Search Feature in Books

At college I used to always feel that books should have a search feature like we have a search functionality in PCs. Amazon.com has come with this new feature which allows one to search inside the book(content of the book). It has one of the largest digital content archive. If I have to look about a particular word in a book then now I can do that.

I have this feeling now this could lead to plethora of other things basically it would cause a sort of disruption.

Air Deccan

“Air Deccan” which started recently is something that I am following up very regularly. I so much wish it to succeed. This has a potential to cause a a disruption………

Chairman G R Gopalakrishnan of Air Deccan

says “Modern customer is very cost conscious. and then would forego little pleasures”

I have this opinion ” Modern customer wants the most bang for the buck” so I would urge him to not to do away air hostess

Meaning to blog

Many are largely of the opinion that personal blogs would become another fad and would exist in the same state that personal websites do.

That made me think about my own blog. I basically started this as an personal information management system. To capture my thoughts, to increase my learning(simple formula for: learning = reading + thinking + writing, ) . As I think about it I have this feeling that it is much more than it. I think I am blogging basically to inspire and get inspired. If it were just a personal information system , one would not have to put it up open on the web

Note: The formula was taken from one of previous rajesh’s writing

killer Apps

Killer Apps are really somthing that really thrill me. Killer app is a new good or service that establishes an entirely new category and, by being first, dominates it, returning several hundred percent on the initial investment. The personal computer, electronic funds transfer, and the first word processing program are all examples of killer apps.

Creating a killer app is a sure way of disruption . Only if I could create one.

Blog that should be interesting

This blog thing is taking the world like storm. More and more people are getting familiarized with it everyday. But I guess there is still more popularity and acceptance that needs to be generated about this thing called blog. There are so many cool people out there who have amazing blogs. There are still so many many cool people out there who don’t blog yet. But a blog from a couple of people I am sure I would like and enjoy.

One such person would be my roommate/dear friend at college, Sunil Mohan who was the considered the guy with highest IQ in the campus. He is such a geek that you give any hardware/software system he would figure it out how it works and would fix all issues around it. Anybody and everybody including even the director/dean of our college turn to him when nothing else works.
He is also a staunch supporter of Free software foundation.Once ‘Richard Stallman’ visited our college and since then he has become so obsessed with free software. I have urged him time and again to start a blog and he says he does’nt have the time. I am anxiously waiting for him to start one.

Another person would be Rajagopal Subramaniam . I somehow sometime back in college stumbled on this guy’s website who is from IITB. Normally I would have passed it as another website by someone. But there are a couple of things that this guy had in his home page that makes me want to visit him again. I also shot him an email , urging him to start a blog. He says very soon he will start one.

I also would love to see blogs from the Director of my college, something like what Prof Sadagopan Director IIIT -B writes . But I also understand that he keeps very busy. He did not even reply to the mail I sent him suggesting him the idea of starting a blog. I guess his BayesSpam would have stopped my mails reaching his mailbox

Bill Joy’s Fortune Interview

Bill joy had this interview with Fortune recently and spoke at length about a couple of things.
I completely flipped my lid about his world views was when I read an April 2000 essay
published in Wired magazine on Why the future doesn’t need us. It spoke of how our most powerful 21st-century technologies – robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech – are threatening to make humans an endangered species

This article evoked a lot of discussion in a humanities course at college. The course was titled ‘Vedanta’. I also remember working on some assignment related to this.

Rajan

Music and Innovation

I listen to certain bands/songs and I have always wondered why a certain kind of band/song strike me the very first time I listen to them and I get hooked on to them. Some of these bands include Nirvana, Pink Floyd, Led Zepplin and many more.

I guess I know the reason why I like certain bands so very much It is innovation. Innovation is something that is something so dear to me.

People like David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Jim Morrison, Page, Kurt Cobain and Mark knopffler. They are the greatest innovators of the 21st century. They did to Music what Ford did to corporate America, Mandela to apartheid and Fidel Castro to geopolitics.
They have had a disruptive effect in the music landscape.

Syd Barrett gave his life for laying the philosophy of Pink Floyd – he turned insane. Kurt Cobain and Jim Morrision gave their lives for their music, their art. Led Zepellin’s “Stairway to Heaven” is one of the most philosophical lyrics ever written in the history of music

Music and Innovation goes hand in hand. If we really want to learn what innovation is – we should learn from them – the rockers who are considered “punks” in the social elite.
So, in Guns’ N’ Roses’ “Get into the Ring” , let confront those hypocrites.

New blogs from guys doing MBA

I have to mention about a couple of blogs that I stumbled upon today.

Here is the blog of an IIMK guy which I discovered today
Sathish
Sathish Decently good blog

Venkat at the IIM-L. He comes across as a down-to-earth, simple but brilliant chap. Again, I am impressed by the honesty in this blog too.

Average package

An article in the economic times gave the following data that was some food for thought.

Average starting salary for,

IITian in India = Rs. 2.4 lacs pa

IIMite in India = Rs. 6 lacs pa

IITian in the US = $40k pa

Engg. PhD = $60-70k pa

Finance PhD = $140k pa

Of course the IT field is an exception and salaries there may not fall under this categorization and remember, this is just an average

Services Company and Product Company

Had this interesting discussion with my friend on the differences of career graph in a big IT ‘product company’ or an IT ’services company’.

The gist of it was that a career at ‘Services company’ is first ‘Generalization’ and later ‘Specialization’ and in a product company it is ‘Specialization’ and then later ‘Generalization’.

In a services company the first few(5-7yrs) years one is allowed to explore various areas in and then later he is encourage to take to a particular field of specialization. In the beginning of the career, the person could get exposed to do client interaction and be at the forefront and enrich his experience.

In a product company for the first few years one is allowed to work on different products that company has but thing is that it is only backend work. After a person is there in a product company for sufficient amount of time and he reaches quite senior position like being a director or a VP then only he gets to do a front end work of client interaction.
These equations get changed if we were to take small companies or startups into picture. One fundamental fact that changes is that the graph here could move in a total non linear fashion as to opposed to a linear graph in a big company.