interesting business cards...

I was looking at designing my biz card, and found very some interesting ones.... 

Saving for the rainy day...

Today morning while returning from the airport after dropping my brother, I gave a lift to a very young man who was on his way to play cricket at the Pune University. As usual, my curiosity to listen to what’s up in a strangers life led to a very interesting discussion.

 

He was about 24, with some minimal education, and came from a low-middle class background working in a factory doing some mundane data entry job.  His company is now reeling under the impact of recession, and he expects to get laid off in another 2 months. 

However he is very smart. Soon after getting his job he setup a Xerox (Copier) shop for his mom, and then a garment shop for his sister. He is the VC for both the ventures by taking loans on his meager salary, and both shops are doing very well. If laid off, he expects to spend more time in his business and make it bigger.

 

I was amazed. Three years back when there was a boom in the market he was smart enough to start ventures which now is saving him when he losses the job.

 

The first thing that came to my mind was how different are the most IT (and other highly paid) engineers are. We are all busy blowing up whatever money we make in multiplexes, malls, cars, hotels, etc, without bothering about saving for the rainy day.

 

~Sri

If Piratebay, then why not Google?

A very unfortunate and illogical event happened in Sweden recently. The founders and employees of Piratebay in the Piratebay vs. Hollywood case. 

For all said and done, Piratebay is just a search engine. They do not host any pirated data on thier servers. So if Piratebay is convicted, then Google should also be. I am sure common sense will prevail soon. Bhagwan ke ghar main der hain, under nahin! ;-)

View the news conf. with the piratebay founder here.

~Sri

Anand on Rediff...

Read Anand's interview - How he built a $100-million company - on Rediff.

Though Anand's interviews are always interesting, I should say this one is disappointing. The questions and answers looks more like an FAQ (i.e. too bland), and also not structured properly like the 2nd page about the award winning data procressing solutions comes out of nowhere in between.

~Sri

krishagni.com is now online....

I got one small monkey off my back. Though I didnt do much, I finally got krishagni.com up and running.

Sorry to disappoint you...a small start but still a start! :)

~Sri

Almost Perfect!

WordPerfect was one of the first Word Processors, and went on to become the market leader. This book is by Pete Peterson who was instrumental in taking the company from six employees and sales of about $20,000 a month to 4,000 employees and annual sales of more than half a billion dollars.

Read on... the is book is "open source"...

http://www.wordplace.com/ap/index.shtml

~Sri

To or not to.....Play your natural game....always!

When Virender Sehwag was out playing an across-the-line aggressive shot for the second time in the Test on Saturday, a debate was triggered. Often it is said that players like Sehwag shouldn’t tamper with their style of play regardless of the match situation. Earlier, another natural strokemaker Yuvraj Singh, too, had gone for an expansive drive to a ball pitched outside the off stump and was caught in the slips. Since the need of the hour for India was to curb the risky shots and play straight, questions were asked if ‘playing the natural game’ was always an irrevocable adage with no exceptions.

On Sunday, the query was put to Rahul Dravid and it induced a firm ‘No’. “You have got to play according to the situation. That is what great players have done over the years. They read the situation, they play according to the wicket and the conditions, and that’s how people I have admired and I have watched over the years played,” he said. 

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/dravid-doesnt-endorse-naturalgame-theo.../440535/

Every hour is Earthhour!

Well.. i dont like this whole issue of earth hour...

For me every hour is an Earth hour. Switch off the light,  fan, laptop when leave your cube and room, everytime! Not just on earth hour.

the art of tutorials...

This is usability engineering:

http://blogs.openforum.com/2009/03/19/the-art-of-the-tutorial/

About salaries on Joel

An excellent article about salaries on Joel.

The part I liked the most:

At the same time, if you hear a lot of griping about salaries, you shouldn't look just at your system for paying people. One thing I've learned from experience is that happy, motivated employees who are doing work they love and feel they are being treated as adults don't gripe about money unless their pay is egregiously unfair. If you hear a lot of complaints about salaries, I suspect that's probably a manifestation of a much bigger disease: Your employees aren't deriving enough personal satisfaction from their work, or they are miserable for other reasons.

It takes a lot of salary to make up for a cruel boss or a prisonlike workplace. And rather than adjusting pay, you might choose to focus on some non monetary ways to make employees happy. Happy employees make better products and provide better customer service and will make your company successful and profitable. And success allows you to pay workers better. It's a virtuous circle, and it has worked for Fog Creek