VIP Program!

If you haven't seen the latest set of products from Samsung, take a look! What is different? Samsung is in a period of transition where it is adding the component called 'Cool' into its products.

And the associated article in BusinessWeek.com titled 'Camp Samsung' explains what the employees in Samsung are upto. The program as such has all the components to be part of an MBA program:). Well, even the article too! The three lettered abbreviations always keep flying in any MBA lecture like here, Value Innovation Program (VIP), Value Innovation Specialists, Market Driven Change, Value Curves (Lean Concepts), Good to Great...

Bringing simple thoughts & expectations of a consumers by putting themselves in consumers' shoes is making the company come up with these 'cool' features.

The article's extract

"To keep costs down (part of that quest for value), Samsung removed a sensor that automatically adjusts the brightness to the light in the room and decided not to boost resolution to accommodate the latest high-definition standards. And with the speakers under the screen, the sound quality was lowered even as the TV's silhouette improved."

Ofcourse, with such a sleek high tech TV in the center of the hall, it would be more than apt for any consumer to have the hi-fi digital surround sound speakers and hence, compromising the TV sound quality for its look can sure be overseen! But, not sure if the resolution & brightness adjust trade off for aesthetics is worth it. Because, when people go for HD/LCD/Huge Flat Screen/Plasma TVs, they look for picture quality.

Give or take... The program seems to be a success because without the employees pledging themselves into VIP, these changes are not possible. When I see this line

"...stay inside a drab room with small, curtained windows for the bulk of the next six weeks.",

my thoughts are on the motivation factors, if at all any, offered by the Samsung management to these employees!?

Same Sea Different World?

With all the ads going on about Shamu, my expectations did increase. If you have seen them, you'll understand too! A couple of killer whales swimming under the ocean, coming up above the sea level and flying near the down town buildings - The ad ending as Believe in Shamu! This is a new show by Shamu killer whale in Sea World, San Diego! What else can a whale do was my question when I went there.... & yes, there was nothing special in the new show too! A bit of disappointment.

But, to my surprise, the show by the seals - Clyde & Seamore's Risky Rescue had a new story line and it was much more entertaining than the previous ones. It sure is worth a watch! And as always the dolphins put up a great show in their Discovery! They never give up & I too always enjoy watching them!

Yet another surprise is the summer time show of Cirque de la Mer - (Picture?? - Succeeded uploading after many tries!!) The show with people dressed like sea world creatures dancing, doing acrobatics and performing for music. I should say this performance is not that much entertaining as the others, because it is not performed by sea creatures and well, is performed at a distance from the audience! Here are some clips of the same! Video 1, Video 2

What to say! May - June is the right time for San Diego Sea World and if you get a chance, just try it out.

Colors They Change...

Assume you lost something near a bush in your backyard and you are searching for the same. You are moving the plant & bush with your hands and suddenly you feel that the bush underneath your hand is moving on its own. Just out of curiosity, you take a peek. Alas! You see a venomous snake which is almost of the same color as that of the bush. Can you feel the chillness in your heart?

Well, you will if you feel discomfort with snakes around and especially if you have touched one before! Once when I was in a theme park, I had 3 long snakes around my neck (one of those crazy stuffs :)) and even now, I feel their movement!!!

Alright! Coming to the point: There is so much of hype around the discovery of this new species, informally called ‘Chameleon Snake’. Till now, scientists haven’t had a chance to see one legless reptile which can change color, to blend with its surrounding! This snake called the Kapuas Mud Snake, caught in Borneo’s rain forest is the one and has become the center of attention!

“I put the reddish-brown snake in a dark bucket. When I retrieved it a few minutes later, it was almost entirely white,” is how Dr. Mark Auliya, a German researcher has explained his discovery!

Well, after reading the news story, my curiosity increased on how chameleon actually changes color. How Stuff Works?

“For example, reptiles, amphibians and fish with green coloration typically have a layer of skin with yellow pigment and a layer of skin that scatters light to reflect a blue color. Combined, these layers of skin produce green. "
-- How Stuff Works

Guess, this whole article really explains how most of the animals change their colors and how they adapt! Most probably, this ‘Chameleon Snake’ uses one of those mechanisms. Or is it possible that this snake variety uses a totally new way of producing & refracting lights & colors? Who knows what’s in store in nature?

Football Fever!

The whole world is watching and the happenings everyday are so dynamic - It is the FIFA World Cup Fever!

• Like, I didn't expect Switzerland to lose to Ukraine yesterday - Well, the consolation for Switzerland is, the first team to walk out of FIFA with 'No goals' against!

• With all eyes watching Brazil's Number 9 in the game against Ghana, Kaka's pass did the magic and Ronaldo etched his name in the record book with 15 goals in FIFA. Hats off!

• And with the last eight teams decided (all expected except Ukraine), the tension is mounting more... I wish, Germany walks away with the cup, atleast this time:)!

There is another part to this fever story - A bitter one though! (Picture from The Hindu) More & more stories keep coming of asian poor villagers being exploited in unhealthy & unsafe working conditions for very cheap labor rates! This story is no different, except that we are seeing children!

Just to meet the demand of FootBalls in the international arena this season, these poor village children near Meerut, India are made to work! With poor lighting, bad sitting positions, unattended needle pricks & knife cuts, these kids are stitching at a rate of 2 balls per day for an average Rupees 5 per ball.

Without worrying about their future and their health, these poor kids are serving their families on a day to day basis! Well, these kinds of prolonged workings hours in very bad working conditions is kind of common at many small scale industries in India, for adults or for that matter, kids. Even though, different Indian states are taking measures to abolish child labor, the condition hasn’t improved and is sure more than prevalent! Are the politicians taking a note of these or are they too ‘involved’?

Unless, the Indian government take some stringent actions and put some hard & fast rules, things are never going to improve! More seasons & fevers will come by and more kids will join the bandwagon. May be OSHA should review different industry segments in India and start making very strong suggestions for improvements.

A Stealing Deal...

Related Posts:
Steels: Steal or Deal?
Steels: A New Character!

So, atlast... After 5 months of battle, these guys made a deal. Arcelor is joining hands with Mittal steel. Ofcourse, Mittal has tried to satisfy the Arcelor board and their concerns. They have almost increased the offer like 80% more from that of Jan 06's offer to around USD 33 Billion.

Whatever it is! Guess, Lakshmi Mittal has no more control on the management decisions - 12 out of the 18 board members are from Arcelor! No idea, if Aditya Mittal will be right choice as the next CEO... Yet another wait:)!

A closeness...

What can be more soothing than to read some good news about India? Or to be more specific, something GOOD about Hindu & Muslim unity? Beyond all the communal clashes that we can see in the other parts of the country like in Gujarat, anyone can tell that these people can be brought together by their hearts, some needy times & humanitarian aspects.

But, what took me by surprise is, how people have come together in the event of God. Muslims have put in their hands and have given full support for the Orissa Jagannath's 9 days rath yatra, which is not only being celebrated in Puri but also in many other local villages.

"..."Hindu residents join us in our Id festivals too," said Sahid Khan, another villager, adding that the communities attended each other's marriages and other cultural ceremonies.
This year, one of the villagers (from Deulasahi) Naeem Ali donated a tree for constructing the chariots. Some Muslim carpenters also pitched in in building the chariots. ..."
-- TimesOfIndia

It's better to promote such kind of news about India, the secular country, rather than all those train burnings and communal clashes leavings hundreds dead!! What say?

Are NoteBooks Too Hot?

Noone knows what has happened exactly and Dell is trying to investigate the incident. But if you see the article in The Inquirer, you'll know this ain't good!

What can the possible reasons? May be the fan at the bottom with too much of dust? Or the batteries, which always get over heated. We did see HP pulling off some of the batteries from the market!

Whatever it is, Dell has to act fast. Because, market shouldn't feel that they are getting really very poor quality products for all the discounted sales from Dell. The business model can be great for cost cutting, but the quality matters. No sales means No Business!

Well, may be Google have to reconsider their deal with Dell:)!

Woes...2 More Years...

There are lots of things to think about as best in North America. For me, it is the infrastucture that amazes me - The road system (Like five flyovers are built one over the other in Dallas, Tx) and the way all the freeways are connected to each other! No wonder, the MapQuest & Yahoo maps works:)!

And still, the best thing today is how they are repaired and extended! Though there may be some issues for the near by commuters, the builders really try to make things easy for them! Not like in India! I know, India doesn't even stand close to America in infrastructure and can't be compared. But just imagine the plight of all the IT workers in India Silicon Valley - Bangalore, for the next 2 years!

Prime Minister Dr. Singh is approving Rs.450 crore for a Bangalore flyover project! The details read as

"...The 10 km elevated "Hi-tech" flyover to Electronics City, the IT hub on the city's outskirts, will be the first of its kind in the country. The four-lane flyover will be Bangalore's highest flyover at a dizzying 17 metres (56 feet) from the ground...."
--Hindustan Times

Though this can be a great initiative, the day to day office commuters for the next 24 months to the Hi-Tech park will have really the toughest commute! Already there is too much of hue & cry... Now, add some more.

Educational Society... But

In India, kids are being forced into educational system. Every single kid does study a lot and children try to acquire lots of knowledge & skills from their very young ages. Parents expect their kids to be the first rank holder in everything.

Yesterday, one of my friends claimed that a kid in KG gets books for Science, Math, 2 books for English and what not! Meanwhile, the small kid is already visiting regularly dance, karate, singing classes! Already...!!

But is achieveing excellence in studies the right thing to measure? Because, Delhi Public School just stand to differ. Let's see the story of Garima Godara - A 16 year old girl from a village near Delhi has scored like around 97% in her CBSE 10th Grade exams and still she couldn't find a seat in the highly acclaimed school! Well, she cleared the school's entrance exam (for the +1 grade!) and then she couldn't clear the interview - Not good in Spoken English is the reason!

Well, I too stand to differ from the school! If spoken english is the only reason to reject her, then it's really a bad reason. The school should just have thought about Japan and I'm sure, they would have reconsidered their decision. I'm sure, if the girl is that much skillfully qualified she would put some more efforts to excel in her spoken english too.

It's good that the school has built a good name and the knowledge creams want to walk into this school! But, shouldn't the school put some efforts to bring up some kids? They just can't expect the top notch kids to walk into their school, the kids do all the work and the school ending up getting 'the name'!

Well, we can say that the girl just tasted the reality in India. More to come, are the reservations, the governmental offices, the corruptions - Things which we don't have any control on, but just accept them as a part of our life...

Enemies Join Hands!

Yesterday, I happened to install Real Player in one of the systems. Well, at the end of the install, much of to my surprise, there is dialog for installing Google ToolBar! Interesting enough - RealPlayer is trying to pull down the monopoly of Microsoft as much as possible! Very much apt to say 'Enemy of my Enemy is my friend'!

Well, much to a coincidence came across another news yesterday itself. The very recent enemy for Microsoft is the PDF guy! He too joined his hands with Google! A multi-year agreement of including Google's toolbar with all Adobe products starting with ShockWave player! 'All small enemies join hands with one lead enemy'!

On a side note, guess, everyone wants to install a new toolbar in Internet Explorer and Firefox! The new Yahoo Messenger 8.0 beta install, compulsorily installs yet another toolbar for these two browsers:)! Microsoft should never even be worried about that small MSN search textbox in the corner of IE 7.0!

Waiting... For Bad

America is a vast landscape! This country sees all kind of natural disasters from one end to another!

Florida & places near the Atlantic are always hit with hurricanes! North from there, meets with heavy rains, floods & feets of snows. Equally the states of mid-west like Ohio, Michigan gets all snow. Coming down, Oklahoma goes with those Huge Twisters! And coming to the west end and above it, Earth Quakes & Volcanos (Yellow Stone).

I'm kind of closer to the Earth Quake prone area, where once in a while, I feel the jolt, the machines dancing in my office! I guess, have seen Tsunami warnings one or two times last year! Well, the tectonic plates north of me have always been on the move but haven't been that devastating like the 1906 San Francisco quake! But, when I saw this news, I feel like... when is this disaster going to be? Not really something good to foresee! The San Andreas Fault is waiting to explode (Pic from Berkeley.Edu)!

We'll wait! New Orleans met with the worst disaster last year with Katrina, but still they have rebuilt the whole city and the Mardi Gras celebrations went on very well this year! And yet again, they have started waiting for this year's hurricane season! When everyone waits for the yearly seasons, we in this side of the country wait everyday:(!

Seats Assigned!

I guess the first time I boarded SouthWest airlines is around 2003! One airlines company, that went really very strong during those periods of economy slowdown and didn't even come close to Chapter 11! Well, even Continental was equally good and... Let's discuss just SouthWest!

My first flight experience in SouthWest was a bit different! At that time, my preference went to SouthWest, because they were the only ones who were allowing passengers to check in 3 luggages - Three luggages for domestic travel and for great travel deals!

On the date of travel, after the initial check in formalities I had my boarding pass!

I was travelling one-way and so, there was more surprise for me at the airport! Any guesses? Well, it seems my boarding pass had an 'encrypted' code, informing the baggage screening area officials that am a one-way traveller! So, they pulled me aside for special screening:):(! Till date, got no idea what that code is.

More surprise!!! When I was looking for the code, I realized that there is no seat number in my boarding pass! I was about to board the flight and got the details for seat allocation clarified! Well, it seems I can take whatever seat I want! Couldn't believe my ears! But I was glad, because I walked into the flight as one of the first set of passengers and so, picked a comfortable seat in the first row! Cool deal! And there was no business class too!

More & more surprises - The way the stewards entertained the passengers with some songs and few steps of dances! A very dynamic entertaining exciting travel on that day!

Back to that seat allocation - I was a lucky one on that day! But how many times can I get so lucky? Just think about the last guy who is walking into the flight! His/her flight experience will be awful with the worst seat he/she could think of! The travel can be more than a frown! From the day of it's business around 1970, SouthWest have had this model of 'No Seat Allocation'!

And now, there is change of stand! Passengers are going to be assigned seats! The reason behind this, I guess should be two fold. One to help those frowning passengers and probably to invite more passengers who prefer assigned seat processes! The second should be probably to improve the boarding time!

Hmmm... The areas to be concentrated for this transition are computers, database, online seat allotment & check in, training personnel... BTW, do their flights have seat numbers:)?!

A Known Fact!

There are some things different about the humans in US and that we can blatantly see, when we come here for the first time especially from a country like India! Hmm.. Am just finding words to put it! Alright, here is a list (May be add the word 'Almost' to all of them) -

• Every person you meet on the road will greet you with Hi, Hello, Wasssup, How are you doing or just Good Morning!
• We can expect every shop clerk to say 'Thank You' and wish us 'A Good Day/Evening'!
• If someone walks through a door and if you are following them, the other person will keep the door open for you until you pass by!
• When you sneeze in a crowd, you can expect someone to shout 'Bless You'!
• Car drivers wait for pedestrians and for other cars as if they are not in any hurry! They even show hand signs for others to take the lead!

We just can't expect any of them in India! No way, especially to strangers! Does that mean Indians are impolite? Not courteous? Well, that's what a Reader's Digest survey between February & March 06 has found! "New York - Most Polite! Mumbai - Rudest"! Guess, they have added one more criteria to the above list of simple things - Drop a document and see if any passby picks it up!

As I have always insisted, common Indians have great hearts! It'll be put into work, only when need arises! With the population in each & every metro & cosmo city in India exploding, may be the percentage of such small things happening is very small that they become unnoticed! Don't you feel so?

Car With 'Brains'

How does it sound if we get a car which 007 gets? Hmm... Probably, it's a over call:)! Alright, not needed to that extent, but certain things are not a distant future & yet not reachable!

For me, this has been going on for quite sometime, when I see different ads from different biggies! Like the latest one from Toyota Yaris, which puts its tongue out to catch some iPod, chews it and spits it out - Representing that it is MP3 players compatible! Well, how about just putting all the songs in the car itself! I mean, why not a hard drive inside the car so that I can load all the songs I have into it! I don't need to have a CD, Mp3 player, Cassette player or for that matter some car adapters!

All Nissan cars do lots of calculations and keeps giving information to the drivers like the Mileage, how many more miles can the car go with the available gas and much more. So, why not the car do much more anaysis & probably advice the driver on how his driving is and where he can improve! Well, may be even the car itself can make some inner mechanism changes for optimum use of gas!

And we know that cars change their inner temperatures based on the climatic change outside! Even the use of coolant & battery can be optimized! And probably go ahead and advice the driver & passengers seperately to maintain their individual seat temperatures for best performance of the engine!

When the GPS systems are used to find directions and drive around, they also do make some decisions now a days - Based on the currently available 'Live Traffic' information, they do make some alternate routes. May be, this should also be advanced enough to make a trade off decision if it is worth to make that alternate route considering the gas usage - in the traffic jam or the extra miles of free traffic!

Well! Is that it? Consider the OnStar facility at a GM car! I mean, this is cool because I saw the live demo of my car being opened by some person remotely located in some other city! And added to that, ofcourse my car will transmit information to the service department if something goes wrong! Well, the car can sure give the driver such kind of information and provide the probability of things going wrong, so that the driver has the discretion to make the decision!

What more! Well, imagine you are in a long drive! You are thinking about making a stop over in an hour for food! How about some in built computer where we have online access, look for Pizza Hut at our stopover and place an online order itself!

I ain't asking a lot! These are all already there, but not everything is in the affordable ones! Or Are they?

Bush Bug:)!

If you haven't heard about it yet, may be you should try it out!:)

1. Open an empty Notepad file
2. Type "Bush hid the facts" (without the quotes)
3. Save it as whatever you want.
4. Close it, and re-open it.

Mother Of Lemons...

From all around the world, the luxury car makers have always seen complaints - How, the after sales service from BMW or for that matter, that of Benz (DaimlerChrysler) is awful! So, let's see what is going on today with these guys!

Mercedes Benz AMG CLK-GTR roadster is worth like a whooping USD 1.7 Million! If you think of it, it's much more than a dream car - 12 cylinders, 124 MPH in 10 secs & 200 MPH max speed! And this has been in Los Angeles for quite some time now! If I had known, I sure would have sneaked into the showroom! Just like, peeking all kind of Ferrari's at Wynn in Vegas:)!

Well, well! So much for the hype and I guess, I need not regret now - The car hardly ran for 10 blocks, gave a oil pressure warning and then refused to shift gears! Lol...Now this is scrap metal worth USD 2 Million & called 'The Mother of All Lemons' - An apt picture too! The worst part is Mercedes haven't provided their helping hands...

Is there a way, we can start making CarFax reports for any car that walks out from a plant?!

Socializing...

Have never been full-fledged into a socializing website... until now. Many of my friends used to mention about the same but never cared to take a look.

But it so happened, that one of my friends added my profile in this website as a friend, where I had been a member for quite sometime, but never found a use of it! The site is Orkut! I have seen some bad news articles about this site for past few weeks, like child pornography and yesterday's story on stealing data - all happening around Brazil though! All those bad news get quite a bit of attention because this Orkut has Google's backing!

Inspite of all those stories, I just spent a day in it & I found quite a few of my friends and more friends from my friends' network. Not bad! Am I recommending you to join this & join me as a friend? Not really! This is more like some time pass:). Well, if you are kind of wondering what to do, how to spend your time browsing, may be Orkut will help you find more of your old time buddies, pals & friends.

Moreover, this is like a number game - The count of friends in your network keeps increasing and people feel pride and satisfaction in that:)!

Why didn't Dr.Singh...

There is so much talks going around by the presence of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad in Shanghai! Why not? With China and Russia around, if Iran's president is shaking hands with Hu Jintao and Putin respectively and has seperate "high level" discussions with them, then why not the whole world will look towards their small statements?

Till now, this for me is a low profile "get-together" as I have no idea about the same - Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) - A grouping of Russia, China, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Tajiks and Kyrgyzstan! Not any more! Well, but why did Iran's president make a presence? We have four more countries for this association - India, Pakistan, Iran & Mongolia - in observer status. And even Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan President has also made a guest appearance.

So, here is one group Russia, China & Iran who are more like anti-US. Pakistan & Afghanistan more like Pro-US. All the big heads from these countires joined this "get-together"! Interesting enough! Well, it seems Dr.Manmohan Singh didn't attend this conference - which ofcourse has been played low because of all other stuffs happening in this circle! But why?

Is it because, India has already voted for IAEA's proposal to report Iran's nuclear programme to the UN Security Council? Or is it because, India doesn't want to shake hands with the anti-US group? Or is it because, it just wants to play safe till the US-India nuclear programme gets through?

Beyond Need :)

At one end of the world, there are always starvations & deaths! At another end, people create things, innovate & invent based on needs. And then, there are some products which people want to have. Well for this day, probably Apple's iPod is a want- It can be seen as one best entertainer for an average New York Subway commuter!

The product release I saw today is much more than those! Guess, people can't answer the questions of "Do we need it? Or atleast, do we want it?" I guess such kind of products go to those people who don't know how to spend their money! Check out the picture. Still wondering what it is? Check out it's complete specs here!

Haha! I don't know which way to define it - An iPod docking station with a Loo Roll Dispenser with moisture-resistant speakers? - For peaceful/mind blasting/soothing music Shittttting!??

Is it Time for India?

It has been really a very long time since Kofi Annan took the seat! I guess, let me put it this way - I'm not sure what is the term period of the UN General Secretary:)! Whatever it is, it is time for Annan to step down on Dec 31st and so, the place is becoming vacant!

Looks like this is time for Asians to pitch in their candidates! Didn't India lose the battle to Japan like 10 years back, for the non-permanent seat in UN Security Council? Is this time for some pay back? What, am I kidding - An Indian for the highest UN post? Well, its happening! SriLanka, Thailand, South Korea... India just joined the line. When Japan is yet to get a candidate out, rumours are around that Shashi Tharoor will be backed by India for the post! He is U.N. under-secretary-general for communications and public information! Well, I guess that speaks about Tharoor and I'm not going behind the credentials of this candidate! Even if its some other candidate, doesn't matter. Let's just concentrate on where does India stand in this!

India is in the right spot now! A global power on the make, along with other BRC countries. So, India has all the chance to prove its point. But, are the five permanent seat holders ready to take it?

What kind of advantage will India get if at all Tharoor gets elected? Out of my mind, more financial aids, more facilities, infrastructure, improved health conditions of the poor, more education... who knows?

Asian Robots!

I guess every Asian knows personally that many of them are born workers! They work very hard, hard enough that their employees always take advantage of them. I already wrote on this topic on how employers exploit their workers with extra hours of work and no pay for the same.

But what I'm discussing here is - How, many asians work more than their capacity, not in the high tech IT jobs, but in some factory floor as hourly labourers with unhealthy, unsafe & unhappy working & living conditions just to get their daily bread & butter:(! Why do you think many Americans hate WalMart - I mean literally boycott? One of the reasons is because of these unhealthy workers all around the world trying to meet the demands of WalMart's Supply Chain. Many workers in many Asian countries like Bangladesh and Indonesia work for very less pay but work more than like 16 hours a day.

Well! A cool gadget from California joined this line today - Apple & it's iPod! A very disturbing report from Shenzhen, China in fact!

"...Like soldiers on parade, the young men and women are ordered to line up on the factory roof and drilled for up to three hours, often in searing heat...."

"...They discourage individualism, effectively turning the workers into robots as much as they can. Except, of course, they're a lot cheaper than robots..."

I wish, some human welfare commission do take a notice of this report and order due actions! Well, Apple has promised to look into the matter and may be, they may come up with more details and a good, safety & healthy working conditions for the workers in their supply chain. Hope this won't end up like any other hot story of a day and dies out eventually!

Is He Out?

The talk is on! The SOPs have to be decided! The protocol has to be called out! That is what the ICC - International Cricket Council has tried to do, I guess!

I was continuously following the score on that day - The fourth day of the first India-West Indies Test Match at Antigua when MS Dhoni was in full flow and swinging his bat for those Raining 6's. When he was at his personal score of 69, another hit towards the boundary line and now, the ball has landed in the hands of Ganga! There starts the drama!

Ganga made a doubtful call that he didn't step on the boundary ropes! So, the on-field umpires were unable to make the decision on a six or a catch! So, they passed on the baton to the Third Umpires. Well, after 15 minutes of TV replay review - Ufff... indeed a loooong time - the Third Umpires once again handed over the baton to the on-field umpires to make a decision! Now, that IS bad! The third umpires should have made a decision! My guess was, the benefit of doubt should be given to the batsman and hence, that hit should have been declared a six.

Well, the ICC made a decision on the protocol to be followed!

Since, in such cases, the boundary /six is doubtful, the decision should be a non-boundary!

And so, in this specific Dhoni's case, a non-boundary is a catch and the batsman should be called OUT! A good way to come to a logical conclusion:).

Whatever we say! But it wasn't good on part of Lara to ask Dhoni to walk out, when the umpires are yet to make up their minds!

Car Dance!

If there are somethings which have changed in recent days in Universal Studios Hollywood, then they are mostly from King Kong & the upcoming Fast & The Furious!

During my recent visit there (may be the 7th time I guess) things have changed. Well, I should say I haven't been there since the movie King Kong came. One gigantic display of Kong (Picture) for people to take photos in front of. The 'special effects' show have included some clippings from the movie and have tried adding sound effects to them too. Nice improvements! For the first time I really enjoyed the trip to Hollywood after a long time:)

The other best thing is the hype created around the upcoming movie Fast & The Furious. Not sure, how the movie is going to be, but sure the cars do look great. The Studio Tour tram ride also happened to be great. The cars booming, flying and dancing in front of us - is worth an effort, entertaintment and appreciation:)!

Less Delay?

I'm not sure if the delay in the process of issuing passports to Indian nationals is going to be reduced or not, but for sure the passport applicants don't need to pay off the visiting officials:)!

The process of issuing Passports for Indians involve this step where the applicants got to wait & wait & wait:)! As part of waiting, they also need to wait for a police constable to come to their residence to verify their respective residential address! This process has some complications from the applicant's perspective! Well, the applicant can't sure make other plans of going out of their residence because, he/she is not sure about when the constable will walk into the house.

Well, atleast this is tolerable, but for sure we know one thing. If some government official walks into our house, then we need to pay them 'some amount' for nothing:)...:(! And so every constable will get due 'respects' at every house of passport address verification! The new initiative from Ministry of External Affairs to avoid this process - A government offical's visit for verifying residential address - is a good one.

Hopefully, this will make the process simple, easy & reduce delay for the applicants. But, will it help reduce the applicant's loss of 'some amount' and avoid some basic level of corruption??

It's Virtual Enough!

Any engineer in the software industry would like to sit in his office desk and do all the work. Mostly people will avoid walking to any kind of lab to do the work. I'm no different either.

Well, there were days when I either try to use a physical machine in the lab, do remote desktop, terminal server it or atleast try to set up the lab I need in my office itself:)! Fair Enough! Then, came VMWares - The Virtual Machines! The IS team got set up some machines in the lab with their respective 'Split Personalities' and so, we can ping them and get ourselves going! And so, came a time when even running 3-4 systems per physical system is not large enough to cater the demands!

Do we have a new solution? Looks like Akimbi is good enough to meet those demands! I tried my hands on it and I do enjoy it! Why? Because, everything is not only from my office desk, but from my office system itself.

Alright! So, this is how this works from a user's interface! There is this server which has say like 300 GB of space. All we need to do is, go via the Akimbi interface, create a configuration and add a machine with the required Ghost! That's it! We are up & running! So, we can also add multiple systems to one configuration, deploy, undeploy, revert to the default configuration or reset all of them together! And the big advantage is, system snapshots can be captured & stored in library.

But at the same time, if the original system is running, is it possible to run the snapshot at a different system! Possible, Name & IP Address conflict? The systems talking to each other are kind of really very slow at the start and eventually they establish a good connection. The real concern is, it seems the architecture works like having a constant/common set of OS files for all the systems running in the server! How can they be shared? Won't we get into file sharing issues?

Like any other system, this hardware-software system works and I'm happy about it! Will wait to run into some serious issues:)!

Browser To Go!

If you are a FireFox & Google fan, then you sure will like this. Whatever Google says about Microsoft, its MSN search box and IE7, it doesn't matter because Google is also sailing almost in the same boat with respect to Firefox.

Well, I sure am a FireFox fan. So, I do wish my "Favorites" (Bookmarks) to walk with me and ofcourse, the same set of links arranged in the Firefox's Bookmarks Toolbar in all the systems I'm using:). Till now, the route I used is export & import. Probably, it's time to move over & start using some tools from Google and try to avoid such workarounds. What Say? It seems, Google Browser Sync is the solution provider - If this is installed in the machines, where I would like to browse then MY FireFox walks with me with my predefined settings! Okay! Sounds good!

And added to that, user has a choice of opening the same set of tabs/web pages too, which he/she had kept opened when FireFox was last used in probably a different system. Well, that brings up a new set of questions. Before using the Browser Sync, here are some privacy-security concerns.

• If Browser Sync is installed in a public computer, is FireFox browser going to show up differently for every new Google user?
• Are the user IDs and passwords (if I have set FireFox preference to store them), going to be stored in some central Google Database that is accessed over the net - once again for every different user going to use the system?
• If I have logged into a bank account at one system's FireFox, go to another system with Browser Sync and open Firefox, is this new browser going to automatically log me into my bank site?

I know! I'm yet to go over the Privacy policies, the Terms & conditions of using Google Browser Sync. May be my concerns are addressed. Can you think of any others? - Something like people were so worried when GMail introduced Ads based on 'reading email contents'!

A Penny Touch!

Here is the scenario - Just imagine a robot's hand touching your body and massaging gently without really giving you some acute pain or anything of that sort! Or A robot trying to do heart transplant - Like Neo's hands working on Trinity's hearts in 'The Matrix Reloaded':)! Quite a possibility in the future and researchers have moved an inch closer to that reality!

So, here is the research and invention topic of today - The robot fingers & hands are coated with a special film which can make them feel the surface they are touching!

Their new film is made of alternating layers of gold and semiconducting cadmium-sulfur nanoparticles separated by nonconducting, or dielectric, films.
--ABC

This film is ElectroLuminescent - Film will glow once it touches a layer based on the texture & pressure. The light can be used as a signal source that can be interpreted into pictures via specialized cameras which in turn can help in understanding the characteristics of the layer that is being "felt". Wow!

How effectively can this idea be used? As the researchers have shown it with their "Penny Touch" experiment (Image from CBC News)-

A US penny produced an image detailed enough to show the wrinkles in the clothing of Abraham Lincoln, who is pictured on the coin, and the letters "TY" in "LIBERTY".
--ABC

- they are also pretty much sure that this technique can be used for monitoring & controlling the movement of the robot arms in some very delicate human surgeries using small tools for some remote inaccessible locations! Not bad for a great foresight!

With all the needed funds available in America and with more & more brains draining away from Asian countries to US, I would like to see innovations and progress in such technological inventions happen at a greater pace! Ahnn... I'm not changing topic. Actually, this is related. Ain't it, always good to see the names of proving Indians, like in this case Vivek Maheshwari and Prof. Ravi Saraf from Chemical Engineering Department, University of Nebraska?

Greens For Less Gas!

One amazing country is United States! Can you imagine - If people use public transportation, then they get paid extra dollars? My company offers me extra bucks for any kind of office commutation other than driving alone like biking, walking, car pooling and others. We sure have special car pool parking spots in our office, right near the doors, next to the handi capped parkings:)!

With all the cars roaming around in the freeways and the price of oil lingering around $75 per barrel and still moving up, companies and communities are trying their best to help this country save some natural source of energy! No wonder Toyota Prius is one big hit in US. It seems there are many companies in the bay area that actually help their employees with 10-20% of the cost in buying hybrid cars! Interesting enough!

Google is one of them, paying like $5000 bucks for their employees! Timberland, too offers a special parking spot for hybrid cars and some USD 3000 as cash back. Well, the big news today is Bank Of America, made its cash back offer of $3000/- for around 21,000 employees near Charlotte, Los Angeles & Boston! That sure in enough incentive for employees to buy the hybrids.

Well! On the other side, the experts calculations say that there is eventually no long term savings for an individual by using a hybrid and using less gas! How far is this true?

A Dot In Yahoo!

If you log into Yahoo mail, there is a new ad campaign going around. That is the inclusion of the dot. Dot, where? My preference switched over from Yahoo Mail to Gmail for quite some reasons and the dot is one of the main reasons too.

So, the new ad campaign is all about building some more Yahoo user base by adding a dot in the email ID like Bush.Kerry@yahoo.com. I'm not sure how long this has been going on, but this I know, is right on target over one of GMail's advantage.

When I was wondering about the possible set of users who may sign up newly, one of my friends signed up a new Yahoo email ID for his kid with first name and last name with a dot inbetween:)! Okay! A new set of Gen Y & Z may sign up. Then ofcourse, Yahoo fans will do! Why not another meaningful Yahoo email ID with a dot? And then another friend signs up an ID, with his name dotted with his fiancee's name! There goes a huge head count who want to join not only their hands but their names too with dots! Wow, that sure is a great initiative from Yahoo, though following Google!

Well, here is another reason, why I prefer GMail! I don't need to refresh the page:)! A tab in the FireFox automatically reads like 'GMail - Inbox (1)' and the number keeps on increasing as & when a new mail arrives. I don't need to have a Google Toolbar or keep running my GTalk to know the arrival of a new email! Yahoo!, you listening?

Good, Bad & Ugly!

It seems everything started in an internet chat room and has gone all the way to Canadian Government Buildings & US Towers controlling GPS for Aviation! Well, it is also great that Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) were monitoring all these from the beginning - That's Ugly - People planning terrorist activities from chat rooms!

...when a shadowy group of disaffected urban youth began talking in an Internet chat room in the fall of 2004 espousing anti-Western views, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service was listening.

Nissan ain't having good times in the most important US market recently! Toyota & Honda had a great last quarter while Nissan is still trying to make a statement with its new set of models lined up for the future. Can Versa meet Honda Fit? Can the so-called "Ugly" designed & delayed Sentra walk over the super hit Civic? I feel, its all Bad times ahead for Nissan! What else can you expect if you are late to the market?

...After Nissan introduced the Sentra at the Detroit auto show, comments on car Web sites were mixed, with several on autoblog.com calling the design "ugly.'' Some even worry that the Versa could provide competition for its big brother....

What more can you expect from one of the state governments of India than helping its citizens with simple procedures, less paperwork & bureaucracy, faster service and all of it because of technology & e-Services. Ofcourse, most of them have already been automated in many other states like Tamil Nadu. But, this sure is a good initiative from Uttaranchal!

The Indian state of Uttaranchal is developing a central data repository and a public key infrastructure (PKI) to make it easier for its citizens to access government e-services.

A 'Save As' Issue!

'Why' is the question that stands in my head! I'm more than surprised by this new stand from Microsoft. They have fought cases of monopoly where they never even had the chance of winning. But today, it's a different scenario. They not only didn't fight but also conceded defeat in this issue where they may actually win. But why?

We all know of PDF for quite some years and it had been declared as an open format by Adobe allowing other softwares to support it like Mac OS does so. Well, recently Microsoft have also made a move to support PDF in their Office 2007 to be out with Vista. All they have done is, include another menu option in the products of their Office 2007 Suite Beta Version - Save As PDF! That's it! Adobe took a reverse stand - If Microsoft is to support PDF through their Office Suite, then they need to charge for the same from their customers! A Stand that applies only for Microsoft!

It's understandable that Adobe may lose some market if MS Office starts supporting PDF. But, PDF is an open format to be supported as declared earlier by Adobe and so, Microsoft had all rights to include the respective 'Save As' option. But to my surprise, Microsoft yielded and accepted to remove the 'Save As PDF' option from their Office 2007. And they have accepted to give the option as a free downloadable patch for their customers. How come Microsoft took this stand?

On a side note - It seems Adobe is still unhappy. They neither want 'Save As' nor a free patch from MS:)! Hmm... Microsoft is already getting ready for yet another court action! But, does Adobe really have a point to win?

Raining 6's!

I just feel very sorry for myself, because right at this moment I should be sitting in front of TV instead of my office desk and watching the hat-trick sixers hit by Dhoni in the 151st over of the Indian's 2nd innings in the first test cricket match against the West Indies!

Wow... Six sixers out of Mohammed's deliveries in almost consecutive overs. I saw Dhoni's score like 22 when Kaif is standing at 29 and was thinking about the low scoring test match and how bored the audience at the stadium will be. Suddenly, the score against Dhoni shows up as 69 with 6 sixes & 4 fours. Took some time to believe my eyes:)! Great going!

Well, if luck takes him through, then there is a written century against his name. Otherwise, he'll soon get out - Going behind the ball & the biggies are not good in a test match!

Yet Another Security Breach!

One fine morning, one of my friends gets a call from a collection agency that he has failed to pay an amount of US$400/- odd, to a hospital some 4 months back. My friend went poking into details and realized that the hospital is located somewhere in Florida where he didn't even visit four months back. So, some more queries & clarifications made him realize that someone else has used his information to do some emergency medical check up in that Florida hospital. His first suspicion was on his 401K company and their reported lost of his information few months back because of a laptop, hmm, rather Notebook Theft!!

Yep! This has been going on for a while from different sources. Like last month, we witnessed the worst case scenarios - Discovery that someone possessed access to Ohio University servers for long time. Likewise, some 25 Million US veterans information was lost - That sure is huge. Anyways, what prompted me to write on this?

Ernst & Young are the auditors of Hotels.com, a sub-division of Expedia. One of their notebooks (Ahh! No!) is stolen in a car theft incident. The bad part is, the notebook has information like Name, Address and Credit Card details of like 243,000 customers of Hotels.com!! Can they be read? Well, the system is supposed to have password protection (as if we don't have for our notebooks) and some software encryption! Unfortunately & coincidentally, this particular notebook doesn't have the encryption installed yet:)!

Here are few things I just don't understand sometimes! It seems, the auditor employees rightfully & legally can carry such information in their notebooks. Why to carry around such kind of confidential & sensitive informations in notebooks - I mean, I already here have quoted 2 incidents where laptop theft has lead to probable information theft? Why can't they log in & access the required information through secure networks from servers/main frames?

We know there are always prey watching eyes to steal notebook from cars. And if they end up breaking into the system's information carrying such sesitive data, then they sure have made their day!

Leave stealing! What about misplacing? A quite probable story in the future considering all those tiny storage devices in the field now. Here is another friend of mine, working in a top notch Fortune 500 consultancy firm, who was recently offered a 2GB jump drive (Can you imagine? Yeah! Yeah! That thumb sized drive) to carry confidential clients' information. And this friend of mine is always on business trips & visits, flying every week to different places. I just couldn't stop giggling seeing that Jump Drive! Well... Ofcourse I do know the issue is much more serious than a giggle!

McLaren's Tracker!

Has Kimi been driving faster now a days in the circuits? I don't see any difference! Are the McLaren engines in great shape? Can't comment especially after the Monaco Grand Prix. But their F1 car building team is happy about one aspect - They are able to track information down to every component level.

So, what is bringing this change? Let's just open the back door. What we may be looking at is like a new car every year - Design & manufacturing in like 4 months, taking care of around like 10,000 components, incorporating design changes inbetween the production lines, an engine for one race or at the max 2 and with a head count of say 500 - Just look at it like a lap in the whole circuit of product cycle and at that lap speed. One thing is for sure in this section - Things are always tough to track and people always have the responsibility to report progress and to answer management's queries! As reported by BusinessWeek last week, this 'sure thing' has been eased out lately. And the company that has made this happen is SAP - Much to my surprise!

There has always been this story about these big giant ERP solution providers like SAP, Oracle...

It's a period of heavy rain in this dense forest and everything around is getting bad. A turkey in this forest wants to cross over the flooded river to go for safety. Comes a Fox (you know who) around. He offers to help. Turkey sure is scared and doesn't want to risk. But, Fox is quite promising that Turkey yields.

Turkey climbs on the back of Fox and stays farther away from Fox's mouth. As Fox starts walking, the water level increases and slowly the Turkey realizes its sinking. Without much of choice and realizing Fox is the only "friend" now, it slowly starts moving towards the neck...on top of neck... near the forehead... on the forehead... That's it. Next moment, without Turkey's realization Fox has its mouth around Turkey's neck!!

SAP was never for small companies with like less than 1000 employees. It's like filing bankruptcy eventually if such a small company is signing up for SAP. But, look at SAP's goals -

...SAP has for years been trying to push further down into what it calls the Fortune One Million -- companies with as few as 100 employees. SAP's goal is to have 100,000 customers in that segment by 2010, a more than fivefold increase from the current level....
-- BusinessWeek

Well, if SAP is looking at very small businesses, it has lots of ground work to do. Especially make its products so lean that they just meet what the small firm (or the industry marget segment in broader perspective) wants and ofcourse, without much of maintenance to do for the whole year long.

Partnership with McLaren would sure give visibility for SAP (like I thought of blogging:)) and probably bring more businesses to SAP. But do every small firm has a funds bank in their back like DaimlerChrysler for McLaren's F1s?

Have You 'Ask'ed?

There was a time in like 2000 I guess, when I used to chat with some personnel online on a topic of search. And the website answers questions. The company called itself 'Ask Jeeves'. It was a different business model altogether then. It wasn't a one-two words search. I used to chat about a certain question with some person online at the site and later the contents of the whole chat session will be sent to me.

And now, things have changed. It's no more questions & answers but words Googling - Just like Kodak Moments! But, lately I have been seeing too many Ads on TV giving some of the features of Ask.com and right away comparing & hitting on Google's way of searching - Some word like Grisly Bear or something of that sort, A kid explaining how Google is bad!

Well, for me the questions that stood right out is - When did it become Ask from Ask Jeeves? How come it is able to pour in so much of money in this new marketing campaign - I mean, something which is standing at the end of the competition when compared to Yahoo, MSN, Google, A9...? So, obviously I went on to Ask something. It was in February 06 when the new name came into existance. The site has been bought by InterActive and so, they are behind all the marketing funds. Ok! But, is it really different? Another Ask!

Not bad at all. A site built on the concept of value-adding to search. So, I gave Sun Microsystems as a search text.

• The company's stock price immediately below which we know is falling after their layoff plans.
  
• Then an explanation from Wikipedia, with the company's logo in the side.
  
• Some news headlines right away - Not Like Google, which takes us to a new page.
  
• Then comes 3 Ads. Well, mostly Google puts all its Ads abobe & on top of all its answers.
• Then the regular set of search results.
• The binoculors which shows a snapshot of the page to be visited - with so small texts. Why is this? What value does it really adds? Is there a reason we need to know how the website looks before we go there? We are looking for answers to our queries not the look & feel of the websites!
  
• Some more ads at the end - This ain't good making user to scroll more!
• But some good & different things of notice is at the right side - Gives easy links to pull ourselves inside our query like 'Narrow Your Search' - Stock, UK etc or push outside with 'Expand Your Search' - Sun Java, UNIX, IBM et al!
• Has one more set of links called 'Related Names'! - Has Scott but not Jonathan!!??:)

The links in the right side are quite cool. Some more to Ask! Ended up in a technology called Teoma which is renamed as ExpertRank by Ask. Here is the explanation -

With Ask search technology, it's not just about who's biggest: it's about who's best. Our ExpertRank algorithm goes beyond mere link popularity (which ranks pages based on the sheer volume of links pointing to a particular page) to determine popularity among pages considered to be experts on the topic of your search. This is known as subject-specific popularity. Identifying topics (also known as "clusters"), the experts on those topics, and the popularity of millions of pages amongst those experts -- at the exact moment your search query is conducted -- requires many additional calculations that other search engines do not perform.

No wonder! It is working on topic clusters and so, it is able to pull up the norrow, expand and related names links.

Well, on a funny note, I Asked for Tamil too after the Google Video stats - You see TamilEelam symbol, LTTE explanation from Wiki, Sun TV in a dropdown and in the side - SriLanka Map, Vijay, Mumtaj, Shakeela & Simran. What the heck!!??:)

Some Digests!

When I heard Motorola Razor recall in like April 06, I somehow felt I shouldn't even go near it anytime. Should I get into that mode for Prius too? Not a good news from Toyota - A recall of 320,000 sedans!

Although motorists generally view recalls as a black eye for an auto company, ``when an extremely strong brand sees a problem and fesses up right away to the problem, it generally is a positive thing,'' said Dan Gorrell of San Diego-based market researcher Strategic Vision.

Google has been backing Firefox. Old News! My guess was, after they decided to give over their Pack to Dell, they should probably be soon coming out with a new browser! Because, we know they ain't happy with IE7 too! Looks like Eric Schmidt is not looking forward to! Is there a chance, Google grabs Firefox:)?!

"We would not build a browser for the fun of building a browser and creating another choice," Schmidt added, explaining that Google would make a browser only "if we thought there was a real end-user benefit."

I have always thought about sending some of the old PCs, to say GoodWill or some other charity. But, haven't decided yet if I got to send them to Apple:)! Not a bad program as such, but shouldn't the customers get some sort of discount for their new Mac buy:)?! So, is it better to recycle or to put an ad in eBay or Yahoo?

...allowing consumers to send back any make or model of PC, free of charge, provided that they purchase a new Macintosh.

Fire In Sun...

It's a whole new world today as everyday and but things haven't changed much in the Tech world. It is the same story from Silicon Valley from the days of Dot Com Burst. There was a time when I found tough to digest the news from Intel and today a similar news from Sun Microsystems.

A switch over from Scott McNealy to Jonathan Schwartz means a new management and new way of looking things and new routes for cost cutting. But the number is huge. 5000 employees out of like 37000 to be fired is a lot to think about - Well, can't say because I guess they have already downgraded around 12,000 from the year 2000.

I'm not sure if their server line up - AMD's Opteron based ones, Solaris, Niagara & what else - is ready to meet the market demands. Haven't really been tracking details on these. Any insights?