Monthly Archive for September, 2004

Published
by
Gagan Kaul
on September 12, 2004
in General
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Creating Options

Rajesh has put up articles on his blog site Emergic which I really loved. The articles deal with creating options in life. He talks about the selection of his educational institutions, and then further about the deals that he has been an integral part of. Very enlightening and interesting.

Here is an excerpt from his blog:

So, the question that arises is: how do we go about creating options? While there is no single formula that will work well in all situations, here are a few pointers which can help:

Evaluate Objectively: It is important that we assess the situation that we face on its merit. What are the assumptions that we are making? What if those assumptions are not true? What are the constraints that are there? Can we work around those constraints? These are some of the questions that we should be asking. In many cases, we will find that for a small increase in personal effort, time or money, we can create situations where we have much greater control of what is likely to happen.

Understand Probabilities: As former US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin writes in his book, “In An Uncertain World”: “People who have worked with me know I don’t believe in certainty.” We should also not do so. We obviously cannot prepare for black swan events, but we should also not go to the other extreme of believing that what we want will happen. There are probabilities of various events occurring, and if we can mentally think through the chances, we can then better understand the alternatives.

Be Dispassionate: Emotions and feelings can impair decision-making, and force us down paths which we otherwise may not take. It could be positive or negative feelings about places or people. While we do want past experiences to have a bearing on the future, we need to separate out those bits which can bring needless bias into the decisions we make.

Be Alert: It is the point I had made earlier about “Life’s Little Clues.” If we can just be that little extra careful and observant, we will see that there are many signals that are there around us – like the shepherd sees in Paulo Coelho’s “The Alchemist.”

Experimentation Matters: We need to create the environment where we have multiple choices. We can only do this if we try out different things. This is especially true at an early stage of a new venture wherein it may not always be clear which of the ideas may work. Keeping an open mind with some trials to reinforce one’s views can help us reduce errors.

Think Chess: Chess (and other games of strategy) can teach us a lot. We can either be reactive, or we can do some planning by considering some of the paths that the game can take. If we are willing to think a little ahead in Chess and work on creating situations which benefit us, why not do the same in real life?

Sub-optimal Optimisation: We have to be careful what we need to optimise. It is not easy getting all three of “faster, better, cheaper.” So, we need to consider what we are willing to give up in order to ensure we get the others. On a lighter note, it is the difference in knowing when to book a hotel through Priceline.com and Hotels.com – one gives you a good price without the flexibility of location, and the other gives the choice of the hotel, though the price you are likely to pay is going to be higher.

Creating options is what life is about. A little thinking ahead of time can make a big difference as we go through our personal and professional lives. In the words of Jean Nidetch: “It’s choice - not chance - that determines your destiny.”

Published
by
Gagan Kaul
on September 6, 2004
in General
. 1 Comment
Photo Stamps

Gone are the days when one used to get one’s picture printed in the form of a postage stamp and mail it across to someone sounding cool. Next came the internet revolution, and you could simply upload your pics and get printed pics in the form of a postage stamp. But however, they were not of much utility but to attach on an envelope you send out along with a real postage stamp.

However all that is going to change. PhotoStamps provides all of the above services, but what makes it stand out is that they can be used as real postage stamps. Now you can print your own pictures stamp size and get postage ready stamps with your own pictures on it. No need to go out and buy postage stamps. With some mouse clicks and a little more money, you get your own designer stamps which are postage ready and delivered at your doorstep.

I found this idea very neat and extremely catchy. Check it out.

Published
by
Gagan Kaul
on September 5, 2004
in General
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Dell’s Soul

Strategy-Business has a very interesting case study on Dell. During the internet bubble burst in the 90’s, even Dell suffered the kickbacks. Falling stock prices and lots of layoffs were damaging the company image. And that is when the strategists took charge. Redefining the very basic paradigms on which the institutional values and belief systems were based. And in the process they ended up in bringing a new metamorphosis to the Dell World … something that they call Dell’s Soul.

A very interesting read for anyone interested in strategy or general management reading.

Published
by
Gagan Kaul
on September 5, 2004
in General
. 0 Comments

Broadening IT - The Initiatives

Most of the technology initiatives’ goal is to dramatically broaden the spread of information technology to underdeveloped regions around the world. Companies and university researchers have launched a flurry of collaborative projects to design new computing and communications gadgets, some priced at $250 or less, to reach new users in India, China and other emerging economies.

The new brainstorming about the digital divide is partly inspired by technical breakthroughs in fields like wireless communications. But it also reflects a widening consensus that existing government and charitable efforts at technology transfer aren’t sufficient.

The efforts are based on a belief that technology developed for industrial countries doesn’t meet the needs of many poor regions, which grapple with problems such as power shortages and language differences.

Some commendable initiatives:
- UC, Berekeley’s ICT4B
- AMD’s 50×15 effort, which “takes its name from the goal of connecting 50% of the world’s population to the Internet by 2015, up from 10% today”
- Intel’s China Home Learning PC
- Raj Reddy’s PCtvt
- ITC’s e-Choupals

Another project of note is the Aqua news forum for the farmers, supported by India’s first wireless lan in a village at Vigyan Ashram, Pabal (near Pune), Maharastra.

Published
by
Gagan Kaul
on September 2, 2004
in General
. 0 Comments

Message in a Bottle - Hello Aliens!

Astrobio.net reports an interesting report by Christopher Rose, Professor of electrical and Computer Engineering at Rutgers University. Rose contends that inscribing information and physically sending it to some location in deep space is more energy-efficient than pulsing it out on radio waves, which disperse as they travel. “Think of a flashlight beam,” Rose says. “Its intensity decreases as it gets farther from its source. The same is true of the beam of a laser pointer, though the distance is much longer. The unavoidable fact is that waves, both light and radio, disperse over distance, and over great distance, they disperse a lot.” He speculates that if we consider distance, and the “energy budget” required for sending a signal, the budget increases with distance, and the detectability of the signal diminishes. The less detectable a message is, the lower its speed.

Rose is in favor of listening for that close encounter, but he thinks researchers should have their eyes open, too. Rose speculates that “messages” might be anything from actual text in a real language to (more likely) organic material embedded in an asteroid or in the crater, made by such an asteroid upon striking Earth. Messages, perhaps millions of them, might literally be at our feet. They might be awaiting our discovery on the moon, or on one of Jupiter’s moons. They might be dramatic or mundane. A bottle floating in the ocean is just a bottle floating in the ocean, unless, upon closer inspection, it turns out to have a message in it.

The conclusions of the research team, reported in Nature magazine, are similar in spirit to what motivated the golden disc carried by the 1970’s Voyager spacecraft.

Slashdot carries more information and links to this report.