May 20th, 2009
Its another interesting book that I bought few years back and was in my waiting list. One good thing about non-fictions are you will get lots to learn in the course of reading the book.
Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping point unveils some interesting facts that was unknow for long time..well atlease for me. He surely has a different perspective of analyzing things. This book is based on 3 basic principles of epidemic transmission, Power of context, law of few and stickiness.We can find lots of examples on each of the principle.
Over all its an excellent book and i’m looking forward to read outliers soon.
Posted in Book Review, General | No Comments »
May 2nd, 2009
Yes ..this was the question that started ringing in my ears when I first heard of Mind maps while reading or implementing GTD. Then started exploring few software (obviously free / open source). It was interesting.
First I tried out mindmeister which is a web based tool that can be used for real time collaboration. The visuals are cool and its very easy to use. With in couple of mins I could create my first map. It uses lot of other cool concepts like open id, file sharing for collaboration, Google Gears offline library for offline support, browser add-ons, etc. This adds a new flavor to the social networking tools.
Then I tried a stand alone (again a free ware) application - FreeMind written in java! This can be used for creating maps for own use. It has all the features for creating a multi layered maps and also link multiple maps to create a nice flow. Many times the app was slowing down while loading the saved maps. (but may be an issue with my laptop)
But still it was not convincing enough. Wanted to know what is that can be achieved by these tools that can not be done with powerpoint, visio or excell (to list and track tasks) ???
Here are some things that I realized after spending some time:
- Simplicity: yeah it is very easy to draw what ever you visualize.
- Information rich: We can put in lot of information in to one simple map
- Structural flow: We can give a structural flow to our thoughts
- Layered view: We can collapse or expand at any node level helping us in having a desired level of abstraction of data.
I’m convinced now to use it!
Posted in Cool, General, Tech | No Comments »
April 21st, 2009
Last week when we were out shopping my wife insisted on getting some houseplants. I just knew it had a good ornamental value but not sure about the other advantages. So came home and googled (as any other curious minds) and found this nice article on houseplants. Wow.. good to know the advantages! and good we picked one of the recommended plants.
Posted in Go Green | No Comments »
March 12th, 2009
I was reading Malcolm Gladwell’s - The Tipping Point and came across a section in which he talks about the a survey that shows the importance of having a strong social network. Here the excerpt from the book -
“In his classic 1974 study Getting a Job, Granovetter looked at several hundred professional and technical workers from the Boston suburb of Newton, interviewing them in some detail on their employment history. He found that 36 percent of those he talked to found their job through a personal connection. Another 18.8 percent used formal means — advertisements, headhunters and roughly 20 percent applied directly. “
Suddenly I could see lights flashing in my mind. I could easily agree with this theory as I have personally seen the importance of having an acquaintance and the power of “word of mouth”.
I could easily see a parallel between this book and the driving force behind the modern day social networking site linkedin.
Posted in Book Review, General | 1 Comment »
February 16th, 2009
I bought this book almost 2 years ago but now I got a chance to read it. (yes this is the previous version of the book) I am thinking why I did not read this book earlier. The author has a clear message in this book. The three parts Chasing It, Figuring It and Finding It is well balanced with information and keeps the reader thinking all the time.
Here are few selling points that I could recollect -
- Case In Point - The crash dummies considered in the case study is interesting and after few pages we will be completely involved with the characters and their financial health.
- Although the major part of this book revolves around the Eisenberg Uncertainty Principles there are some other highlights like The ten commandments and Mr Four Percent which are interesting.
- As most of us are aware of the formula mortgage/Rental spending can go up to 1/3 of the take home salary. Here we can find some detailed discussion on this topic.
- The best part of the book is George Kinder’s Three Big Ones. As given in the book we can realize our “Number”.
- The bottom lines and The number quick and dirty is a good way of concluding the book.
Almost every page has a reference to a book and most of which I haven’t heard. This shows the authors book knowledge. I may try to browse through some of the referred books. But before that I may have to read the next version of “The Number“.
I can give a 4.5/5 stars for this book.
Posted in Book Review, Finance | No Comments »
February 13th, 2009
After deleting my spam email folders on Yahoo and Gmail now I have started cleaning the spam comments on my blog. I think every one would be doing this and it would have become an involuntary act by now. Today while deleting my spams suddenly All the spam messages are obvious scam messages but still we keep getting them… Why??? I was curious to know why do people spend so much time, money and energy on creating these spam messages? I wanted to know the economics behind SPAM messages.
Here is some info about why people continue to spam our email boxes. Although we have organizations like spamhaus trying to fight against this we still do not have a permanent solution.
Posted in Tech, Web | No Comments »
January 19th, 2009
Yes.. now we are seeing the go green awareness every where including landscaping. Arizona Utilities Department has decided to use goats to clear out 30 acres of weeds and brush.
Posted in Go Green | No Comments »
January 14th, 2009
Cost cutting has been on top of the priority list for all the companies in this tough economic times. Every one watching out for new ways of cutting expences. Here are some trivial approaches that most of the companies follow that confirms a company is in the first level of cost cutting -
- Cutting on office supplies and making it minimum.
- Cutting on corporate lunch / outings
- Minimizing the corporate travel costs
- Creating new (documented) process for support activities (like upgrading a laptop?)
But two aggressive steps that can immediately decrease the operational costs are:
- Outsourcing the new wave that caught as number one option for cost cutting.
- Trimming the work force and bringing down the scope of work
All these are done and seen. In recent days I have seen companies being more innovative in cutting cost. Here are some examples -
- Cognizant gives the concept of WFH a new dimension by introducing 20:20:20 programme.
- Infosys is asking each employee to show a one time cost saving of $10
These are some very simple examples of how hard times can drive innovation.
Posted in Business, Tech | No Comments »
December 30th, 2008
Last week was the most unique in terms of the weather changes. As we expected a heavy snow fall ahead of Christmas eve, I googled for some tips on shoveling my driveway. I got lucky and found a interesting blog (unable to find it now..) well it had few tips on how to efficiently and quickly push the snow to the sides of the drive way. I followed it and was really helpful. But I couldn’t beat the wet snow that was heavier and the overnight subzero temperature that froze the snow. I was determined to see a clean driveway. so the next day I chizzled away the icy snow mountain sitting on my driveway. I was sure relived to see the mess cleaned up… but ouch.. I didn’t realize that I had sprained my upper back/shoulders. Towards end of the week the rain and unusual 50*F temp melted away most of my hard work sitting on sides of my driveway.
I was explaining this to my brother who is a doctor (and also has special interest in alternative medicine like acupuncture). He mentioned about a self practiced healing technique called Alexander Technique I am impressed by this art and was interesting to see how many people had practiced it.
With this (and some hot patches!!!) now I am getting ready for the next snow storm 
Posted in General | No Comments »
December 23rd, 2008
wow… I just noticed that I haven’t blogged for more than 2 months now.. Here are my top 5 reasons -
- Economy - Its sure the biggest worry on every ones mind. Its quite disturbing to check news or even log on to internet.
- Canceled Vacation - I had my plans to visit Bangalore this month but I had to cancel my trip for safety concerns. Its hard to come out of the vacation mode. I had planned to do nothing for 2-3 weeks
- Child care - As an offshoot of the above change we had to spend some time searching for quick and affordable alternates.
- Weather - Not to blame our Chicago weather, it had always been a lousy winter weather in last 4 year. But still every year I feel this is the worst weather I have ever seen. So while staying indoor, I’m trying to get off computer and spend more time with family.
- Changes at Work - Had been some shift in project/team I am currently working on. So that needs some extra attention.
Ok.. I know.. I too lazy to even realize that I was not blogging. But good news.. now I’m back on.
Posted in General | 1 Comment »