Category: General

Writes Dave Winer:

From this point we’ll get much better information about how companies are doing. Stock options as we knew them, are over. Salaries and benefits matter. Transparent management. Time to ride the Cluetrain, for real. Companies must make identifiable products for real people that they communicate with honestly, directly and openly. You can’t view your customers, shareholders or readers as fat, dumb and happy; or they’ll take you down the Enron-WorldCom road. It’s time for the philosophy of the Web to become the philosophy of business. View your constituents as people with minds, and treat them accordingly.

The world needs to look at the lives of the other 4 billion people living in developing markets. There’s plenty of opportunity there, but the price points and solutions have to be different. This is where a new beginning needs to be made.

The Economist writes on the battle between the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal, in a face of a downturn in the ad market.

I read both daily (and in fact, the International Herald Tribune). From a readers’ point of view, to get a global perspective, I think all the three papers are a must. From a technology coverage point of view, I still feel there is nothing to beat the FT’s IT supplements. I like the WSJ’s website a lot more: it is the first website I visit in the morning.

Why read all these papers – they don’t come cheap. Reading diversely is a habit inculcated by my father when I was quite young. That has been a huge help for me all my life. I just have to know what’s happening around the world. When I was growing up, BBC World Service (on radio) was my constant companion. Now, its the Internet and the news sites, along with many of the international newspapers and magazines.

A lot of new ideas and thinking is influenced by what I read. It is very difficult to quantify the return on investment. The newspaper may cost a dollar, but the time we invest in reading it and thinking is much more. For me, they have been the key to developing a global mindset. In today’s world, we have to have an international outlook to have any chance of success. For me, newspapers like the FT, WSJ and IHT are what BBC World Service was 15 years ago (and in fact still is) – windows to the world.

On BBC Radio World News, in a span of 6 minutes, I heard 3 items related to the changes taking place in the environment:

– Drought in southern Italy. Rainfall has dropped by 25% in the past decade.
– 13 million people face starvation in southern Africa, with half of Zimbabwe’s population at risk.
– Glaciers in Alaska have been melting faster than previously thought, which means there is greater water supply in the world’s oceans. This can lead to flooding of coastal areas.

Add to this the below-normal rainfall in India for this time of the year. The world’s climate is changing and the environment is hurting. We still seem to be doing precious little.

An interesting point made by a friend recently was that India and China should not be building a lot of highways. If they do so, this will lead to more cars and trucks – by the millions. Instead, the investment should go for improving the railway system. That is much more environment-friendly.

Veer pointed me to this posting on BoingBoing about , which seems to have a few things in common with our thinking on using used PCs as Thin Clients: “ recycles used technology to provide computers, Internet access, education and job skills training to those in need. In exchange for a few hours of community service in the recycling center volunteers earn their very own Freek Box, a refurbished computer system loaded with the Gnu/Linux operating system and Free Software programs. teaches new users how to operate their Freek Box and offers a variety of hip classes, like Perl programing, in their training center.”

Google Director of Technology Craig Silverstein answers questions put by Slashdot readers. Google has over 10,000 servers running Linux. Some good points which may seem obvious but are always worth remembering:

The innovation is driven neither by hardware or software, but by products. We look around and say, “What would be the next great product to have?” and then figure out what software and hardware we need to make that product work and work great.

If we concentrate on users, everything else — including money — will follow.

We will do well to keep both points in mind for Emergic.

Economist on Auctions: “For all their promise, many auctions have strangely disappointed. For online auctioneers, a problem is that customers face costs in time spent bidding, and the risk of losing the auction. Fixed prices can work better if they reduce time spent buying and the risk of not getting what you want. This may explain why few auction websites – eBay is the notable exception – have prospered.”

In a section entitled “Integrator-in-Chief”, the Economist writes:

It is a truism, of course, that if America does bad things or makes bad mistakes, others will criticise it, shun it or even oppose it. It is best, however, to think about this emerging issue of American power and leadership in three ways:

– America’s power relative to its rivals’ and to other alternatives, including its allies.
– America’s power relative to the challenges it faces around the world, and what it might achieve by using it.
– America’s power relative to its own willingness to use it, or to keep bearing the costs of maintaining and using it.

This survey will explore those topics, and the questions they raise. Its answers – be warned – will be optimistic, and will generally be favourable to the United States. Certainly, American leadership will produce mistakes. But without American leadership, worse things would happen. And if any other country were in the lead, there would be much greater cause for worry.

Re-read the above replacing America and US with Microsoft and country with company.

I Want My File-Served TV!, writes Stewart Alsop (one of my favourite columnists) in Fortune, offering a compelling glimpse into TV’s future:

File-served television describes an Internet for video content. Anyone–from movie company to homeowner–could store video on his own hard disk and make it available for a price. Movie and television companies would have tons of hard disks with huge capacities, since they can afford to store everything they produce. Cable operators and satellite companies might have some hard disks to store the most popular content, since they can charge a premium for such stuff. And homeowners might have hard disks (possibly in the form of PVRs) that can be used as temporary storage for content that takes time to get or that they only want to rent–or permanent storage for what they’ve bought.

I love Writing. Its been a habit formed early on in life. I used to keep daily diaries when I was in college and IIT. This continued for some time in the US and later in India, but then as life got busy and more challenging, the diaries took a backseat and then stopped altogether. I didn’t like writing depressing things! Even though the diary habit hasn’t come back altogether, I do occasionally write my thoughts in my notebook (paper and pen, not electronic).

Over the past few years, my note-taking habit has become very good and disciplined. Earlier, I used to write on pads and whatever book/diary I’d get. A few years ago, I got the idea of using 300-page notebooks — this came when I watched a person in a meeting do so. The good thing about using big (in terms of pages) notebooks is that one doesn’t try and economise to conserve pages! I now write (meeting notes, doodling, thinking) 10-15 pages a day. This has been a great asset for my thinking. Even when reading, I make notes of the key points — helps me remember better.

Then, there’s been the public writing. In 1995-96, it was a fortnightly column of 1500 words for Express Computer. I stopped because there wasn’t much new happening then and I found myself repeating myself. In 1997-99, I wrote occasionally for IndiaLine, our own website. Wasn’t very regular. Late 2000, I realised that my thinking had dried up and I wasn’t as much aware of the world of technology as I used to be.

That’s when I took the decision to start a daily Tech column on Tech Samachar. I began by writing the first 3 weeks worth of columns (15 in all, about 400-500 words each). I wasn’t sure how long it would last. Now, more than 18 months later, I am myself surprised! This writing has not only broadened and deepened by writing, but also helped consolidate my thoughts. I write what I think. I write because I now love it. It has made me much more alert, much more thoughtful, and more able to connect things together.

The Weblog is now an extension of this writing. It has now become part of my daily routine. It is also working as an extension of my memory — when I come across something interesting, I post it to the blog.

There is a significant time investment in the writing. Each week’s Tech Talk series of 5 takes me an aggregate of about 3 hours. Each day, I spend about 30-45 mins on the weblog, for a total of about 4 additional hours each week. But I think the time investment is absolutely worth it. This is what gives me the new ideas, it has introduced me to new people and it gives a purpose to my reading. Its also my way of giving a little back to the community of writers (professional and amateur) who have been the inspiration for me.

WSJ’s Map of the Market is a great way to see how the US markets are moving…amazing how a picture can put a new perspective on things.