| Making a point |
[Jul. 7th, 2009|10:33 pm] |
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"In a previous life (before Akamai) I was a complier guy, and for my Master's Thesis I showed that just by adding NOPS you can improve the performance of the SPEC benchmarks by up to 9%. This was in reaction to the common practice (at the time) of publishing compiler papers presenting complicated complier techniques to achieve performance improvements of only 5-10%"
I have not checked out the guy's thesis; but that summary brought a smile to my face, alright!
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| "Browse Here and Buy Online" Book Stores |
[Jul. 6th, 2009|06:27 pm] |
One often comes across pleas like "don't go into a book store to check a product out and then come out and order from some online store - it does the physical store no good while you aim for that 5% discount."
Sadly, if 'check out a physical product and buy later online' is what consumers want, then that's what they will do; you cannot fight that. So let's imagine a store that lets people do exactly what they want. Imagine a store that has rack after rack of books - for display. Instead of a physical shopping cart you pick up a hand-held (with a bar code scanner) at the entrance. The hand held can give you complete access to the online information about a product (like amazon reviews, book website etc.). You browse (physically + info on the net) a book/item, and if you like it, you can 'add to shopping cart' electronically. Once you are done you check out - at 'internet rates', and your selections will be delivered by post to your address.
Think of this as a new retail format that market makers like Amazon can use. 'internet rates' should be possible because there is no inventory management at all in the store (expensive real estate). Perhaps a significant fraction of the cost can be recovered from the brands / companies whose products are being displayed.
Hm... anyone got Jeff Bezos' personal email address? Do you think he'll cough up some cash for some thoughts on this idea? :=) |
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| friendfeed - howto |
[Feb. 28th, 2009|10:08 pm] |
I am sure there is something here I am missing. I import rss feeds of my friends' friendfeeds into Google Reader. Is there any easy way I can choose what channels I receive in those feeds? Specifically I find twitter updates as unbearable clutter in that viewing medium. How do I control what information I get - the default set up appears to be that 'owner' decides what he/she wants to export and that's the end of it.
Does Reader have user-configurable filtering capability?
Update: I've been trying to get Reader to work with FeedRinse. The results have been far from satisfactory, but I guess I need to invest more time exploring the service. I mean, is there *any* RSS reader with built-in filtering capability comparable to FeedRinse? It is very surprising that the situation has not changed nearly 3 years after Cory Doctrow first wrote about it! :) |
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| The Unbearable Lightness of Being - copy for sale |
[Feb. 28th, 2009|09:06 am] |
I thought i found a good deal on amazon.co.uk when I bought Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being for GBP 5.4 as against the list price of GBP 9. Unfortunately I clicked the darned 'add to shopping cart' button twice I now have two copies of this fine book. I will be in Madras / Bangalore in a month's time. If any of you want to buy a brand new copy of this from me, drop me a note :)
Maybe Bezos had something going with OneClick...
Update: Traded for a couple of well thumbed books of comparable quality :) |
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| Plug-in ideas for the Kindle 2 |
[Feb. 25th, 2009|11:37 pm] |
I am surprised how excited I got when I saw the first pics of the Kindle 2. I cannot help but feel the ebook is a concept whose time has come; the Kindle 2 is one way to do it. I wonder what features Amazon will have to build to merely stay in the game (ignoring the marketing required to fight off Apple, who I am sure will be interested in the market sooner or later).
Amazon will have to deal wtih the pulls and pushes of convergence sooner or later (depending on its success of course). I am most attracted to the form factor of this piece of electronics - it is smaller and lighter than your netbook, and about five to six times the size of your cell phone. Do you really want to carry 3 devices on you in the 21st century? How cool do you think it would be if the Kindle 3 had an 'iphone dock' that would let you plug in your iphone to the bottom and control the phone settings through the main display? Or better still, maintain the overall dimensions as they are today, except that the iphone dimensions are "included" in the current size - the generous allocation of real estate to the liberally spaced out key board makes one believe that this is, perhaps, outside the realm of fantasy. Hm, Kindle 3, or any version of Kindle for that matter, is, perhaps, unlikely to get such a feature because of interace issues. And therein, perhaps, lies yet another opportunity for Apple to showcase its engineering and design excellence and leverage its closed architecture for the iphone.
What does the Kindle mean to a collector of autographed books? Well, it sounds depressing at first. But it cannot be that hard to fix it, really. I am sure Amazon has in its release pipeline for Kindle 7, a stylus based input area where authors can sign and leave messages on a page of their choice :) Or one can wish that that be the case :) |
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| 'Discovering' pics that you never knew existed.. via Picasa |
[Feb. 9th, 2009|12:00 am] |
Every once in a while I am surprised to find some old photo in Picasa, bringing back into the realm of consciousness, memories long lost. But increasingly Picasa also turns up photos that I had no bloody idea I had on my hard disk(s). Take a look at the photo below. Even after ten minutes of intense effort I could not figure out what I had to do with this pic... Ah, the wonders of technology :)
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| Headline synthesis |
[Jan. 25th, 2009|05:05 pm] |
A few short days after I blogged (briefly) about content synthesis being the next frontier, I noticed something bizzare on the Google News website. I captured screen shots at that time but did not get around to blogging about it. I was clearly not the only one to notice it. I am not sure if Google came out with an explanation for this weird incident, but I wonder if this is the result of some 'headline matching/synthesis' that goes on behind the scenes.
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| International Appeal of Obama, and languauge. |
[Jan. 20th, 2009|11:39 pm] |
Replace 'America' with Country of Choice in any stirring speech aimed at the masses that Obama has delivered, and you have what would be the best speech in the wettest dreams of any optimist in any country in the world living through these trying times. There is little in his inspiring speeches that cannot be carried without loss to other democracies, at the very least. So, why is it that a Rahul Gandhi, or a Badruddin Sachdev, not manged this unification.
Languauge... language....language. It is my thesis that no Indian leader can mobilize the masses in India like Obama has managed in so short a period.
God bless him. To be precise, God bless his oratorical powers. For now, till he proves his worth through his actions. |
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| toast to Obama |
[Jan. 20th, 2009|11:27 pm] |
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... to his mystical powers of oratory. For now. God bless him. |
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| Satyam's Independent Directors |
[Jan. 11th, 2009|10:15 pm] |
This article in the Business Standard inspired me to do some digging into the profiles of these fine Gentlemen. In the 10 minute research, the profile of Prof. Krishna Palepu , Ross Graham Walker Professor of Business Administration and Senior Associate Dean for International Development, at the Harvard Business School, stood out because of the following:
[...]Prior to assuming his current administrative position, Professor Palepu held other positions at the School, including Senior Associate Dean, Director of Research, and Chair, Accounting and Control Unit.
[...]
In the area of corporate governance, Professor Palepu's work focuses on how to make corporate boards more effective, and on improving corporate disclosure. Professor Palepu teaches these topics in several HBS executive educationprograms aimed at members of corporate boards: "Making Corporate Boards More Effective," "Audit Committees in a New Era of Governance," and "Compensation Committees: New Challenges, New Solutions." He also co-led Harvard Business School's Corporate Governance, Leadership, and Values initiative, launched in response to the recent wave of corporate scandals and governance failures.
Ah, the irony.
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| What would you do if ... |
[Jan. 2nd, 2009|04:46 pm] |
Poignant.
WARSAW (Reuters) - A Polish man got the shock of his life when he visited a brothel and spotted his wife among the establishment's employees. Polish tabloid Super Express said the woman had been making some extra money on the side while telling her husband she worked at a store in a nearby town. "I was dumfounded. I thought I was dreaming," the husband told the newspaper on Wednesday. The couple, married for 14 years, are now divorcing, the newspaper reported. (Writing by Chris Borowski, Editing by Matthew Jones) |
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| Worst webpage ever? |
[Jan. 2nd, 2009|02:03 pm] |
Well, almost. The guy is full of ideas, perhaps. But his website is ... a piece of crap. I was seriously considering sending him a few tips on managing content, when I noticed this at the bottom of the page: "Also please please refrain from offering to “improve” my web site]." *sigh*
www.fooledbyrandomness.com
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| linking google reader to your blog |
[Dec. 7th, 2008|11:51 pm] |
I'd love to be told this is already done...
How many times have you shared a news item with friends on Google Reader along with some insightful comment and wished you wanted to post a link to that item and your uber insightful comment to your blog? Or at the very least wanted to post a comment on a friend's comment on a new item she has shared with you via said Reader? Hm, I've yearned for that feature exactly 3 three times in the past 23 minutes. Now, could one of you Googlers send this feature request to the right people, please? Thanks :-)
On an aside...managing information overload - that's the next stiff problem to be solved in the realm of news aggregation... I can't get to even 2% of the posts in my subscription...
My sisters and brothers @ Google, do you want a challenge - I declare that the holy grail for you exalted souls is as follows, given your Vision (or was that your Mission, sorry my memory was never my strongest suit, and I hate no trumps): Google News does a better than half ass reasonable job of aggregation and categorization of links based on content pointed to by said links. Holy Grail would be aggregation and *synthesis* (apologies for the limitations of html; but I wanted to triple underline, bold, shadow, and italicize that word with a spiraling siren sound in the background) of content. Related copyright issues are left as an exercise for the reader. |
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| NDTV and its coverage of the Mumbai Massacre |
[Nov. 30th, 2008|03:27 pm] |
These are trying times indeed, and it is hard for people to keep a steady head and emotions under check. But isn't cool objectivity and an equal measure of tasteful editorial sense what you would expect from a professional news outfit?
If the current tragedy has shown the intelligence apparatus in poor light and proved beyond doubt the sluggishness of our response to emergencies, it has also brought out in dramatic fashion the immaturity and lack of training in our media. It is painful to watch Barkha Dutt on live television trying to shove her ideas of how people should be reacting down other people's throat. Watching her run a talk show on the current issues is like watching a 8th standard school teacher hold a classroom discussion. I don't know if there was any spontaneous movement by the people to light candles and take walks to "register their solidarity", but I wouldn't be surprised if it was Barkha's idea. Not to say anything about her go at Raj Thackeray, like she has finally found a vent for her frustrations.
I understand it is a bit much to expect the professionalism of, say, the BBC from our fledgling media outfits. The massive spurt in economic growth over the past 15 years has meant all industries are having to deal with a large number of inexperienced staff who have to learn on the job as new ground is broken every day. Experienced resources are in short supply and spread so thin, it's a nightmare. I see this every day in my job in IT Services. But as they say, it's a good nightmare, an opportunity for people to learn and "get better", get the benefit of "been there, done that". But lack of experience cannot be used to justify a shoddy job. If opinion and fact are mixed up, with strong emotions as garnish, it becomes impossible for the viewers to form their own opinion. NDTV has been doing a spectacularly piss-poor job in this respect, and Barkha Dutt is prime example of what I am talking about. I only wish when calm returns to the newsroom, they would view their own performance and learn from all this. The Hindu, the venerable newspaper from Chennai, has a long standing relationship with the Guardian, and has adopted many fine elements of the business from them. The introduction of the position of the Reader's Editor a few years back is a case in point. With the west more eager to reach out to us than ever before, now is as good as it gets. NDTV should consider getting its newsreaders and reporters trained at the BBC, perhaps.
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