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