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Showing posts from April, 2008

A "Revo-lulu-tion" in Print Publishing

ANYONE WITH A SOMEWHAT SERIOUS SLANT towards one's blogging lines would want to publish something in a physical paper format (read: book ) at some point in time. At least that is what my general observation has been. On one hand, while the technology of bringing words online in the forms of Blogger, LiveJournal, MySpace and alike have made content creation a one-click job and in doing so might have taken the 'authors' away from the traditional book-publishing process, on the other hand it is really interesting to see how the same technology loops back and makes publishing a book in paper format an equally user-friendly and accessible experience. Add to that the ability to enable Creative Commons options, variable pricing options, and manufacturing (physical printing on paper and binding) and shipping on-demand, provides the new dimension of flexibility in the hands on authors. This is the modern technology looping back to aid the traditional medium of publication rather tha

Crowded 'Facts'

Crowded 'Facts': "I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it - there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones." -- Arthur Conan Doyle ( Sherlock

The Bard's Birth Day

April 23 - TODAY BEING ST. GEORGE'S DAY is also considered to be the Birth Day of William Shakespeare . (Nobody knows for sure of the bard's exact date of birth.) If one wonders about the alchemists of that era, and if they would have got a couple of 'immortality' pills of which one was taken by Shakespeare such that he would still be alive at this time, what kind of blogs would he be maintaining..? Perhaps a blog with the highest hits on the net! Footnote: Sampling only Technorati may perhaps be a rather narrow view, but looking at their popular index stats available of top 100 , the most popular blog as of this moment is - The Huffington Post , closely followed by (my personal preference) TechCrunch . (Well, by including weblinks here, I just contributed one more point to the 'authority' count on Technorati for both.)

"Fred the Shred" under the weather?

THEY CALL HIM "FRED THE SHRED...". If you count "few good men" who took the lead in the "rationalisation" of workforce in the conservative European banking and Financial services, Fred has to be in the front row. Sir Frederick Anderson Goodwin, remained in the news in Europe, mainly Britain, for his often visionary yet unorthodox methods of running Britain's second largest Banking group. After he assumed control, the RBS groups, perhaps for the first time, saw a rather American-styled cost-cutting, or Shredding as the Britons prefer to call it. Managing nearly 1000 people worldwide at the age of 32, the acumen more than the aggression made Fred the CEO of the Clydesdale Bank at the age of 36. He has been quoted as famously saying, "I have no time for cynics, spectators or dead wood". And as we speak, being with the RBS group, he is the longest serving CEO in the FTSE-100 index. (That precisely makes me wonder if the pool underneath is in a

Oil money powering windmills

WINDMILLS WERE A THING fascination, especially in the farmland of picturesque Europe, more so perhaps because they spoke of a bygone era that I felt I just missed. To much delight, the winds continued to blow in their directions, as it were, and the windmills kept going around. With time, however, as the water-table got deeper and deeper, the Netherlanders found other ways and means to keep them spinning, namely, Electricity generated by turbines spinning by the winds. And I would say, this is a niche electro-mechanical engineering field - building a very energy efficient and 'light' turbine, such that the winds can spin at, and at the same time it gives sufficient torque to the dynamo to create electromagnetic charge that could be refined as usable domestic electricity. And along with all that technical things, the ROI turns profitable within reasonable metrics (and also, that we don't end up having a dog catching its own tail). Now, so far there was no direct conflict of

The Gillette 'trap'

[A little background: It had been a few months that I was searching for twin-blade cartridges for the Gillette SensorExcel safety razor that I prefer. I had almost given up on it by now, and was looking towards this seemingly inevitable upgrade to Mach3 or something when I suddenly hit a jackpot - I found a supermarket selling the make and model that I was looking for. I could finally purchase a year worth of supply. In other words, another year that I would effectively dodge Gillette Mach3 upgrade 'threat'.] The history goes that some hundred years ago, Mr. King Gillette was a wealthy but frustrated failure of an innovator at 40. He had written a book called " The Human Drift ", which argued that all industry should be taken over by a single corporation owned by the public, and that millions of Americans should live in a giant city called Metropolis powered by the Niagara Falls. His boss at the bottle cap company, meanwhile, had just one piece of advice: Invent somet

Lama meets Mahatma

I FOUND IT VERY SYMBOLIC SEEING the Dalai Lama paying homage to Mahatma's memorial at New Delhi. And, rightly so. Mahatma Gandhi, who always advocated for equanimity of all religions, was not a Buddhist, yet, without any exaggerations, he was a perfect example of one. Mahatma brought independence to his people through practising non-violence, and that is what the Lama teaches the world. [Left: Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama throws rose petals at Raj Ghat, The Memorial to Mahatma Gandhi in New Delhi on March 29, 2008, to attend a public inter-faith prayer meeting for those who lost their lives in Tibet. Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Jain leaders offered prayers along with The Dalai Lama and hundreds of Tibetans and their supporters at the cremation spot of Mahatma Gandhi. - tiskali.co.uk] The Dalai Lama is a defacto (though dethroned) King of the Tibetan people. And he is at his Kingly duty while he takes on China with respect to the rights for the Tibetans. In doing so, as alway