The Seventy Percent Rule

"He is the Technical Manager at Satyam and an alumnus of our college", with these words our professor introduced a class of 15 people to the 30 something person standing with the professor. He talked about in length about various topics around IT industry and then he talked about the most important thing which was my takeaway from the talk, "The Seventy percent rule". He said that he followed this rule all his life and he is more than satisfied with what he has achieved with this rule.

His idea is simple, people are always surrounded by opportunities but hesitate to grab one. The reason for reluctance in making choices lies in the greediness for the better opportunity. The counter argument, what is the guarantee that the next opportunity will be better than the current, and what if you keep loosing opportunities waiting for the better ones? The rule is simple; if the current opportunity is as good as at least 70% of your dream opportunity, then grab it otherwise leave it. This rule applies to every aspect of your life, job, career, girlfriend, money and what not.

Web OS

Yes, here we are in a different world altogether, no worry of licenses, virus threats and regular *critical security* Windows updates, in an online Operating System. The web has evolved a lot in recent years with the advent of Web 2.0 and we are moving fast towards Web 3.0.

 

Facebook has matured to become the web platform which eventually is just one step away from Web Operating System. New startup Jooce has recently launched its beta version web OS. Do register and visit the website to experience the changing face of web. Entire site has been developed in Adobe Macromedia Flash.

 

In all the scheme of things that are going on, I am just wondering where is Microsoft?

You Win some You Loose some

You don’t loose the battle until you quit. Losers are the people who do not participate in the battle. More important is the participation and the spirit. Winning or Loosing is just the outcome.

With this Mindset, we set to play against, arguably the second best team of the tournament. We had never practiced before, and some of the players have never played soccer before. Yet, we were dominating the game with 1-0 till the last 2 minutes. Blooper can be termed as an appropriate word for the goal that opponents scored against us. Nevertheless, we put up a good fight thereafter during penalty shoot-out. We scored all the three penalty shots against an experienced player who was their Goal keeper cum forward cum defender cum penalty shooter. The referee decided to opt for sudden death since it was a knock-out match. Opponent’s goalkeeper was able to save the penalty kick and that’s when the match ended.

I will never forget this match for two reasons. First, I saw an ordinary team delivering an extraordinary result. Second, I saw that attitude is what that makes the difference. Our attitude was simple, we were playing and enjoying the game and we were not under any pressure. None of the player tried to become a hero and none kept himself above the team. It doesn't matter for me as a captain that we lost the game but it’s a pride for me that I got such a good team to play along and I thoroughly enjoyed playing the game like I did never before.

The Evolution of Advertising

The way Google grew in the last 5 years has completely transformed the advertising and marketing mathematics. It has proved the concept of personalized advertising. If we take a look at the history of consumer producer dynamics, it has evolved from what it was when industries came into being.

When industries started spurring up, the demand was more and the consumers were less. In fact the consumers did not have many choices also. So whatever industry produced was consumed by the consumer. This situation prevailed till the world war ended. During the world war, a lot of investment went for setting up the industries to produce materials for warfare. This in turn increased the capacity of the industry to produce goods; the affect of which was seen after the world war was over. Suddenly all the industries including metal, electronics, transport and agro turned their attention to the large consumer base which was war stricken. People worked harder to earn more and in turn more they produced. Market scenario changed suddenly from industry driven culture to consumer driven culture. Market became highly competitive, just producing the goods was not enough; selling them became more and more difficult. Product differentiation and intelligent marketing was the key to survival. This gave birth to the marketing gimmicks. Industries started mass advertising campaign to sell their products.

But the only thing that is constant is the "Change". In the new millennium, market has become more congested with variety of products and product technologies. Everything cannot be sold to everyone. Products have become more consumer targeted but the advertising style has not changed. It has become more and more difficult to reach the right consumer base. The advertising has again changed the form and it has become personalized advertising. You show the advertisement to the people who are interested in the market/ segment you cater. This is exactly what Google is doing now, however what Google has done is just the starting. Nowadays, we see a lot of new companies coming up with innovative ideas like mginger which will give you money for receiving the advertisements of your choice on your mobile. TiVo has started the concept of "interactive advertising" with the internet enabled Set-top boxes. There is lot of scope for innovation in this area and the market is still largely untapped. Only future can tell the endless possibilities that exists.

Harry Potter : The Magic is in the Air

Harry Potter and the order of the phoenix released on 13th and I was lucky enough to see it on 15th. As expected the movie is great, awesome locations, awesome digital effects and not to mention the fabulous performance by everyone as expected. The only distinguishing factor was the intelligent editing that was missing in the last two HP movies. The movie has come out very nice, all the relevant parts are intact and less important are curtailed.

Few scenes are really memorable including, Order flying on broomsticks over London, the Fred and George's fireworks sequence to annoy Umbridge, Grawp appearance, and the last fight sequence. I need to specifically mention the last fight sequence which has come out really well and the battle between Voldemort (Oops..... I should say YOU KNOW WHO) and Dumbledore was really stupendous.

In all it is one of the best Potter movies; if you haven’t seen it yet, you are missing something.

All's well that ends well

With Harry Potter movie release on 13th and the last book on 21st, July 2007 is truly a month full of magic. I was excited as everyone was but a little less perhaps, cause when I thought it was a right time to book the tickets, the cinema halls were fully booked. From Thursday till Saturday everything I did, went in vain. There was only one cinema hall where I could get tickets, the "REX" on brigade road.

With a little hope, as I reached there, I was confronted with a long queue of HP fans already present. After waiting for at least half hour a watchman came and told us that the "day" is houseful. All hearts broken, even the last hope shattered. With a heavy heart, I moved out of the premise looking to pass sometime before I head back to home.

Suddenly I remembered that I didn't have breakfast in the morning, my stomach began to sink. I went to the shabby looking restaurant "Coffee House" on MG Road. After having an omelette with toast and a hot cup of coffee, I somehow decide to have a stroll at MG. It had been a long time since I walked around without any specific purpose or need. I saw one book store called "Bookworm" which have used books. I decide to check out the collection, surprisingly it has a huge collection but the book I was looking for was completely new and was not available under "Used" category. I bought Bill Bryons' "A short history of nearly everything".

As I was passing "REX" to catch an auto back home, I decided to take another look and to my amazement they were selling "Front stall" tickets. I called my friends to tell them the "GOOD" news but to my bad luck nobody turned out to be willing to come for the movie. After a lot of deliberation I couldn't resist and I bought the only remaining ticket of "Back Stall".

Alls well that end well.

Living a Life....

In just little more than 3 months I will turn 25. Looking back I see a lot of things I have gone through, some good some bad. More important for me is how enriching has been the last 25 years.

There are many things that human being can do to enrich his life depending upon an individual's interest. How many of them you have done? Ever been on World tour? Ever played sports? Ever acted in a drama? Ever sang a song? Ever danced Salsa? Ever had exotic meals in exotic places? Ever been in Love? There is no dearth. Ever since I gained this conscience, I have always tried to do my best and enjoy every flavor of life.

Nobody who knows me now can ever believe how dull I was when I was in school. I started off in college with a skit. I wrote the dialogs and acted as a politician. I was so successful in my first venture that my seniors and my college-mates started calling me "Neta". Then I moved on to "Dancing”; that was the biggest flop I ever had; backstage had to shut off the music to bring me down from stage. I moved on to "Singing"; had good success in that and also won few prizes in college.

Still I was nowhere in sports; so I started playing soccer when I started the job around three years ago. Now I am learning swimming. I took "Dancing Classes" also and learnt Salsa, Swing and Rock n roll. I did Para-gliding and water scooter in my trip to Goa. There are lot many things pending in the list, including driving, scuba, guitar, horse-riding etc. I know life is short and aspirations are high.

At the end of it; All I want to say to myself is "I have lived my life fully"

Decoding Women......

There might be several explanations, illustrations available on this topic but nobody has approached in such a manner so as to be comprehensible for, so called geeks. So here I am with my version of explanation in a typical electronics engineer way.

After deliberate research and rumination, I concluded that Women are like Analog Circuits and Men are like Digital Circuits. If you would notice certain properties or behavior of the Analog circuits, it is similar to how women behave. Analog circuits are complex, difficult to comprehend and so are women. If one would have noticed, whatever you tell them (input signal) is drastically different from the response you get. You might wonder what she understood, although you were very clear in telling her (like a digital circuit Zero or One) but the response you get is at undefined level (like analog circuit neither Zero nor One). You might have to make a wild guess what she actually means, and here is the catch, you are a goner if you got it wrong (Alas! poor men can understand only One or Zero). Any simulation that men might do themselves is not enough because digital circuit requires infinite resolution to simulate the analog output. So, men try different approaches to identify the output, like reading a book (How does analog circuit behave… etc…) or asking female friends (doing circuit simulations) but when actual results come, its always unexpected. It is remarkable to analyze how the behavior changes or what are the factors that contributes to the unexpected output even after taking so much care. There are several, right from the mood (Temperature), TV serials (RF signals) and friends (interference from neighboring circuits) to minor aliments like happening during the day (residual voltages) etc. These things make it difficult to predict the exact behavior. The best way out is to have an analog circuit which gives fairly predictable output i.e. within a certain range. It’s difficult to find, I agree, I am still searching for the one.