Rajiv's BlogPost - Me, My Life & the world as I see...

Wall Street Meets 70mm

Rajiv's BlogPost — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 04:59:51 GMT

In June this year, CNBC-TV18 in association with Enlighten Film Society organised a film festival titled "Wall Street Meets 70mm" in Mumbai, showcasing 4 movies- Rogue Trader, Wall Street, Boiler Room & Barbarians of the Gate. By the name of the movies and the organiser, it is easy to guess the theme - the financial markets. I expected the festival to move other cities. That never happened!

Over the last fortnight, I watched 3 of the 4 movies. I and Ashu truly, deeply, madly enjoyed the financial thrillers! Flashing guns were replaced with Stock tickers and numbers on the screen represented the bullets. Lives were lost, not with gun shots, but with bankruptcies & broken relationships. Outside the sheer fun and excitement, there is a learning part too. I learnt there is a thin line between financial investing and arrogant gambling. It is important to stay within boundaries and not to get carried away by euphoria and herd mentalities.

I hope the current financial meltdown & credit crisis fuel ideas for more such movies :) Meanwhile, I will catch up others from the past.

Abu Dhabi bails out Dubai!

Rajiv's BlogPost — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 10:39:20 GMT

We are aware of banks being fished out from storm waters by governments. Here is more astounding piece I read in LiveMint. It says "Dubai received a $15 billion (Rs70,350 crore) bailout from Abu Dhabi, its cash-rich big sister. At least that’s how the lending facility set up by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) central bank is being privately interpreted. "

Sounds crazy ah! Interestingly, I have not heard or read about this in another website or TV or newspaper.

Cautiously Optimistic!

Rajiv's BlogPost — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 06:49:52 GMT

At the event of quarterly financial results of an organization, a television channel host interviewing the head of the company asked: "Are you optimistic or cautious about the future". The head of the company replied: "We are Cautiously Optimistic"

So the obvious question is what does he exactly mean?

I found a amazing response posted by somebody on the net

It means "I believe things will turn out well, so I want credit for having the wisdom to predict it. But I don't have the courage to say so out loud, so if everything falls apart, I want credit for having the wisdom to be cautious." It's a phrase used extensively by economists, politicians, and other spineless creatures.

Could it have been described better! ;)

SaaS - A Recession-Proof Corner Of The Tech Sector

Rajiv's BlogPost — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 07:10:09 GMT

Sramana Mitra suggests Software-as-a-service vendors are the most recession-proof in a event of the recession in this Forbes article

In the context of large Indian IT service providers, this is significant. Even in non-recessionary times, SaaS is an opportunity to break the linearity between employee and revenue growth. Such non-linearity strategies are much-talked internally and to an extent externally too. However, result-oriented outcomes are yet to make significant contributions to revenues.

India Salary Handbook

Rajiv's BlogPost — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:17:56 GMT

Found this excellent resouce @ Amit Ranjan's Webyantra- India Salary Handbook by Kelly Services India. I am pretty surprised to find it to be free since such a report which is probably the first time in India (by my knowledge), could have easily found buyers. Much appreciated.

Download

Launching Indian Startup Timeline

Rajiv's BlogPost — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 01:37:57 GMT

Update: World Startup Timeline, in the same lines as Indian Startup Timeline with the same purpose but at a global scale.

Indian Startup Timeline is an initiative + application to build a single-point reference of the milestones and events that make up the lifecycle of any startup. The beneficiaries would be startups, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and practically everybody in the community. As I write this, the idea of IST is just 2 days young. It is an implementation of only my thoughts and I hope it garners support from startup bloggers/event organizers and startups themselves, to achieve it objectives.

The [Add Startup Milestone/Event] link will pop out a form to fill out some basic details about the startup and the past or future event/milestone. (If you think some additional fields or change in existing fields will help, feel free to let me know.) To avoid spam and junk, I review the entries before they show up in the timeline and views. Though I have said "New additions will be reviewed within a day", I can assure you it will be much faster. Email addresses will not be exposed and I might only use them to establish contact to validate the data.

Behind the scenes: After I visualised IST, I started off with an agenda to accomplish it without writing backend/server code! I had watched the interview of 'Mr. Office 2.0', Ismael Ghalimi in the WorkFast.TV show and this charged me up. I tried a few apps I knew and those I found in the Office2.0 Database. Did I meet the agenda? End of day, I managed to meet the agenda by about two-thirds. Zoho Creator powers the database, forms & views while MIT's Simile Timeline plots the timeline. Zoho gave a RSS while Timeline expects a custom xml format. I expected Yahoo Pipes to do the plumbing. Unfortunately, pipes only outputs to any of RSS-related outputs. EditGrid was another candidate that could have replaced Zoho since EditGrid lets me define a format of syndicated data and hence no intermediate plumbing would have been required. However, EditGrid lacks the powers of forms. So, finally its Zoho Creator + XSLT with PHP + Simile Timeline.

To-Do List:

1. RSS feed (Using Yahoo Pipes)
2. Email notifications (Built-in Zoho Creator)
3. Zoho Creator hiccups (JS errors + Favicon missing)

You can get it touch with me at rajiv @ rajspace.net or rajspace in GTalk.

Subject: rajspace is a moron

Rajiv's BlogPost — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:16:35 GMT

So said the subject of SPAM mail in my spam folder! In the body, it said "this is the proof, watch:" and followed with a link to a ".exe"!

Its spam and crap, no doubt. But within that, its a very innovative crap! Never had a spam mail caught my eye to this extent.

Anyways, NO, I am NOT a moron! :)

Vysr: Not a toolbar, it’s a Lookup bar

Rajiv's BlogPost — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 00:39:47 GMT

I found Vysr from FastCompay.TV's demo-cum-interview of Guda Venkatesh (Alumni of IIT,Kanpur). Vysr is new toolbar released in beta for Internet Explorer and Fire Fox. It aims to enhance browsing experience by giving easy access to popular services like Google News, Wikipedia, YouTube, MapQuest and others (called Apps) within the current view of the webpage. On the top of this, it adds a context of the selected text to these apps. What this means is that you can select "abc" on a webpage and click on the Wikipedia app on Vysr. An in-page display shows the Wikipedia page on "abc". I like that! This acts like a lookup within the scope of my current webpage rather than opening another window or tab. Hence, I call it a Lookup bar, than a Tool bar. The position of Vysr is another difference among other toolbars. Vysr does not take away valuable real estate in your browser. It is well position in the bottom right corner. It is also easier to enable or disable which just a click, without having to through seek through the browser menus.

For developers, they plan to release a developer api. I await the release to design a Vysr app to search for shopping deals in India with DealSearchMaadi.com and stock analysis with Stockoogle.in.

Apart from the developer api, here is my wish list:

1. Google Web search app. (How can they forget this in the first place!)

2. The bar gets longer as I choose more apps. I would like to have a Windows quick launch bar's double-arrow styled option that on click pops up the other apps.

3. Geo-focused apps, especially for India for local weather, maps, stocks, news, search etc.

I would keenly watch out if Vysr replaces my Google toolbar over a period of time, also considering the possibility of Google using its toolbar to sketch the Google Trends!

Makes me happy

Rajiv's BlogPost — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 11:47:26 GMT

Something in this makes me feel happy! Found it at Amit Ranjan's Webyantra.net
Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Over 5 MB/sec

Rajiv's BlogPost — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 03:26:52 GMT

Japan Rocks! :)