Thought Garage

It has been a phenomenal and eventful year and yet its time to bid farewell to 2009 and Welcome 2010. I wish you all a Wonderful and Eventful New Year 2010. I hope some of your dearest dreams will come true in 2010, as I believe, you will Make It Happen . Do whatever you do the best. We are all so lucky to have a dream. And I believe, Its time. Let us Just Make It Happen . Its 2010 .   Just Make It Happen. Its 2010.

If majority is what all matters in democracy (getting 60 votes gives approval to the healthcare bill against opposition by 39) what about 51% of people opposing the bill (while only 38.4% favor it)? In a broader sense, what does this mean to the concept of democracy? The elected officials that are supposed to represent the people are going against the wishes of the same people that elected them in the first place. Source: Real Clear Politics

I took a small political profiling test at okcupid and found that I am a centrist with tendency to be more liberal when it comes to social issues and moderate in economic aspects. Your true political self: You are a Social Liberal (65% permissive) and an... Economic Moderate (41% permissive) You are best described as a: Centrist You exhibit a very well-developed sense of Right and Wrong and believe in economic fairness. While I am a bit surprised at the result, I love the visualization of the profile. Here are screenshots and text. You can try it too here:   http://www.okcupid.com/politics

Found this on one of the LinkedIn discussion forums. Rather very creative(?) way of saying you (may be with a team) do freelance software development for anybody.  

Stumbled upon this website that appears to be a Mint.com for Indian consumers. Collect data from all your Banks, Credit cards, investments etc and provide analysis, alerts and reports at one place. Perfios is for anyone who wishes to solve the problem of managing wealth distributed among various asset classes and among various institutions. If you have bank accounts, credit cards, Mutual Funds, Equity etc with multiple institutions, how often have you felt that - ‘what if all of this could be accessed at one place?’ Perfios addresses exactly this aspect (and more!) and provides access across asset classes on one platform and in the process takes care of your other worries too! Source: Perfios Website

Its Lovely.   Source: Signal vs Noise Blog (37signals) A picture is really worth 1000 words. Isn’t it? If you don’t agree, let us setup a meeting to discuss.

Google unveiled a labs feature called ‘Living Stories’ that organizes news related to a topic in a format that best fits the online reader and present all relevant information at one place. I love this new format. Online news should have been this way in the first place, but I am glad it is headed in this direction. Watch this YouTube video for a short demo of the new feature from Google Labs. Check out some of the hot topics of the day… Google Living Pages : Executive Compensation Page   Google Living Pages : The Politics of Global Warming

Its that time of the year again,  when most of us will be looking forward to wishing yet another wonderful and eventful year to ourselves as well as friends and family. This time around, we make decisions faster, Make new rules, set New goals and make new friends. With unquestioned optimism and hope that next year will be ‘the’ year. Here are more than seventy big thinkers, each sharing an idea for you to think about as we head into the new year. From bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert to brilliant tech thinker Kevin Kelly, from publisher Tim O'Reilly to radio host Dave Ramsey, there are some important people riffing about important ideas here. The ebook includes Tom Peters, Jackie Huba and Jason Fried, along with Gina Trapani, Bill Taylor and Alan Webber. Here's the deal: it's free. Download it here . What’s your Idea for 2010?

If you have watched this wonderful talk by Rory Sutherland “ TED Talk : Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man ”, you must have seen this big Red button, showed while explaining that “interface” determines the behavior. Paraphrasing a bit, “if there is a large red button on a wall in your home and every time you press this button it will save you $50, then you will save a lot. Because interface fundamentally determines our behavior. Marketing has done a very very good job of creating opportunities for impulse buying but never for impulse saving”. And of course, as he admits, that is against consumerism and act against the very ambitions of companies that create these advertisements, so probably will never build such an interface. So, when a company says they built an interface that makes saving money a lot easier, you better bring your instincts and not believe it at once. When I saw the promotional advertisement “Keep the change” by Bank Of America that will make savi...

If you ever wonder about this or believe in one way or the other, it may be worth looking at this wiki page : List of Nobel Laureates by University Affiliation . Almost every other day I read or hear somebody comparing India’s IITs with MIT. As per my understanding, its ridiculous. As much as I love India, I hate this fake image. There is no comparison, other than IITs as the Best You get in India to MIT being one of the Best in the world. I have no doubt, they are the Best in India, but they are not comparable on a world scale. Every attribute I think worth of comparing two universities, IITs are no where closer to most American universities, leave alone MIT.  In fact, they are even behind some of Chinese universities in most attributes. Disclaimer: I did not go to any of those IITs or any American or Chinese universities. I studied in an NIT (previously called RECs) instead.

The essence of problem solving is in fact not solving a problem, but detecting one before it becomes one. And the way, problems are solved in a corporate world is anything but a mystery. Disclaimer(s) : For illustration, I used Software Developers. You are free to use your own imagination to see any role in a corporate. It really fits the story. Any possible similarities to my current or previous work place are not intentional but mere coincidences. It is impossible not to have these coincidences in any corporate and it is totally beyond my control. There are exceptions and they are really exceptions. If you are a Manager, you may get offended by getting closer to reality. There are 1000s of great software developers that can solve a problem once you define what is your problem.  But, unfortunately, many of them are good at just that.  They are really great at doing what they are told to do. And, of course, Managers love them, as they rarely question, anything. But the...

Few days back I read an article breaking the news that lots of Indians are going back to India, causing what is called as ‘reverse brain drain ’. Its not the first time I heard this, and certainly it won’t be the last time. Every time going gets tougher in US, I hear this story. This is not a surprise to hear the story in 2009, the worst of times we have seen in recent years.  Whatever reason many attribute to their intention to return to India, it won’t be any easier just to get back. So many things that are taken for granted in US are a rarity or a luxury in India like electricity and roads.  And another significant aspect pointed (in an NY Times Article ) by Raju Narisetty, “Some very simple practices that you often take for granted, such as being ethical in day to day situations, or believing in the rule of law in everyday behavior, are surprisingly absent in many situations”.  Some get upset. Some get used to it, for its not an alien thing to anybody. But some h...

Stumbled upon this great talk on ‘perception’ while browsing for a TED India talk. I simply loved it. The most interesting part of the talk is an example in the talk (one of the best and simplest) that illustrate how Marketers play with perception to sell products.  Each one of us understand ‘perception’ to an extent. But this is quite unbelievable. “Advertising adds value to a product by changing our perception, rather than the product itself.” TED Talk : Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man Now when you see an ad (any ad for that matter) next time, I bet, your ‘perception’ will be quite ……… not the same as ever.

The debate at Copenhagen just begun. Hopefully, we will have some clarity and Truth about the whole gamut of Global Warming and whether we the humans are guilty of it. So far, Scientists on both sides of the argument defend themselves. But one must note that both sides are making a political statement as Scientific data does not conclude either way. These scientists tend to take a position and go back to data to find out data sets that prove their points. Having said that, anybody can say anything about Climate Change, and it is most likely that he/she is right and wrong at the same time, even based on the scientific data per se. Hope we get some clarity and all scientific community come to an agreement. May be, I should have said, I wish.

This is one of the most hilarious and self-serving excuses I have ever heard for Indians being chaotic : we are different ! In a TED Talk, Devdutt Pattanaik says “two fundamentally different sets of beliefs about God, death and heaven” separate Indians from the west and explain the differences in contrasting behaviors. West being structured, orderly and Indians being unstructured and chaotic, have something to do with their religious beliefs. I definitely agree that this is one of the most creative expressions, but I think a lousy excuse for being “well, it depends” and “I am like this because of my religious beliefs”. The key reason for chaos, I believe, lies in the rule of law and the kind of respect people have for any rule of law. Spare all those stories of Ethics and all that. People are taught in every way possible, the only way to survive and succeed is by NOT following any kind of rule of law.  Many even say that it is impossible to find a successful Indian that is n...