Emotionally Charged Song

"The Grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for."
By Allan K Chalmers

Effective Presentations

Check out the complete presentation to learn to avoid bad presentations and cultivate good habits in designing a good presentation.
Core77 Design Blog

Venkat

How to think

1. Synthesize new ideas constantly
2. Learn how to learn (rapidly)
3. Work backward from your goal
4. Always have a long-term plan
5. Make contingency maps
6. Collaborate.
7. Make your mistakes quickly
8. write up best-practices protocols
9. Document everything obsessively
10. Keep it simple

Original Article:
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/boyden/

One laptop per Child

For a long time Nicholas Negroponte from MIT media labs has been pushing the idea of $100 laptop meant for the children in developing countries. Finally starting this month it has entered a mass production stage though not at a initial envisioned price but for $200. Even at that price the lap top is really radical in design and features.


Here are few innovative features that stand apart:

• Because of very low power consumption you can actually human power it, there is a small crank provided which you can use to charge the battery.
• Each laptop intrinsically acts as a wireless router, there by forming a mesh network with other laptops. Effectively you need one laptop connected to the net for the rest to take advantage.
• The best part is the Linux based open software aimed at learning and exploration than mere instruction. There are tons of social and learning tools.
• They are highly durable, drop it, bang it, kick it, they still work. They aren't any moving parts in laptop like disk drives, so this improves the durability of the laptop.

Its not just MIT backing this project but a whole range of companies like Google, Intel, AMD and major backing by UN. I guess it would be a good idea to have some kind of volunteer organization to make these available in rural India through contributions from us. The basic step would be building awareness about it among the Indian community.

Here is a excellent talk by Negroponte about the laptop:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/41

Official Site
http://www.laptop.org/en/index.shtml

Venkat

Impressionism by Van Gogh

Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh

“For an impressionist to paint from nature is not to paint the subject, but to realize sensations”
By Paul Cezanne

Source:
http://www.vangoghgallery.com/painting/starrywallpaper.html

Venkat

Leapfrog ideas for HealthCare and Education

We pretty much tend to accept the high costs associated in health care and education sectors, but on questioning deeply if the value delivered is justified, its often a hard no. Watch this talk by Clayton Christensen, a pre-eminent Professor at Harvard where he points out the root causes associated with these high costs and suggests various solutions to address these. One particular thought that resonates through out is the idea of modularity, to give you an idea think of Windows vs Linux operating systems. Windows is like a one size fits all, on the other hand Linux is built out of well defined independent building blocks where in you can mix and match based on your need. His talk was like a mind candy, watch it to admire his thinking.

http://www.businessinnovationfactory.com/innovationstorystudio/bif3_cchristensen.php

I am not sure how practical it would be to start afresh these ideas in monopolistic US, but India can be a good candidate.

Venkat

Moods 11/14, Contemplation

“I think of life as a good book. The further you get into it, the more it begins to make sense.”
By Harold Kushner

Image Source:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/welshbaloney/412660010/

Venkat

Fun things to do

• Have more fun than anyone else
• Get some insight
• Get some dept
• Find a place to escape reality
• Write something at the end of everyday
• Make yourself interesting
• Live alone for a while
• Treat yourself
• Live like you have nothing to lose

Source :
Ten Fun things to do before you die

Venkat

Mahindra Scorpio on US Roads

On the outlook it might sound ridiculous for Mahindra even to think of competing with heavy thugs like Ford, Toyota and GM likes in US market. But the bravo is planning to sell Scorpio SUV's and altered pickup version of it in US. Since all of them run of diesel, their offering is on fuel efficiency. These vehicles are projected to give 30 mpg in cities and 37 mpg on highways, a mileage like that for SUV's can be a huge selling point inspite of image problems.

Original Article
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_45/b4057063.htm

The problem with American companies is the image thing where everything has to be big without regard to any efficiency, they build SUV's the size of a elephant when the matter of fact all it has to move is a silly needle.

Venkat

Top Technology Conferences in US

Source
http://www.downtheavenue.com/2007/05/top_technology_.html

GreenTech Sectors

• Solar Energy
• Biofuel & Agriculture
• Clean Energy (not solar or biofuel)
• Energy Storage Systems
• Energy Management, Smart Grid & Energy Efficiency
• Water Technology & Treatment
• Green Materials, Green Buildings, Green Nano/Micro-Tech
• Green Automobiles & Transportation
• Clean Manufacturing & Clean Products
• Resource Recovery & Waste Management

Visual Dictionary

Quite often we come across the need to look up the definitions or synonyms for a particular word. Though sites like dictionary.com or merriam provide the service, the problem is that they don't easily convey the context or its relationship to other words. If this can be conveyed in a compact visual manner its easier to remember the word. Look at this site which displays words as a graph with all its relations centered around the word you are searching for.

http://www.visuwords.com/

At the bottom of the graph there is a legend which explains various relationships. Wish I had this during college days, atleast my English wouldn't have been pathetic
.
Venkat

Moods 11/10, Rain

Seattle Moods:

"The best thing one can do when its raining is to let it rain" or may I add "drink more coffee".

Picture Source:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/1bluecanoe/1647578854/

Venkat

GVK Group

Its interesting to note the meteoric rise of GVK from a small construction company into a massive US 3 Billion dollar diversified conglomerate of Infrastructure, mass transportation, hospitality and Bio sectors. This company was slightly personal since their early power plants were built right close to the place where I grew up thats Kadiyam. Late did I know that they bought out the entire Taj group of hotels in Hyderabad ie's Taj Banjara, Taj Krishna and many others. Here is a article in LiveMint about G V Sanjay Reddy the young driver of the company, I liked the way he relates Scuba diving to navigating a company.

Excerpt
"In business as in scuba diving, unexplored terrain is an opportunity in waiting"

Original Article:
http://www.livemint.com/2007/11/08233029/GV-Sanjay-Reddy--Taking-off.html

Venkat

Micro Lending Vs Aid

We often associate charity and aid as humane and noble actions like monitory Aid for African nations or a donation to a charitable organization. But if we closely look at the effectiveness of monitory aid like in African nations it has barely lifted them out of poverty and worse yet it even increased the poverty rate. The most effective way people can get out of poverty is by providing an economic opportunity to make them self reliant. What I mean is instead of providing a day's meal why not help them become self-sufficient and all is needed a micro finance to jump start them.

I came across this Non-profit effort to address the issue I mentioned above. The way it works it you make a micro lending (like $25, $50 or what ever) to a individual you choose in a developing country and in a agreed term he has to pay you back. The risk could be a possibility of non-repayment as the business are very small and tend to operate in a fluctuating markets. All along you are posted of the progress of his operations.

If interested here is the link to Kiva.org
http://www.kiva.org/

Venkat

Robotics

If you thought boy bands are pretty good at doing synchronized dance moves, well think again after you watch this Japanese ingenuity in robotic design.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZzLAsHiGHU

It could be easier to design one bot to perform a pre-programmed dance moves but the challenge here is synchronized move by multiple bots. Every bot here needs to know what its position is in relation to all the rest of the bots. Its interesting how they designed it, Japs definetly have a huge lead in Robotic design.

Venkat
 

Moka5

Through out my high school days I often used to admire a classmate of mine who was absolutely brilliant.  Though from a  very humble  family this guy went on to score a state rank in inter, headed to IIT, a masters from Urbana Champagne and a Phd from Standford. Lately I came to know he and a couple of his friends from Stanford started a company addressing the PC Virtualization for consumer market. In lay terms imagine  being  able to  carry  your complete laptop environment  (Windows OS, your applications like office, browser etc)  on a  pen drive or  even a  iPod. When you need to use it just plug the portable device to any computer be it PC, MAC or Linux and vola you have your familiar environment. Incase you lose your portable device you can just recopy the environment pack from home computer and you have all the environment back no re-installs to worry about.
The nice thing is that one of the angel funding is by Vinod Khosla of Silicon Valley. With very limited players and a huge market to tap into, I am sure it will be huge success.

Here is the link for Ramesh Chandra's company called Moka5:
http://www.moka5.com/about/team.html

Video of Vinod Khosla with Moka5 team
http://www.moka5.com/node/419

I wish him all the best.

Venkat