As every one know 2009 was the year for social networking. The increased popularity of micro blogging on twitter and social networking on facebook has brought down the number of blogs (IMHO) . I am a victim this new trend. I haven’t been to my blog site for more than 6 months and during this time my site was down which I did not notice until Raghu mentioned it (as he hosts my site) and also I forgot my login id and password 
So as per our popular twitter tag let us #blameitontwitter!
Now the twitter craze is settling down and I may not buzz as often as tweet, so decided to get back to blogs.
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.
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!
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.
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
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.
wow look at the first line -
HOLD FOR RELEASE – DO NOT USE – HOLD FOR RELEASE – DO NOT USE
http://gawker.com/5042795/bloomberg-runs-steve-jobs-obituary
Few weeks back I came across an article in sun time about how well some of them are using the coupons. Until that time I had never realized the impact of using coupons. I used to keep few coupons for LNT, BBB, Costco aside so that I can use them, but could never remembered to have them handy at the time of purchase. So I had never used any. Recently I got PDF format of LNT coupon so started printing them before I go there. So today I printed them out and on my way out I saw a BBB coupon on my desk. I know LNT would accept their competitors coupons. So grabbed it with me. I presented both the coupons during the checked out and found that I could not use both in a single purchase. Its common practice and we find this disclaimer on all the coupons. I just wanted to argue logically and asked the checkout agent that if she can accept both the coupons if I made my purchase in 2 transaction? Guess what… she said YES :-/ and applied both the coupons!
I still don’t get how it was different from having all the coupons in one transaction and how the disclaimer of using one per transaction is being validated!
In past few months the one new thats been daunting every one is the subprime crisis. Some financial gurus started predicting the next target of this crisis and few started pointing towards “Credit Card”. An average American household carries $8000 debt. In this economy there is high chances that some of them will turn out to be bad debt. Going a step ahead now we can see this crisis started bleeding in to student loans. Lenders has started evaluating the students credit reports. If this continues the students will have tough time ahead.
We can also see its effect on the US stock market since Jan 2008. Even though we see lot of things has changed negatively, the federal reserve is trying hard not to declare recession. Every one is worried that it will even worsen things. But I feel if we declare recession and accept things as it is today and move on then things may change. As long as we deny the fact the going will get tougher.
Few years back (in India) I would have never given attention to the weather section of the news or would have never visited the weather.com website. But now I can’t imagine with out either one of this. Thinking back it felt very natural to get thunder storms or have scorching heat with out expecting them. But now it has became part of our life. I wouldn’t have expected yesterdays snow storm without knowing the forecast. As I expected this I had to get up early to shovel the driveway and start few mins early so that I could reach the train station on time.