Found this very and interesting pic depicting the Indian Railways Berth Numbering System - 1AC to Sleeper Class. Indian Railway site should take initiative and provide the snaps of all the classes on IRCTC site.
"Opinions expressed in this e-mail are those of the individual and not that of Rishabh Software Pvt. Ltd., unless specifically indicated to that effect. Rishabh Software Pvt. Ltd. does not accept any responsibility or liability for it. This e-mail and attachments (if any) transmitted with it are confidential and/or privileged and solely for the use of the intended person or entity to which it is addressed. We recommend you to use virus scanner to before using any attachments. If you have received this e-mail in error, kindly delete this e-mail. This e-mail (in whole or in part) is not to be reproduced or furnished to third parties or made public without the prior express written permission of the sender."
Bob Sutton from Stanford during ‘Singapore Human Capital Summit – Sep 2009’ came up with the Top 10 list of wrong expectations people and organizations keep from HR. Please click here for the complete blog post. Below is Bob Sutton’s Top 10 List
Flawed, Suspect, and Incomplete Assumptions about Managing People
1. HR ought to be all about spotting, hiring, and breeding individual talent (HR could pack a bigger wallop by focusing on teams and networks more).
2. HR should focus on finding, hiring, and developing the very best people (Bad is stronger than good – about 5 times stronger -- so screening-out, reforming, expelling the very worst people is more crucial to collective performance).
3. Find some great superstars and pay them whatever is necessary to keep them happy… and certainly a lot more than everyone else (The best organizations pay higher than competitors, but have more compressed pay).
4. Competition makes people, teams, and companies stronger (Unless people and teams are rewarded for undermining one another rather than helping each other… dysfunctional internal competition is one of the most pervasive problems in American firms).
6. The key to success is copying practices used by the best companies. (The best companies may be succeeding despite rather than because of their HR practices).
7. Every company needs a great performance review system. (Are they really worth the time and effort? Do they do more harm than good?).
8. Taking a leadership position brings out the best in people. (This is a dangerous half-truth. Giving people power over others turns them into self-centered jerks).
9. The most important thing HR can do is to find and develop great senior leaders (Having an organization with a high proportion of good bosses is probably more important).
10. The best organizations have the best people, “the people make the place.” (There are huge differences in talent, but the best organizations typically have the best systems and not necessarily the best raw talent).
I happen to return to my blog after a long time but this is more for a good friend Ram who has achieved a remarkable milestone in life. Today he became an integral part of very rich and eminent club by penning his imagination into a wonderful book - The Victims of Desire.
A man’s desires are like ripples on water, they never cease to enlarge.
In the year 1808, a precious 280 carat diamond gets stolen from an ancient Kali temple in Rajasthan, India. Two Hundred years later, in the year 2008, the diamond resurfaces in Australia. The Diamond is presently worth a staggering Ten Million Dollars. It is currently owned by a cunning millionaire, Alexander Fox, the powerful owner of Fox Ammunitions Inc, one of the biggest weapons manufacturing company in Australia.
Fox has kept the diamond in his ancestral mansion in Dubbo, Australia, where the diamond lies in a safety vault placed inside a secret underground room which is secured by a centralized computer security system and is constantly guarded by armed security guards. To steal the diamond from Fox’s ancestral mansion, KK Raina, assembles a team consisting of Ira Handrich, an amazingly beautiful computer hacker; Siddhanth Roy, an ex-Indian Air Force pilot, simultaneously battling the global economic downturn and fate to save his dying daughter; Harry D’Cruz, a brilliant safe cracker whose dreams were shattered during the 26/11 terrorist attacks in India; and Karan Singh, the inside man. The team travels to Australia in order to pull off the heist. The scene is set for an extraordinary adventure which elicits everyone’s obscurest desires.
Twitter going Google way with the new redesigned front page having search facility.
This search facility will give real time results on the tweets for the searched strings. Twitter started as the micro blogging site, moved on to social networking and powerful marketing tool, further moved on to the communication tool and now speedily coming up as searching tool as well. The new front page has been designed specially to take care of new users of twitter. Front page talks in brief about the capabilities of twitter and displays the trends as well.
In all the new front page is cute and better for the new comers. More details at Twitter Blog.
Got this fake Free Gmail SMS message... Beware... The link goes to the login page exactly similar to Gmail Login... One more Phishing site i believe...
------------------------------------
fromGmail Team
to
dateMon, Jun 22, 2009 at 2:28 PM
subjectSMS From Your Email !!!
mailed-bygmail.com
hide details 2:28 PM (5 hours ago)
Dear Valuable Gmail User,
Gmail Team proudly introducing FREE SMS portal(Beta Version) to send and receive SMS via Gmail Account. Please click on following link to activate.
Ever imagined that someone will tear apart the Brand NEW 'iPhone 3G S' just to know whats new inside… Sounds crazy… I know even I felt mad… when I read it… The Rapid Repair team got a new iPhone at Orange Boutique in Paris and before 99.99% of the prospective iPhone 3G S customers in world even experience the touch and feel of the new iPhone 3G S, these people drilled down the hardware of the new apple phone released as the fasterst vesion of iPhone 3G. U have already seen one of the snap shot… For detailed story please Read More…
Missing Barcamp Banglore 8 badly. I committed to present on the ‘Rich Internet Applications’ still could not go due to some important lectures and secondly my Prof have not considered to exempt me from the presentations here L
I was surprised to see the overwhelming response to the Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) session. By the morning of event 60 people has shown their interest. I think I have missed a big thing. To present, To Attend, To share, to participate, To facilitate and To Learn…
Sometimes when you have to take such difficult decision then priorities comes first and I decided to attend the important lectures at college as final presentations are going on and grades are directly related to these presentations as these subject don’t have the written exam.
The best part is I m following it on Tweetgrid.com and its really exciting to see the tweet refresh every 30/40 sec with 4-5 new tweets… To all those who had made it… Hat’s off…
Request all to collect the PPt’s and place it somewhere on Slideshare or something similar.
By the time I am posting it, #bcb8 has already achieved No. 2 Trending topic on Twitter…
Sorry for all those who have registed for RIA session as shown above. Please send me mail at meetmurli@gmail.com so that I can send the PPT across.
When I got exposed to the Font System in the Windows... I always thought of having my own font and how these fonts are generated.
Now http://www.yourfonts.com provides the facility to create your own fonts, download them and use them as any other font. YourFonts.com is a FREE online font generator that allows you to create your own OpenType fonts within a couple of minutes. Go make your own handwriting as a font!
Its a simple process where you have to print the blank template, fill it, upload it and within 15 mins YourFonts.com produces the font file customised for you and your Font...
This is the Kind of innovation we can say, a breakthrough to the traditional fonts :)
Its almost one year now since i have heard his poem for the first time... those who still havent got chance to listen him... just read one of his best creation... and dont forget to listen him in the embedded video... Its the BEST !!!
कोई दीवाना कहता है कोई पागल समझता है मगर धरती की बेचैनी को बस बादल समझता है,
मैं तुझसे दूर कैसा हुँ तू मुझसे दूर कैसी है ये मेरा दिल समझता है या तेरा दिल समझता है !!!
समुँदर पीर का अंदर है लेकिन रो नहीं सकता ये आसुँ प्यार का मोती है इसको खो नहीं सकता ,
मेरी चाहत को दुल्हन तू बना लेना मगर सुन ले जो मेरा हो नहीं पाया वो तेरा हो नहीं सकता !!!
मुहब्बत एक एहसानों की पावन सी कहानी है कभी कबीरा दीवाना था कभी मीरा दीवानी है,
यहाँ सब लोग कहते है मेरी आँखों में आसूँ हैं जो तू समझे तो मोती है जो न समझे तो पानी है !!!
भ्रमर कोई कुमुदनी पर मचल बैठा तो हँगामा हमारे दिल में कोई ख्वाब पला बैठा तो हँगामा,
अभी तक डूब कर सुनते थे हम किस्सा मुहब्बत का मैं किस्से को हक़ीक़त में बदल बैठा तो हँगामा !!!
This poem is by famous poet Dr. Kumar Vishwas. You can find him in Google(Type Koi deewna kehta hai) or just below... really nice... You will enjoy the comments given by him in mid of his poem as well...
When You're Smiling (The Whole World Smiles With You)
Poem by : Louis Armstrong
When you're smilin'....keep on smilin' The whole world smiles with you The sun comes shinin' through And when you're laughin'....keep on laughin'
But when you're cryin'.... you bring on the rain So stop your frownin'....be happy again The whole world smiles with you
Cause when you're smilin'....keep on smilin' The whole world smiles with you (instrumental break) Oh when you're smilin'....keep on smilin' Ah when you're laughin'....keep on laughin' The sun comes shinin' through Now when you're cryin'.... you bring on the rain
Cause when you're smilin'....just keep on smilin' So stop that sighin'....be happy again And the whole world gonna smile with
The great big world will smile with The whole wide world will smile with you
Following is my assignment I submitted for 'Consumer Behavior'. I used Guy Kawasaki's Alltop.com as the live case to reinforce the stand :). Thanks Guy.
Consumer is the king and Consumer behavior is mainly driven by the trends they follow in searching for, purchasing, using, evaluating and disposing of products and services that they expect will satisfy their needs. Consumer spend their resources (time, money, effort) to decide what, why, where, when, how to and how often to buy the particular product of service. When consumer is everything and decides everything about the product and life of the product it is really beneficial to involve customer right from the beginning of the product Creation and Design. This results in ‘win win’ for both the consumer and organization.
Consumer
A consumer is a person who uses any product or service. Consumer can be considered as an aggregated commodity item with little individuality other than that expressed in the buy/not-buy decision. However there is a trend in marketing to individualize the concept. Instead of generating broad demographic profile and psychographic profiles of market segments, marketers are engaging in personalized marketing, permission marketing, and mass customization.
In free market or capitalist economies, consumers are presumed to dictate what goods are produced and are generally considered the center of economic activity. Individual consumption of goods and services is primarily linked to the consumer's level of disposable income, and budget allocations are made to maximize the consumer's marginal utility.[2] In 'time series' models of consumer behavior, the consumer may also invest a proportion of their budget in order to gain a greater budget in future periods. This investment choice may include either fixed rate interest or risk-bearing securities.
Consumer is the key player who decided the future of everything around him. The business who can satisfy Consumer can fulfill the targets is the mantra for the modern economy.
Product Creation and Design
R&D mainly consist of product development and design along with the research. Thus, it is more of developing better products from the existing ones than developing something new from a scratch, like a new medicine.
“In general, R&D activities are conducted by specialized units or centers belonging to companies, universities and state agencies. In the context of commerce, “research and development” normally refers to future-oriented, longer-term activities in science or technology, using similar techniques to scientific research without predetermined outcomes and with broad forecasts of commercial yield.”
The key reasons why R&D exists in companies are the constantly changing markets and customer needs. Customers’ needs change all the time which means that old products will eventually become outdated and thus less desirable. This implies that the company that can respond fastest to the changing trends will collect the pot. In addition, the supply of competitors is always varying, which means that no company can really rest on its laurels but has to keep up the pace. This is where R&D comes into the picture. An efficient R&D makes it possible for a company to be competitive also in the future, when today’s products have become just a vague image in history. Wheelwright and Clark (1992) have summarized well the three driving forces behind R&D. They are intense international competition, fragmented and demanding markets, and diverse and rapidly changing technologies. These are explained in more detail below :
Intense international competition. In every business, the amount of global competition has been on the increase. This has made the business more intense, demanding, and rigorous, because companies are punished out of small mistakes immediately.
Fragmented demanding markets. The modern consumers have become more sophisticated. When possible, they expect to have personalized products and also the demand for quality is increasing.
Diverse and changing technologies. The development of new technologies and better understanding of the existing ones means that there is an increasing amount of solutions available for engineers and marketers in their quest for creating new attractive products.
The three forces mentioned above are common for all industries, but they are especially important for young technologically dynamic industries like the mobile device industry. When the technologies are constantly changing, it is already a challenge to keep up the pace, not to mention when a company should create something new and innovative.
Customer Involvement
Consumer Involvement can be in the following form :
a)Collecting data and the feedback from the consumer
b)Collecting the data regarding Consumer Preferences and Behaviour and then coming up with the product as per the suggestions
c)Involving consumer right from the beginning to end of the product life cycle i.e. from initial decisions to launch of the product till the time to replace the product.
The rigorous global competition, the numerous of market segments and niches and the accelerating technological change have created three major competitive imperatives: speed and responsiveness, productivity, and quality. Involving consumers would create value for all the three following competitive imperatives.
Speed and responsiveness - The intensive competition and the need to fulfill the customers’ changing needs have forced companies to invest in shorter development cycles and better targeted products.
Productivity - The exploding product variety and competition in every area has made companies to put emphasize on product development productivity. In new technology companies this amount is larger than in the more mature markets. For example in 2006, an estimate for Ericsson’s R&D costs was almost 25% of its revenues3. This means that even a small increase in productivity can lead to the saving of millions of dollars.
Quality - The intense competition and the demanding customers have put companies in the position where there has to be creativity well combined with overall product quality.
In brief, product creation and design is a major battle area where one has to make big decisions and balance between long term technology decisions and short term product content decisions. This means that the development of a new major technology or platform has to be started well in advance for the products that are to be implemented on top of these technologies later on. A company has to have a long term vision. The success today does not guarantee success later on. Hence the continuous involvement of the consumer will ensure that the product or the service is meeting the expectation and as per the need of the market place.
Why Consumer Involvement ?
Consumer Involvement in Product Creation and Design is must for the following:
1)Consumer Needs
2)Simplicity
3)Innovation – Consumer Creativity
4)Customization
5)Co-creation
1)Consumer needs
As per the basic definition of consumer behavior the consumer need is the only thing we have to cater, the means and manner can differ. The best people to understand consumer need are the consumer themselves. In Needfinding, a main principle is to look for needs, not for solutions. To do so, the methods to generate customer information are focused on data related to what people actually are striving to achieve when taking actions. Hence, goals, contexts, actions and behaviours matter and are probed for by the Needfinding team. A common approach is a combination of methods relying on observations and interviews. In practice, the way in which the study is undertaken will be context dependent. The search for data should be performed by a multidisciplinary team, in which the idea is that designers and consumers should participate.
In view of the identified differences it can be concluded that the input from a needs-based approach differs in terms of the kind of data that would result in a need statement. Such an approach provides rich and contextual information about people’s activities and goals, while a typical product development approach provides rich and detailed information about the products that customers use. Thus, a need-based approach supports innovative and new products and traditional product development seems to support improvement of existing products. Yet both are important to develop functional products. The challenge of integrating the two stances is identified as related to cultural and historical formative issues. Designers are well acquainted with product improvement from a technical point of view, but needs identification is likely to require a non-trivial shift in perspective and in particular will rely on a broadly sociological ability – the ability to observe human beings.
2)Simplicity
Simplicity is the key to success. Taking example of the Google case, the whole business and revenue model was based on the simplicity. Google continuously take the feedback from the users and try to implement which will fit their model and feasibility. In fact companies like Google have the system where the user can even upload their own snippet of the code or small utility to the Google Labs and the same will be made public after little testing and checks.
3)Innovation – Creative Consumer
Mahindra and Mahindra recently ran the contest where they came up with the ‘SandBox’ competition where employees have to submit the new venture where company should look for future businesses. Within a week company got almost 1200 responses and most of them were really good. This was the first of its kind drive in the company and the responses which were shortlisted were being implemented as future cutting edge technology.
Now a days Customers are not only just consuming/imbibing the products however at the same time they are thinking and marching ahead in the thought process. As the Article in ‘Economist’ suggest consumers are the future of the innovation as there is tremendous rice of the creative consumers.
Taking the advantage of Web 2.0 the companies constantly collects the consumer’s creative thinking through the blogs, the online forums and the discussions. Lot of emphasis is given for the consumer to comment on the existing products or service and at the same time organization continuously tries to tap what consumer is thinking to have the features/facilities in future. The innovative ideas have started flowing from the consumers to organizations.
As per Charles Leadbeater “Innovation was once the work of an individual. Now - from weblogs to mountain bikes - we are inventing the things we want to use”.
Example
To take an example, Research Internation (RI) implemented the tapping of creative consumers idea. In two half day clinics, the RI team designed a strategy of using 12 participants from its Creative Consumers who are leveraged in RI's ideation process in order to bring a unique perspective to the ideation session - they are extraordinary lateral thinkers and are able to create multiple solutions to a problem from diverse perspectives. Creative Consumers also bring an unparalleled energy to sessions, which is critical to develop the breadth and depth of ideas needed. All Creative Consumers undergo a rigorous application and interview process, testing and training.
Through various exercises, RI was able to gain insight into consumers' thoughts on the new formulation and capture consumer language that could be used to convey the benefits of the product in television and print ads.
These new ads were presented to the Creative Consumers to obtain recommendations and capture additional language for optimizing the advertisements.
4)Customization
Today in the era of the Customization every organization want to achieve the highest degree of the customization for their customers. The concept of mass customization is attributed to Stan Davis in Future Perfect and was defined by Tseng and Jiao as "producing goods and services to meet individual customer's needs with near mass production efficiency". Kaplan and Haenlein concurred, calling it "a strategy that creates value by some form of company-customer interaction at the fabrication and assembly stage of the operations level to create customized products with production cost and monetary price similar to those of mass-produced products".
Increasingly, firms adopt mass customization, which allows consumers to customize products by self-selecting their most preferred composition of the product for a predefined set of modules. The best information regarding the customization can come from the consumers only as they are the one who decides whether customization is required and how much can be used.
Example
PC vendors such as Dell allow customers to customize their PC by choosing the type of processor, memory size, monitor, etc. However, how such firms configure the mass customization process determines the utility a consumer may obtain or the complexity a consumer may face in the mass customization task. As per Michael Dell’s recent visit to India during a talk show with the MBA graduates, he himself was trying to get the feedback from the students where and how the customization can be increased in the Dell’s product range.
5)Co-creation
Co-creation is the practice of product or service development that is collaboratively executed by developers and stakeholders together. Isaac Newton said that in his great work, he stood on the shoulders of giants. Co-creation could be seen as creating great work by standing together with those for whom the project is intended. Organisations are now a days involving the consumers in the Co-creation activities.
Consumer Involvement: Live Case Study – AllTop.com
Guy Kawasaki, former Apple Evangelist, author, venture capitalist, Truemors creator, and Top 100 Technorati blogger, launched Alltop.com. True to his mantra-making form, he describes Alltop as an “Online Magazine Rack.” It’s an apt description. Alltop’s main page feels like an online version of the magazine section at a Borders or Barnes and Nobles.
Guy made it simple and sure hit marketing strategy for the Alltop. All the marketing is done through the means which don’t cost him at all. The best way he chose is Twitter.com. Twitter is the micro blogging site where users can post the tweet upto 140 characters and the users who are following you can see your tweets directly on their pages.
Guy extensively used Twitter to market the Alltop. The only fundamental concept used by the Guy in marketing of AllTop.com is ‘consumer involvement’. Guy personally all the possible tweets and make it a point to implement the feasible solutions right their in time. To take an example when I wrote to Guy that there is no result for the ‘BarCamp’ on Alltop within a half hour he made arrangements to include the same. This not only made me feel good but also motivated me to give more feedback as I can see the implementation. When I have done a little research what I revealed that the success of AllTop.com is just because of the way he used Twitter and mass consumer involvement. Almost 80% of the Alltop topics are suggested by the users and as it implemented for me the same will be implemented for all. The Customer involvement satisfies customer needs, achieves simplicity, involves Innovation which implements the Consumer Creativity and attaing the customization through co-creation.
Conclusion
The organization and the market today don’t have any option other than involving customers in the product creation and design phase. The Co-Creation and the Customer involvement goes hand in hand and contributes hugely to the success of product and service.
The organization need to alleviate and go to next level in the value creation where involving customer will not only customary but mandatory. The Customers will not be only the king and driving the business however will be playing lead roles in the evolving, design, creation and implementation of the products or service.
References :
A database of examples of Consumer involvement in Research by Paul Dixon, Edvina Peart and Roy Carr Hill
Consumer Behaviour by Leon G Schiffman and Leslie Lazar Kanuk
A need-based approach to product development by Ericson, Åsa
Now one can have his Google Profile page as well... The look and feel is obviously simple and best as Google is maitaining it. This is really a no nonsense kind of profile page with handy links and best interface. U can provide ur links... ur photos and a small writeup. It shows the small Google map highlighting the places where u have stayed....
Prof T N Swaminathan forwarded this to me today morning...
At least 195 reasons to be angry, upset and concerned this time. More, if you count the wounded too.
Last week's terror strikes on Mumbai left all humanity shocked and stunned. Pained we all surely are, but we must not allow ourselves to become numbed. Each of us needs to wake up from our comatose states to make our individual and collective opinion count. The only way to address this crucial and distressing issue is by becoming a part of the solution. After all, as long as India is 'of the people, for the people, by the people' we will be fully responsible for the change that we want to see in her.
However, this is not a problem restricted to any one particular city or state. One doesn't have to be a resident of Mumbai to be appalled at the ghastly and murderous acts. If you have witnessed any emotion while you the saw Mumbai burn on your TV screens, then the only way to express it is by taking action for Change.
India will come together to give expression to the anger and anguish on Wednesday, 3rd December, 2008, at 6:00 pm. The venues are as follows:
-Mumbai at the Gateway of India
-Delhi will meet at the Central Park, Connaught Place
-Hyderabad is meeting at Tank Bund, Telugutalli
-Chennai will meet at Opposite Government Guest House, Behind M.A. Chidambaram Cricket Stadium
-Bangalore at CubbonPark
-Kolkata at the Maidan
Indians have great resilience, but please don't let the recent pain become distant just yet; don't let the memory fade too soon. Capture your emotion and come to the venue with your form of expression. Showcase it at the venue through a painting, elegy, song, poster, a lit candle, or by just holding hands.
Take a little extra effort bring those that you care about. Let us become the beginning of Change for India. And, let us start by making a personal commitment for this Change.
Please forward this mail to as many people as you know and show you care. Come to the venue with those you know.
Most of guys from my class are worrying about the Empirical Study and worry is not abt the study (as we all are pretty smart in that :) but it is about creating online questionnaire as the sites now a days charge heavily for sporting the questionnaire and giving the responses for the same in format i.e. excel or something similar...
When nothing seems to be working then we all look at Google... and dont know how but Google always have the answer... Google have Funtastic feature to create and host your survey questionnaire and converting the same into friendly excel format... and all this at the price of nothing i.e. absolutely free... Following are the steps to create and use Google forms...
Login to ur Gmail ID
Open Google Docs...
Go to New >>> Forms... Following screen will appear where u can modify everything...
One can add six types of questions as whown below...
Questions can be duplicated. One can form as many questions as one have to... Once full questionnaire is prepared you can click the link at the bottom of the screen which will take you to Questionnaire webpage...
U can provide the same link to everyone who are ur 'to be responders' for the survey... Check some more features... One can see the responses in the Summary or Spreadsheet form...
Survey Spreadsheet looks something like this... It is nothing but the Google doc Spreadsheet...
You can view the same spreadsheet from the Google Docs page as well...
So now no need to pass on the excel sheet or go to pain sites... simply create the Google Form as you like and Enjoy... If you feel that the questionnaire link is very long u can use tinyurl.com to shorten ur link and get a small and handy web link to circulate...
All geared up for FailCamp. Failcamp is a friendly unconference where people get-together to share and learn from failures. It is taking place on 16th November,2008 at Chennai. We all make mistakes and learn from it to become a better person. Won't it be great to learn from other's mistakes so that we don't make the same ones! The focus is really not about the failure. It's about why we failed and what lessons we learnt from it. Let's not be ashamed about failing. Let's celebrate failure. Let's look straight into its eyes.
Easier way to chat and have Voice + Video Google. Google came up with the video and voice chat, bringing along an easier way to connect over the old internets. Presently Google has added the video and voice chat capabilities to Gmail only, through which users can simply click a button in Gtalk to start exchanging funny faces with your chat partner. This will again avoid the necessity to open a separate application to chat as in case of Yahoo or Skype... Just download the plugin from here and start with the bang.
Google going Way ahead in all the services... Thanks to Google :)
In my 1 year PGPM MBA course we have been taught a subject... Politics culture and Business i.e. 'Politics and Business' and on similar lines world till date has discussed the topics like 'Politics and Religion', 'Politics and International Relations', 'Politics and Society', 'Politics and Religion', 'Politics and Poetics', 'Politics and Vision', ''Politics and Technology', 'Politics and Governmente', 'Politics and Democracy' and the latest topic in discussion is -
'Politics and Internet'
'Politics and Internet' is the topic which is widely discussed in the recent 'Web 2.0' summit. Some experts say that in the recent USA election Internet has played the disruptive role whether some says that it has played the most important role... however both in the favour of the Mr New President. It has been said that Obama's Youtube spots gathered an aggregate of 14.5 million viewing hours. Obama's internet campaign is compared with the most famous televised debate between John F Kennedy and Richard M Nixon. The way Mr Obama used internet for campaign is unprecedented . This year internet has revolutionised the way campaign ways are innovated. “Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not be president. Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not have been the nominee,” said Arianna Huffington, editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post.
And Technology also supported the initiative with both the hands open... USA today built a special RIA (Rich Internet Application) to follow the Presisential Polls whereas BBC has a cool Flex application for the same. Google came up with couple of analytical tools for speciall for the Election like tracking the polls you want, customised election coverage as you want... Some of the google gadets/analytics tool were : Election 2008 Gadget Election Tools for Educators This site was designed for teachers, but it provides links to tools anyone can use. Teachers, parents, friends, and voters of all ages could learn a thing or two.
So the Internet and Politis going in collaborative fashion and it seems the best is yet to come... Couple of more people who posted on similar topics are as follows...
Now a days taking snap is not at all hard... gone are the days when we used to bother about buying films, getting them washed and produce at Photocentre and then bringing the snaps... now it is just a click away... take snaps.. and see them instantly on ur laptop or PC or mobile... or on cam itself... no need to buy films and most importantly... no need to buy abt the no. of photos... take as many as you can...
During our recent International Study tour to Singapore... all digital camaera equipped people on the average toom 250 snaps in a day... (this is the lower figure) and professionals almost took more than 400 in a day...
So Technology has made it so easy to catch those 'Kodak Moments' of life... The way new technology is coming is even inspiring... Digital Cameras are also chaning almost on the daily basis... They are reducing on the size... increasing on the display... increasing the features... in all... things are going more and more efficient, easy to use, durable... Camera Developers exactly know what is the need of the customer and are coming up with the new technology each time and each time it is amazing... like recently I saw an ad which claimed that the camera will take snaps automatically when the person in front of the camera smiles... means this is like going beyond the face detection now camera will sense the smile as well... Gosh !!!
I am doing lil research on the latest trend in digital camera as one of my best friend ask abt the best cam avaiable in the market...
BCC2 will be kicked on at 09:00 am today... A two day roller coaster ride to the technology, the upcoming things, the newest 'in things' by the experts, so called geeks and techies... and at the same time. The topics which are going to cover are mainly under the headings MI4, Web, Coding stuff, Cloud computing, Computers, Mobile, Management and yessss soem not so geeky stuff as well...
So dear all... wish to meet you at the Two day event... Lets rock the place with Tech and geeky thought process :)
Preparation BarCamp Chennai 2… i.e. BCC2 has been kicked on and today I attended the Organizers meet. The BCC2 is coming up with big names this time with the sponsorships from CTS and CSS, the top of the top organizations in IT. The only dilemma for some is that the first day is overlapping with Google Developer Day, Banglore. The site has already been setup and the preparations are all at the verge of completion. The venue is fixed… participants have confirmed… vendors approached and business discussed with all the one associated with BCC2. The core team is working real hard to make it Big on D-Day. Following is the link for the BarCamp Chennai Website (wiki basically) to know the further details:
The Google Group has also been setup for the discussion and decisions for the like minded people and janata opposing them… Great minds are colliding at the Google Group dedicated to BCC2 :). To volunteer or keep track of event discussions join the Barcamp Chennai mailing list
All the techies and non techies, geeks, wannabe geeks and non geeks & knowledge seekers are all invited to the Great event... Register soon...
Google can crawl almost all the phone numbers and help one to find the US telephone numbers. To know the details of a particular number just open Google and type 'Phonebook:' keyword. Keyword can be used as per the users requirement. Eg. using it like below for Bill Gates name gives results for the 'Bill Gates' and respective nos of the people in USA.
Google has provided the facility to remove your own name from this listing as well...
Adventures of Tintin - The rejuvenating session i had after i plotted the pdf copies of TinTin and the very moment sat down to copy and reading the pdf as well. In between the lectures I even finished one of the book as well... 'The Calculas Affair'. It reminded me of those old golden days when TinTin and Asterix were mostly read during vacation days. I still remember these were one of the costliest comics. Back to grandmas palce in local library they used to charge twice/thrice to lend these comics... may be to meet their breakeven sooner.
Why comics reading was always rejuvenating and refreshing... i think they are made that way only... The best thing is after going for so many places and meeting quite a no. of people when I am reading comics, apart from the usual fun stuff I can see the way the author maintains the connect. For example if we are reading TinTin, you can also see the French connection in the background and people around. In fact the extra funny characters which are included just like that always come with the distinguished characteris which author deliberately wanna portray. The other day Anantha, my project guide was telling me that in IIM they used to do the track of what type of magazines/book are issued from the library in what season and as a part of study they found out that comics are issued throughout the year and the consumption touch the sky high in the exam days... So I think we can say that comics is read in colleges more... and at the same time mostly in B-Schools :)...
Comics apart from a good time pass, are the source of the knowledge as well. U come to know about the others culture in better fashion as compared to watching the movies. In/After B-Schools you get the new perspecitve of doing the things and the thought process definitely modify after doing a business program. Same is happening with me as well. The different perspecitve and thought process goes when we read the comics now a days. Long live Comics and all the characters...
The snaps shown below are the snaps of about 2:30 am at night, apologies I mean in the morning when Gauthaman came from home and brought two filled tharmas of tea. People flocked as crowd at his desk to collect their part and quickly go back to their respective teams for the assignment part…
The wonderfull way to finish a MBA day is to do the
assignment till say 4.30/5 in the morning and then trying to sleep with the fact that we have to get up for the 8:30 class and ya we have to submit the assignment as well before that. This do happened a lot when Dr. Rakesh Singh taught us ‘MacroEconomics’. His assignments were always awesome and always came with the aggressive deadlines. When I say aggressive they can be at midnight for the class finishing at 7:30 pm or it can be next days morning 8:00 pm for the class finishig at about 8:30 pm… And as a group of 10 people we used to divide the work among ourselves, assign it that is dissecting the topic and then come again with the homework and consolidate to prepare the assignment report and most of the time a PPT as well to be presented next day. The learning of such case studies and Assignments were far better that those closed classes…
Dr. Rakesh Singh always teaches with the grace and specially
the last lecture of the course was so awesome that no one moved from the place for almost 4-4.5 hrs and we all were struck by the depth an length of the knowledge.
Lets see how next couse of this prof goes…
{P.S : posting the post from the mail through posterous… lets see how it goes with all the images}
Today I broke all my trends I set or developed in the tenure of last few weeks. So this Friday was trend breaking day for me. I went to office in time… Actually I caught the bus in time, as I left my bike at office on the previous day (so no option) Everything in time… Right from Lunch, Work, Meetings, Code Deliveries even returning to home, then meeting my friend and then again sleeping at night with some resolutions for next day... Everything was done perfectly and in time. It feels gr8 to have such fun-tastic day time bound day.
And next day was even surprising. I got up at 6.00 am in the morning (I still cant believe it). I went on morning walk and small trek near my home with my friend. So everything was going ideal. But I was not knowing that this so called " " ideal thing will come to end shortly. While coming down I noticed that left leg's knee was paining lil bit and realised that from last 13-14 months I haven’t went on major trek or walk spree. After some more time by the time I was almost at the starting point I noticed that nah... something majorly wrong with this knee. I took no time to recollect that this leg suffered a lot during my last accident on bike. Thought left let was not directly involved but as injury was on right leg, and due to all that limping this leg started behaving differently. It survived some 2 more lil accidents after that first accident but lil bit injuries were there. I thought all these is coming collectively and effectively and its time to see some expert in Ortho. Ortho expert said nothing to worry, just have these medicines and do come next week but ya no treks and jogging. What else a laxy guy like me needed, now i got doc's approval for not jogging...
Neway there is end to everything and my so called ideals hours came to end just in one day. Next day again the same routine followed as I got up at 11.00 am as I enjoyed Godfather DVD a night before :)
Life goes on but ya that one day getting up at 6.00 has proved that
> I can get up early
> I can go for walk/jog
> Its not easy to achieve ideal things...
Life is b..e..a..utiful and u must know how to enjoy it.
It all began after i posted the party's mail to everyone on friday. Parag may hv cursed me that why me myself and murli is posting which he was supposed to post. But i waited for his mail upto 6.30 pm and then started drafting the mail after he havent picked up the phone. I called Parag at 11.00 pm (he may hv cursed me again... after all is this the time to call a recently married beautiful couple) He said we will decide abt the venue tomorrow after having a talk with all. Here came the next day. Parag started preparation. Me and Vivek decided some 3 venues : Jazz at Esquares, Garden Court or Ambrosia. Then couple of calls and lots of confusion. Then again some calls. Ultimately i told Parag to call Prashant as he always have some venue concerns, ask him and decide abt the venue and call everyone as everyone is saying it is Parag's party and why the hell is this bloody Murli conveying everything to everyone. Parag said calling all will be problem but then I convinced him. Then Parag maharaj havent called up upto 4.30 pm I called at his home and he was not there. Thankfully, Prashant revealed everyhting abt the venue. I started sms'ing (is this word correct! ) people abt the venue. There by the time Vivek also came to know abt the venue and timings and he also started floating sms's but his msg was not having the venue and time. So the plan ultimately formed was : Veneu - Hotel Riverside. and it can be called as one khopcha of Koregaon Park. I will pick mannu from Corporation. Avi will be obviously coming with his bet-ter half Priya. And Vivek decided to come in car with Abhijits ( Kawre and Choudhary ). Aarti denied to come as she was tired (after working upto 4 am in morning she went for the presentation at 10 am. Sorry boss i may have gien a shot and taken a full day boss. How can people manage all this things.) But vivek a.k.a "the guy with guts" convinced her. As usual me and Mannu reached the venue before time (though mannu came to Corporation 20 min before our decided time and I reached Corporation 20 mins after deicded time, still we managed to reach venue before time - Pulsar is a paisa vasool bike boss.) It was almost 7.15pm by now. Then as no one except some mischievous couples. (Hey Mannu do u remember those couples) came out from that bushes. We enjoyed the sight. But after say 15 mins they also got some good idea and moved. So again leaving Me and Mannu outside hotel (with the darkness around becoming even darker) alone. We decided to take ride around Koregaon Park. We came back after half and hour. Still no one in the hotel... So we decided to have a seat and then i plotted the ravishing lady and our own hero, the couple of millenium-> Parag and Renu. Parag all equipped with his cam and Renu's Saree mindblowingly superb(I mean to say that apart from Renu her Saree is also superb). After that everything happened is history. The guys or gals who were not there have missed a lot of things right from Vodka shots to some hilarious incidednts of mauritius naratted by Parag. Then one by one guest started coming. I think Prashant was the first person to come(after all this place was suggested by him), then Vivek, Abhijit both kaore and chaudhary, Aarti and then another couple Avi and entrancing Priya. The alluring chemistry between both the couples was tempting. So once and all all were set for the dinner. Starters started flowing in along with the boozing material. Some courageous ladies also decided to give a try for some new types of drinks. So that’s the way it went. Some tequila shots, Vodka, Beer started flowing like never before. Then comes the starters (please don’t ask the whole exact menu as there were so many items flowing in and as all know we care to eat and eat only). And then second round of booz flowed in. And then main course. So that’s the way it went, The most important thing is that we all enjoyed it very much. Thank U Parag from the bottomest part of the bottom of …. What ?!?!? ofcourse Heart yaar. Then we handed over the Parag’s Gift (in the form of cheque) and then as usual Tata Bye Bye. Areeeeeee wait we even spent some time a a Ice cream parlour where everyone praised after havingt Vivek ke pasan ki icecream. It was some fruit mix and specially tubbed in Mango. It was also fabulous. After that everyone started for home. Parag and Renu Thank U very much. I m still waiting for the day when Renu will call all of us at home for dinner as 2nd Party (this is what she commited on that day).
A moment fills a lifetime
Now a days taking snap is not at all hard... gone are the days when we used to bother about buying films, getting them washed and produce at Photocentre and then bringing the snaps... now it is just a click away... take snaps.. and see them instantly on ur laptop or PC or mobile... or on cam itself... no need to buy films and most importantly... no need to buy abt the no. of photos... take as many as you can...
