Aspiring radio hosts need only a computer, phone
Anyone with dreams of being a talk radio star--ranting about sports and politics, chatting with callers, sharing recipes or car-buying tips--can play host on their own show, right on the Web.
BlogTalkRadio, Talkshoe and Skypecasts are among the Web sites that have become popular for would-be radio jocks, and all it takes is a computer and a telephone.
"You can create a show within five minutes and be on the air within 15 minutes," said Alan Levy, the CEO of BlogTalkRadio, a site he started shortly after his father fell ill with non-Hodgkins lymphoma in 2006.
At first, Levy created a blog for his father, allowing him to easily keep in touch with family and friends. Later, Levy decided he wanted something more than a blog.
"I wasn't feeling like it was a conversation--it was all text," he said. So he came up with the idea of creating broadcasts for bloggers, and BlogTalkRadio was born.
With BlogTalkRadio, hosts use a telephone and computer to create live, call-in shows. Unlimited participants can join, and the service is free because it's advertising-supported. After airing, the shows are archived and become available as podcasts for other listeners.
So far, nearly 46,000 shows have been created--with subjects ranging from entertainment to politics to sports and lifestyle. Actor Brad Pitt, politician John Kerry, baseball player David Wright, and author Jodi Picoult are among those who have been interviewed.
"Some shows are good, some aren't so hot," said Levy. "The cream rises to the top."
Sunday, December 30, 2007
The Momentum Fitness & Weight Loss System
1. How The Momentum Fitness works:
What is a Heart Rate Monitor?: A heart rate monitor helps you measure the intensity of your workout. Most heart rate monitors come in two separate pieces – a chest band and a wrist watch.
Sample Interval Workout: Sample 25-Minute Interval Workout with 3-Minute Intervals
Warm Up: Be sure to warm up for 5 minutes. You can walk, jog in place, jump rope, or run around the block. In fact, you can do anything that gets your heart rate elevated, as long as you don’t overdo it. This means that your perceived exertion (P.E.) during the warm up should be a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10 (“1” is the exertion required to sit on the sofa and at “10,” you’ve just passed out). Never go above a perceived 8.5 exertion while doing this or any workout.
Give Yourself A Break! The Importance of Recovery in Your Training
Your success with Momentum lies in the strength of interval training — not only getting your heart rate up, but also letting it come down again before starting your next interval. Alternating between exertion and recovery strengthens your heart (a muscle) and lungs because you are training the two how to respond to, and absorb, exertion. The more you work your heart and lungs using Momentum intervals, the quicker you will recover over time. This is why your recovery heart rate is such an important indicator of your fitness level.
There are several ways to find your recovery rate. Momentum users can actually see it on their heart rate monitor during their interval workouts. For example, if you hit a target heart rate of 150 during a 3-minute interval, and your heart drops 30 beats per minute during your 1-minute recovery, your recovery rate is 30 bpm.
2. Product Description
The Momentum Fitness & Weight Loss System
The Momentum Fitness & Weight Loss System uses interval training techniques, one of the hottest trends in health and fitness, to cut your exercise time in half, and give you the healthy weight-loss results that you have been looking for. Momentum fits easily into every lifestyle, whether you like running on a treadmill in the gym or biking a mountain trail.
3: Credibility: References , endorsements ( creditability of person who endorsed )
The Science of Momentum Summary Report documents the benefits of using the Momentum System.
"The Momentum System takes a straight-forward approach to exercise and nutrition, without the empty promises so common in many other programs. I have been in the health and fitness field for over two decades and am happy to endorse Momentum as a quality product that is based on science, and not just on hype."
Joseph Quatrochi, Ph.D.
Professor of Human Performance and Sport (HPS) at Metropolitan State College of Denver
The Science of Momentum Summary Report documents the benefits of using the Momentum System.
#1: ACSM Guidelines: Interval Recommendation
For the first time, the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), the most widely recognized authority on fitness guidelines, specifies "intervals" as an acceptable method of working toward improving cardiovascular fitness in their textbook, ACSM's Guidelines for Exercise and Prescription(ACSM Guidelines), 7 th Edition (2006 released May, 2005).
ACSM Guidelines: Interval Recommendation
The RESEARCH
· Interval Training: Lose 3 Times the Fat
· Interval Training: Burns up to 30% More Calories
· Interval Training: Results in Three 30-Minute Workouts Per Week
· Interval Training: Strengthens Heart and Lungs
· Interval Training: Builds Endurance
· Interval Training: Increases "After-Burn"
The Momentum Fitness & Weight Loss System combines a 6-, 12-, 18-, and 24-minute No Excuses Workout with Interval Training techniques and a common-sense approach to nutrition and health.
4. Person behind this product
Jonathan Roche is one of the nation’s foremost authorities on heart rate-based interval training. Through his company, Breakthrough Health & Fitness, Jonathan promotes the use of heart-rate based interval workouts to achieve maximum fitness and weight loss results in the shortest period of time. Says Jonathan, “It’s not how hard you train. It’s how smart you train.”
Jonathan, a native of Boston, Massachusetts, is a certified personal trainer, an award-winning fitness video instructor, an 10-time Boston Marathon runner and an 12-time Ironman Triathlon finisher selected All-American by USA Triathlon in 2003. He has run 11 Boston Marathons as a member of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute team.
Jonathan Roche BlogTalkRadio - see the recored Radio talk on the right side. If you listen to talkshow Very practical advice asking to park car couple minutes away in the office parking lot.
P.S: I found this Momentum Fitness when surfing BlogTalkRadio when on ZDNet
What is a Heart Rate Monitor?: A heart rate monitor helps you measure the intensity of your workout. Most heart rate monitors come in two separate pieces – a chest band and a wrist watch.
Sample Interval Workout: Sample 25-Minute Interval Workout with 3-Minute Intervals
Warm Up: Be sure to warm up for 5 minutes. You can walk, jog in place, jump rope, or run around the block. In fact, you can do anything that gets your heart rate elevated, as long as you don’t overdo it. This means that your perceived exertion (P.E.) during the warm up should be a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10 (“1” is the exertion required to sit on the sofa and at “10,” you’ve just passed out). Never go above a perceived 8.5 exertion while doing this or any workout.
Give Yourself A Break! The Importance of Recovery in Your Training
Your success with Momentum lies in the strength of interval training — not only getting your heart rate up, but also letting it come down again before starting your next interval. Alternating between exertion and recovery strengthens your heart (a muscle) and lungs because you are training the two how to respond to, and absorb, exertion. The more you work your heart and lungs using Momentum intervals, the quicker you will recover over time. This is why your recovery heart rate is such an important indicator of your fitness level.
There are several ways to find your recovery rate. Momentum users can actually see it on their heart rate monitor during their interval workouts. For example, if you hit a target heart rate of 150 during a 3-minute interval, and your heart drops 30 beats per minute during your 1-minute recovery, your recovery rate is 30 bpm.
2. Product Description
The Momentum Fitness & Weight Loss System
The Momentum Fitness & Weight Loss System uses interval training techniques, one of the hottest trends in health and fitness, to cut your exercise time in half, and give you the healthy weight-loss results that you have been looking for. Momentum fits easily into every lifestyle, whether you like running on a treadmill in the gym or biking a mountain trail.
3: Credibility: References , endorsements ( creditability of person who endorsed )
The Science of Momentum Summary Report documents the benefits of using the Momentum System.
"The Momentum System takes a straight-forward approach to exercise and nutrition, without the empty promises so common in many other programs. I have been in the health and fitness field for over two decades and am happy to endorse Momentum as a quality product that is based on science, and not just on hype."
Joseph Quatrochi, Ph.D.
Professor of Human Performance and Sport (HPS) at Metropolitan State College of Denver
The Science of Momentum Summary Report documents the benefits of using the Momentum System.
#1: ACSM Guidelines: Interval Recommendation
For the first time, the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), the most widely recognized authority on fitness guidelines, specifies "intervals" as an acceptable method of working toward improving cardiovascular fitness in their textbook, ACSM's Guidelines for Exercise and Prescription(ACSM Guidelines), 7 th Edition (2006 released May, 2005).
ACSM Guidelines: Interval Recommendation
The RESEARCH
· Interval Training: Lose 3 Times the Fat
· Interval Training: Burns up to 30% More Calories
· Interval Training: Results in Three 30-Minute Workouts Per Week
· Interval Training: Strengthens Heart and Lungs
· Interval Training: Builds Endurance
· Interval Training: Increases "After-Burn"
The Momentum Fitness & Weight Loss System combines a 6-, 12-, 18-, and 24-minute No Excuses Workout with Interval Training techniques and a common-sense approach to nutrition and health.
4. Person behind this product
Jonathan Roche is one of the nation’s foremost authorities on heart rate-based interval training. Through his company, Breakthrough Health & Fitness, Jonathan promotes the use of heart-rate based interval workouts to achieve maximum fitness and weight loss results in the shortest period of time. Says Jonathan, “It’s not how hard you train. It’s how smart you train.”
Jonathan, a native of Boston, Massachusetts, is a certified personal trainer, an award-winning fitness video instructor, an 10-time Boston Marathon runner and an 12-time Ironman Triathlon finisher selected All-American by USA Triathlon in 2003. He has run 11 Boston Marathons as a member of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute team.
Jonathan Roche BlogTalkRadio - see the recored Radio talk on the right side. If you listen to talkshow Very practical advice asking to park car couple minutes away in the office parking lot.
P.S: I found this Momentum Fitness when surfing BlogTalkRadio when on ZDNet
Omron HBF-500 Body Composition Monitor with Scale
Detailed Measurement
The weight display measures weight up to 300 pounds in .2-pound increments, while body fat percentage can be measured from 5 to 60 percent in .1 percent increments. Meanwhile, skeletal muscle percentage is measured from 5 to 50 percent, also in .1 increments. Visceral fat classifications are available, too; the device will tell you if your visceral fat levels are normal or high.
One of the keys to weight loss and management is tracking your body mass index, or BMI. The HBF-500 rates your BMI from 7.0 to 90.0 in .1 increments. BMI is classified at three levels: underweight, normal, overweight, and obese. You can also assess your resting metabolism; the device measures your resting calorie consumption from 385 to 5000 kcal in .1 kcal increments.
User Review
162 of 169 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Scale with Bonsuses, January 18, 2007
By Jacob Hantla "hantla.org" (Chandler, AZ United States)
So what about the body fat monitor: As to the accuracy of the monitor I cannot speak. However, it is very consistent, much more consistent than the experience that I have had with the handheld-only monitors from Omron. The scale will calculate your percent body fat & your percent skeletal muscle. It will also give you a reading of your visceral body fat, which is a better indicator of your health risk associated with body fat (visceral body fat is the fat which is inside your body surrounding your organs, which subcutaneous fat is the fat that we all see just under our skin). Using these calculations and the user-defined height, weight, and age data that you enter, it will give you your resting metabolic energy needs for the day to give you an idea of how much you should be eating to lose weight in a healthy manner.
The weight display measures weight up to 300 pounds in .2-pound increments, while body fat percentage can be measured from 5 to 60 percent in .1 percent increments. Meanwhile, skeletal muscle percentage is measured from 5 to 50 percent, also in .1 increments. Visceral fat classifications are available, too; the device will tell you if your visceral fat levels are normal or high.
One of the keys to weight loss and management is tracking your body mass index, or BMI. The HBF-500 rates your BMI from 7.0 to 90.0 in .1 increments. BMI is classified at three levels: underweight, normal, overweight, and obese. You can also assess your resting metabolism; the device measures your resting calorie consumption from 385 to 5000 kcal in .1 kcal increments.
User Review
162 of 169 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Scale with Bonsuses, January 18, 2007
By Jacob Hantla "hantla.org" (Chandler, AZ United States)
So what about the body fat monitor: As to the accuracy of the monitor I cannot speak. However, it is very consistent, much more consistent than the experience that I have had with the handheld-only monitors from Omron. The scale will calculate your percent body fat & your percent skeletal muscle. It will also give you a reading of your visceral body fat, which is a better indicator of your health risk associated with body fat (visceral body fat is the fat which is inside your body surrounding your organs, which subcutaneous fat is the fat that we all see just under our skin). Using these calculations and the user-defined height, weight, and age data that you enter, it will give you your resting metabolic energy needs for the day to give you an idea of how much you should be eating to lose weight in a healthy manner.
Heart Rate Monitor
What is a Heart Rate Monitor?
A heart rate monitor helps you measure the intensity of your workout. Most heart rate monitors come in two separate pieces – a chest band and a wrist watch.
Heart Rate Monitor - Q&A: Fitness Monitors
Knowing your heart rate is important because if you are working out too hard, your activity can become counter productive and strain muscles. To achieve an effective workout, no matter what the aerobic activity, you must maintain your heart rate at a proper level for a minimum of 20 minutes. The proper level is generally 65%-85% of your maximum heart rate. Mounting bracket to mount watch receiver to most treadmills and bicycles Time of day display and daily reminderalarm feature 1 year warranty
What is resting metabolism?
Resting metabolism is the energy to maintain vital functions and it counts 60 to 70% of total energy consumption. Knowing your resting metabolism can help your dietplan. If you can increase daily activity while keeping food intake at resting metabolism level, you can lose weight.
What is visceral fat?
Visceral fat is located around the organs. Too much visceral fat is thought to be closely linked to increased level of fat in the bloodstream, which can lead to common conditions such as high cholesterol, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Sedentary life style causes excess visceral fat, and exercise can reduce it quicker than subcutaneous fat (fat located under skin).
What is skeletal muscle?
Skeletal muscle is muscle attached to the bones that is used to move the body. If you do weight loss without exercise, you may lose skeletal muscle. Skeletal muscle is important to maintain your resting metabolism as well as your functionality. Monitoring skeletal muscle during weight loss is key to avoid weight rebound in the future.
What is the Bioelectrical Impedance Method?
Bioelectrical Impedance (BI) is considered one of the most accurate and accessible methods of screening body fat. Muscles, blood vessels and bones are body tissues having a high water content that conduct electricity easily. Body fat is tissue that has little electric conductivity. The monitor sends an extremely weak electrical current through your body to determine the amount of fat tissue. The weak electrical current is not felt while operating the Body Fat Analyzer. The monitor is calculated by a formula that includes five factors; electric resistance, height, weight, age and gender.
A heart rate monitor helps you measure the intensity of your workout. Most heart rate monitors come in two separate pieces – a chest band and a wrist watch.
Heart Rate Monitor - Q&A: Fitness Monitors
Knowing your heart rate is important because if you are working out too hard, your activity can become counter productive and strain muscles. To achieve an effective workout, no matter what the aerobic activity, you must maintain your heart rate at a proper level for a minimum of 20 minutes. The proper level is generally 65%-85% of your maximum heart rate. Mounting bracket to mount watch receiver to most treadmills and bicycles Time of day display and daily reminderalarm feature 1 year warranty
What is resting metabolism?
Resting metabolism is the energy to maintain vital functions and it counts 60 to 70% of total energy consumption. Knowing your resting metabolism can help your dietplan. If you can increase daily activity while keeping food intake at resting metabolism level, you can lose weight.
What is visceral fat?
Visceral fat is located around the organs. Too much visceral fat is thought to be closely linked to increased level of fat in the bloodstream, which can lead to common conditions such as high cholesterol, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Sedentary life style causes excess visceral fat, and exercise can reduce it quicker than subcutaneous fat (fat located under skin).
What is skeletal muscle?
Skeletal muscle is muscle attached to the bones that is used to move the body. If you do weight loss without exercise, you may lose skeletal muscle. Skeletal muscle is important to maintain your resting metabolism as well as your functionality. Monitoring skeletal muscle during weight loss is key to avoid weight rebound in the future.
What is the Bioelectrical Impedance Method?
Bioelectrical Impedance (BI) is considered one of the most accurate and accessible methods of screening body fat. Muscles, blood vessels and bones are body tissues having a high water content that conduct electricity easily. Body fat is tissue that has little electric conductivity. The monitor sends an extremely weak electrical current through your body to determine the amount of fat tissue. The weak electrical current is not felt while operating the Body Fat Analyzer. The monitor is calculated by a formula that includes five factors; electric resistance, height, weight, age and gender.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
appcelerator RIA SOA can be developed in Java, .NET PHP Ruby on Rails and Python.
asr take: this will succeed because next gen apps should be accessible from mobile, web, desktop , server any embedded OS device (digital camera, some monitoring system) . Only SOA message based architectures built from ground up can fit the bill.
Appcelerator is a next-generation, open source web platform for developing Rich Internet Applications (RIA) on a Services Oriented Architecture (SOA).
Appcelerator is standards-based, supports all modern web browsers and can be developed in Java, .NET, PHP, Ruby on Rails and Python.
The Appcelerator Platform
The Appcelerator Platform is our flagship product. It's a next-generation, open source web platform that fundamentally changes the way Web 2.0 and rich Internet applications are developed. Here are some technical highlights about the Appcelerator Platform:
What is Appcelerator?
Appcelerator is a platform that allows you to quickly build both rich and highly dynamic user interfaces (RIAs) as well as true SOA-based services in Java, Ruby, .NET, PHP or Python - it's RIA and SOA made easy.
Just so you know, we built this documentation explorer using Appcelerator.
Message Oriented Architecture
The foundation of the Appcelerator Platform is a Message Oriented Architecture. What this means is that ALL components in an Appcelerator application communicate via simple lightweight messages. HTML elements can both send and receive messages and all Appcelerator services are message-driven.
Appcelerator Client Development
The Appcelerator Platform comes with two powerful capabilities that enable you to quickly build your RIA. The first is the Appcelerator Expression Language. The Appcelerator Expression Language turns simple HTML elements into powerful Ajax and DHTML components. The Expression Language is simple - it has only one attribute: the on attribute. Within the on attribute you create simple expressions that unleash the power of Ajax and DHTML without having to use Javascript. Details about the Appcelerator Expression Language are covered in more detail in this Explorer.
- Basic code
- wow these sample test app is great - look at widgets
Adobe responds to Appcelerator with open source BlazeDS
- Accommodate when necessary, and sell what you can, seems to be the Adobe motto regarding open source. I doubt these moves would be happening if the pressure from open source were not real.
Marc Fleury, the l’enfant terrible of open source, is back from his Red Hat-induced vacation, acting as an adviser to Appcelerator, an Atlanta start-up with a “compelling take on the SOA market.
Appcelerator is a next-generation, open source web platform for developing Rich Internet Applications (RIA) on a Services Oriented Architecture (SOA).
Appcelerator is standards-based, supports all modern web browsers and can be developed in Java, .NET, PHP, Ruby on Rails and Python.
The Appcelerator Platform
The Appcelerator Platform is our flagship product. It's a next-generation, open source web platform that fundamentally changes the way Web 2.0 and rich Internet applications are developed. Here are some technical highlights about the Appcelerator Platform:
What is Appcelerator?
Appcelerator is a platform that allows you to quickly build both rich and highly dynamic user interfaces (RIAs) as well as true SOA-based services in Java, Ruby, .NET, PHP or Python - it's RIA and SOA made easy.
Just so you know, we built this documentation explorer using Appcelerator.
Message Oriented Architecture
The foundation of the Appcelerator Platform is a Message Oriented Architecture. What this means is that ALL components in an Appcelerator application communicate via simple lightweight messages. HTML elements can both send and receive messages and all Appcelerator services are message-driven.
Appcelerator Client Development
The Appcelerator Platform comes with two powerful capabilities that enable you to quickly build your RIA. The first is the Appcelerator Expression Language. The Appcelerator Expression Language turns simple HTML elements into powerful Ajax and DHTML components. The Expression Language is simple - it has only one attribute: the on attribute. Within the on attribute you create simple expressions that unleash the power of Ajax and DHTML without having to use Javascript. Details about the Appcelerator Expression Language are covered in more detail in this Explorer.
- Basic code
- wow these sample test app is great - look at widgets
Adobe responds to Appcelerator with open source BlazeDS
- Accommodate when necessary, and sell what you can, seems to be the Adobe motto regarding open source. I doubt these moves would be happening if the pressure from open source were not real.
Marc Fleury, the l’enfant terrible of open source, is back from his Red Hat-induced vacation, acting as an adviser to Appcelerator, an Atlanta start-up with a “compelling take on the SOA market.
Top 50 projects in the open source world
on May 4th, 2006 ( as of Jan 1,2008 this is 1.5 year old ) Desktop Linux Summit in San Diego Uversa CEO David Uhlman ( Customer Happiness Guru & CEO )offered a PDF list of what it considers the Top 50 projects in the open source world.
But what really is the most important project? It’s the one you’re using.
It’s a flip answer with a serious message. There are literally thousands of open source projects out there. Each has its own users, its own committers, its own managers.
The most popular projects are not necessarily the most important, although if you go to Sourceforge that’s the way they are listed. And when PR folks representing open source projects call, they will often reference the popularity of their downloads there as equating to importance.
In fact, the importance of any particular project is a matrix.
* How deep in the stack is it? Linux will always be vital because it is an operating system so many other projects depend upon.
*How many real users does it have? This does not mean desktop Linux projects are all that vital. It does mean that Google software is.
*What value does it deliver? Based on this I would argue that mySQL is a very important project. But remember it is also the base for many other projects.
*How unique is it? Any project that takes open source into a new direction — to phones or inside the network — is important.
Following are extracted from this PDF doc linkopen source top 50
Eclipse
- Comprehensive development environment for JAVA,PHP, C, C++, and more
iFolder
- Those Novell guys just won't quit
- Allows seamless file sharing and synchronization
- across platforms
Subversion
- Primarily for source code but also good for text/html
Mantis
- Bug tracking system w/Email notification
- Similar to BugZilla, much easier to install and use
- We use this tool probably more than any other tool
Planner
- Project tool, was once known as MrProject, really
- Does a nice job for basic to intermediate project planning needs
- Not specific to technology projects, offer extensible options for resources and task hierarchies
OpenOffice
- Definitive OS Office Suite, Word Processor,SpreadSheet, Drawing/Diagramming and Presentation Tool
- 2.0 is extremely compelling, ODF is a huge leap
MediaWiki
- Wiki System in PHP
- Popular, The Wikipedia Wiki!
- Great as "thought management" system
- Many user driven sites build documentation this way for better or worse
Evolution
- Outlook replacement for Linux
K3B
- CD burning done right
- Ease of use comparable with EasyCD, Nero, etc.
- Nice features for creating CD's from downloaded
- Supports DVD's as well, DVD+RW, DVDRW
GIMP
- Best open source option for Adobe Photoshop like functionality Not as comprehensive as Photoshop
Tomboy
- Note tracking application
- New solution to the Post It Notes problems
Beagle
- Search tool for the Personal Information
- Builds on Google, Yahoo desktop search
Thunderbird
- Companion email application to FireFox
- Look at latest versions for integration withcalendaring, groupware, etc
Jabber
- definitive Open Source Instant Messaging System
- If you are thinking about corporate IM look a Jabber
Joomla
- Main Marketing Content, front pages of website
- Templates compatible with Macromedia
- Dreamweaver, CSS Driven
- Great default templates, clean and crisp
- Multi format delivery PDF, print, email
- The sales guys can use it. The designers like it.
Zabbix
Monitoring tool along the lines of Nagios and Cacti written in PHP
But what really is the most important project? It’s the one you’re using.
It’s a flip answer with a serious message. There are literally thousands of open source projects out there. Each has its own users, its own committers, its own managers.
The most popular projects are not necessarily the most important, although if you go to Sourceforge that’s the way they are listed. And when PR folks representing open source projects call, they will often reference the popularity of their downloads there as equating to importance.
In fact, the importance of any particular project is a matrix.
* How deep in the stack is it? Linux will always be vital because it is an operating system so many other projects depend upon.
*How many real users does it have? This does not mean desktop Linux projects are all that vital. It does mean that Google software is.
*What value does it deliver? Based on this I would argue that mySQL is a very important project. But remember it is also the base for many other projects.
*How unique is it? Any project that takes open source into a new direction — to phones or inside the network — is important.
Following are extracted from this PDF doc linkopen source top 50
Eclipse
- Comprehensive development environment for JAVA,PHP, C, C++, and more
iFolder
- Those Novell guys just won't quit
- Allows seamless file sharing and synchronization
- across platforms
Subversion
- Primarily for source code but also good for text/html
Mantis
- Bug tracking system w/Email notification
- Similar to BugZilla, much easier to install and use
- We use this tool probably more than any other tool
Planner
- Project tool, was once known as MrProject, really
- Does a nice job for basic to intermediate project planning needs
- Not specific to technology projects, offer extensible options for resources and task hierarchies
OpenOffice
- Definitive OS Office Suite, Word Processor,SpreadSheet, Drawing/Diagramming and Presentation Tool
- 2.0 is extremely compelling, ODF is a huge leap
MediaWiki
- Wiki System in PHP
- Popular, The Wikipedia Wiki!
- Great as "thought management" system
- Many user driven sites build documentation this way for better or worse
Evolution
- Outlook replacement for Linux
K3B
- CD burning done right
- Ease of use comparable with EasyCD, Nero, etc.
- Nice features for creating CD's from downloaded
- Supports DVD's as well, DVD+RW, DVDRW
GIMP
- Best open source option for Adobe Photoshop like functionality Not as comprehensive as Photoshop
Tomboy
- Note tracking application
- New solution to the Post It Notes problems
Beagle
- Search tool for the Personal Information
- Builds on Google, Yahoo desktop search
Thunderbird
- Companion email application to FireFox
- Look at latest versions for integration withcalendaring, groupware, etc
Jabber
- definitive Open Source Instant Messaging System
- If you are thinking about corporate IM look a Jabber
Joomla
- Main Marketing Content, front pages of website
- Templates compatible with Macromedia
- Dreamweaver, CSS Driven
- Great default templates, clean and crisp
- Multi format delivery PDF, print, email
- The sales guys can use it. The designers like it.
Zabbix
Monitoring tool along the lines of Nagios and Cacti written in PHP
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Dream things
Epson S5 2000 Lumen 3LCD Multimedia Projector - #2 in business projectors
- Energy-efficient E-TORL lamp that lasts up to 4000 hours
- see this review: 17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
and have been in photography since high school. Digital projection technology has really come around!, September 10, 2007
- Not only can you electronically zoom in or out on total picture size, but you can electronically "tilt the image" forward or back, to compensate for raising the front of the projector to elevate the image on your screen or wall. It takes care of the "trapizoidal distortion" in optical projectors of yester-year.
Pro CSS and HTML Design Patterns - book to production
Multiple Monitors and Productivity
eApps - Web Hosting For Demanding Customers
- Energy-efficient E-TORL lamp that lasts up to 4000 hours
- see this review: 17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
and have been in photography since high school. Digital projection technology has really come around!, September 10, 2007
- Not only can you electronically zoom in or out on total picture size, but you can electronically "tilt the image" forward or back, to compensate for raising the front of the projector to elevate the image on your screen or wall. It takes care of the "trapizoidal distortion" in optical projectors of yester-year.
Pro CSS and HTML Design Patterns - book to production
Multiple Monitors and Productivity
eApps - Web Hosting For Demanding Customers
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
A killer cold? Even the healthy may be vulnerable
A high school varsity athlete, a sturdy guy with a health history blissfully free of blips, 18-year-old Joseph Spencer had little reason to think anything was seriously wrong when he got sick last April.
The vomiting, chills, fever -- "It must be the flu," he thought.
Within hours, Spencer's fever was 104 degrees. Within days, he was in the intensive care unit at Providence Portland Medical Center in Oregon with full-blown pneumonia. Spencer's doctor was afraid this sturdy teenage boy was going to die.
"His lungs had filled up with water, it was hard to get oxygen into him," explains Dr. David Gilbert, an infectious disease expert and Spencer's physician at Providence. "Things got so bad, I thought we were at risk of losing him."
But as perplexing as what would make a hardy young man so sick -- so quickly -- was his diagnosis: adenovirus, the virus that usually causes nothing worse than a nasty cold.
"In the past, we considered adenovirus a 98-pound weakling," says Dr. Dean Erdman, leader of the respiratory diagnostic program at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. "But adenovirus is causing severe disease and, in some cases, death in normal, healthy people."
At least 1,035 people in Oregon and a handful of other states have been infected by adenovirus so far this year. One of the largest outbreaks was at an Air Force base in Texas.
Adenoviruses are ubiquitous, scrappy bugs -- they exist on everything from pens to countertops to inside our noses. They are spread through contact with a surface, or through the air we breathe. Most people won't suffer life-threatening illness if exposed to adenovirus 14, and that strain of the virus is still pretty rare, but since few people have antibodies to it, there's opportunity for a new virus to spread rapidly throughout the population.
"Adenoviruses kill people," says Gilbert, adding that when these infectious viruses do spread, they spread fast.
"We are asking physicians is to be alert, not to panic -- but be alert," says the CDC's Erdman, who stresses that influenza remains a much larger public health concern, killing and causing far more serious illness annually than adenovirus.
I never thought this would happen to me. You'd think it only happens to unhealthy people," he says, pausing to find the words to finish his sentence. "I always thought of myself as a healthy guy until this happened.
"People need to be aware there's a killer out there
The vomiting, chills, fever -- "It must be the flu," he thought.
Within hours, Spencer's fever was 104 degrees. Within days, he was in the intensive care unit at Providence Portland Medical Center in Oregon with full-blown pneumonia. Spencer's doctor was afraid this sturdy teenage boy was going to die.
"His lungs had filled up with water, it was hard to get oxygen into him," explains Dr. David Gilbert, an infectious disease expert and Spencer's physician at Providence. "Things got so bad, I thought we were at risk of losing him."
But as perplexing as what would make a hardy young man so sick -- so quickly -- was his diagnosis: adenovirus, the virus that usually causes nothing worse than a nasty cold.
"In the past, we considered adenovirus a 98-pound weakling," says Dr. Dean Erdman, leader of the respiratory diagnostic program at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. "But adenovirus is causing severe disease and, in some cases, death in normal, healthy people."
At least 1,035 people in Oregon and a handful of other states have been infected by adenovirus so far this year. One of the largest outbreaks was at an Air Force base in Texas.
Adenoviruses are ubiquitous, scrappy bugs -- they exist on everything from pens to countertops to inside our noses. They are spread through contact with a surface, or through the air we breathe. Most people won't suffer life-threatening illness if exposed to adenovirus 14, and that strain of the virus is still pretty rare, but since few people have antibodies to it, there's opportunity for a new virus to spread rapidly throughout the population.
"Adenoviruses kill people," says Gilbert, adding that when these infectious viruses do spread, they spread fast.
"We are asking physicians is to be alert, not to panic -- but be alert," says the CDC's Erdman, who stresses that influenza remains a much larger public health concern, killing and causing far more serious illness annually than adenovirus.
I never thought this would happen to me. You'd think it only happens to unhealthy people," he says, pausing to find the words to finish his sentence. "I always thought of myself as a healthy guy until this happened.
"People need to be aware there's a killer out there
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Falsh
Abdul Qabiz's Blog - India
a developer on technology, adobe (macromedia) flash/flex/apollo/flashlite, web, usability, startup...
asr: seems good source for advice on UI/flash in india
a developer on technology, adobe (macromedia) flash/flex/apollo/flashlite, web, usability, startup...
asr: seems good source for advice on UI/flash in india
Monday, December 17, 2007
Statup Categorization
1. Data Collection based decision-Enabler Startups: These startup help make a informed decision to fix a problem with your product/service. These kind of startups will succeed in this internet age where decision enabling service/software commands enormous primium.
a) Splunk is the IT Search Engine
- decision part: reduce time to fix an IT server problem by at least 25% by providing all log information at finger tips.
b) Track Blog Reactions To Your Brands With Scout Labs
- decision part: Let brand managers at companies know what consumer is thinking about their "products/services/opinion(in case of your blog writing)" then help to fix the problem with your products/services.
c) indeed.com - collect job listing from all job listing sites like Dice.com , monster.com etc..
a) Splunk is the IT Search Engine
- decision part: reduce time to fix an IT server problem by at least 25% by providing all log information at finger tips.
b) Track Blog Reactions To Your Brands With Scout Labs
- decision part: Let brand managers at companies know what consumer is thinking about their "products/services/opinion(in case of your blog writing)" then help to fix the problem with your products/services.
c) indeed.com - collect job listing from all job listing sites like Dice.com , monster.com etc..
Sunday, December 16, 2007
OpenOffice Microsoft Office alternatives
OpenOffice.org Training, Tips, and Ideas
- This blog seems to have many tips on openOffice usage
Summary of new features in OpenOffice.org 2.3
____________________________
Just Say no to Microsoft - this page has evaluated alternatives to each of MS product
- Spreadsheets comparison
- MS Wordcomparison - Abi word is there (my favorite for fast and easy )
- look at the legend icons on each product like "quality alternative/my personal pick" etc.. this gives the evaluator opinion on each of the products
Open Office
Open office Producs
Product Reviews:Please note that OpenOffice.org does not purchase reprints from magazines which print favourable reviews. Neither do we buy advertising space in magazines which are about to review or which have reviewed OpenOffice.org. If reviewers say that OpenOffice.org is a great product, then that's their genuine, unbiased, uninfluenced opinion.
OpenOffice.org 2.3 Impresses: General improvements made to the spreadsheet application, Calc, and word processing application, Writer, make the case for OpenOffice 2.3 as a potentially easier and definitely cheaper upgrade path for existing Microsoft Office users, who may be considering a transition to Microsoft Office 2007
Open office Calc Spreadsheet review
Web based Word/spread sheets
- As I am using google docs ,they are good to share( for read/write) with any body , but for some reason my google spread sheet is not opening one of existing "Microsoft Excel" file
- tried "glide crunch" offline spread sheet looks good , problem it saves only it's own format not the opted .xls etc..
- This blog seems to have many tips on openOffice usage
Summary of new features in OpenOffice.org 2.3
____________________________
Just Say no to Microsoft - this page has evaluated alternatives to each of MS product
- Spreadsheets comparison
- MS Wordcomparison - Abi word is there (my favorite for fast and easy )
- look at the legend icons on each product like "quality alternative/my personal pick" etc.. this gives the evaluator opinion on each of the products
Open Office
Open office Producs
Product Reviews:Please note that OpenOffice.org does not purchase reprints from magazines which print favourable reviews. Neither do we buy advertising space in magazines which are about to review or which have reviewed OpenOffice.org. If reviewers say that OpenOffice.org is a great product, then that's their genuine, unbiased, uninfluenced opinion.
OpenOffice.org 2.3 Impresses: General improvements made to the spreadsheet application, Calc, and word processing application, Writer, make the case for OpenOffice 2.3 as a potentially easier and definitely cheaper upgrade path for existing Microsoft Office users, who may be considering a transition to Microsoft Office 2007
Open office Calc Spreadsheet review
Web based Word/spread sheets
- As I am using google docs ,they are good to share( for read/write) with any body , but for some reason my google spread sheet is not opening one of existing "Microsoft Excel" file
- tried "glide crunch" offline spread sheet looks good , problem it saves only it's own format not the opted .xls etc..
Friday, December 14, 2007
Job goals by age
Job goals by age - By Meg Donohue CareerBuilder.com
Each decade of life brings a set new of challenges as working professionals move into different phases of both their careers and personal lives.
Entering a new decade of life can be a perfect time to take stock of one's situation, reevaluate priorities and set career goals for the years ahead.
Setting goals makes people "feel more in control of their destiny, which in turn makes for positive feelings and a sense of purpose," says Laura Berman Fortgang, a pioneer in the life coaching field and the author of several bestselling books, including "Take Yourself to the Top."
Nevertheless, Fortgang cautions that people should remain flexible in their goals: "Being too tethered to one specific outcome can jeopardize one's ability to recognize other opportunities when they become available."
In your 20s: Establish a positive work record
Relax -- you don't need to know exactly what you're going to do with your life just yet. It makes sense to explore your options at this early stage of your working life, as long as you build skills and make contacts along the way.
"Deciding what to do long-term is more organic than most people think," Fortgang says, adding that what is essential during this decade is to establish a good work record.
"The people you work with ... in your early years could become life-long supporters, mentors and references for years to come. So building a good reputation is important even if you don't see yourself sticking in your current job for long."
In your 30s: Focus on becoming a leader
People often enter their first management positions in their 30s, and the "switch from being a worker-bee to a leader-in-training ... [requires] a change in mindset," Fortgang asserts.
"The goal here," Fortang says, "is to get recognized for all you have done, and parlay that into a more focused path." Document your accomplishments so that when it comes time for annual reviews, you have proof of your hard work and leadership experience (or potential).
In your 40s: Re-examine your definition of success
In this decade, people get very serious about their earning power and [set their sights on] top roles that could potentially be theirs now or in the next decade, Fortang reveals.
"This is also the time of mid-life crises," Fortgang warns, which often result in people questioning their careers.
This decade is a good time to take stock of the direction your career path is headed and to evaluate your work-life balance.
What will make you feel successful? Occupying a high-level position within your company or field? Reaching your full earning potential? Having the flexibility to spend more time with your family? Retiring early?
Re-examine your definition of success and adjust your career path accordingly.
In your 50s: Envision your future
"People are usually well established now and peeking over the horizon to retirement," Fortgang says. "Even if [retirement] is not immediately eminent, they are setting themselves up now for what they want in the future."
Set a tentative timetable for the working years ahead. No matter what you see in your future -- whether it's retirement, a second career or more years on your current career path -- it's important to be aware of your financial savings and investments.
Understand your vision of the future and be sure you've planned for as many unforeseeable twists as possible.
In your 60s (and beyond): Reap what you've sown
You've worked hard, and perhaps you have no plans to slow down now. Whatever the future of your career path looks like at this point, your goal should be to enjoy the fruits of your labor.
"This is a time when many people seek some final educational goals that they might have missed out on," Fortgang reveals. "Or they plan to take advantage of all that their employer can offer them in terms of opportunity -- education, travel, maximum financial benefits, a final promotion -- whatever the case may be. It's the 'reap what you've sewn' time."
Each decade of life brings a set new of challenges as working professionals move into different phases of both their careers and personal lives.
Entering a new decade of life can be a perfect time to take stock of one's situation, reevaluate priorities and set career goals for the years ahead.
Setting goals makes people "feel more in control of their destiny, which in turn makes for positive feelings and a sense of purpose," says Laura Berman Fortgang, a pioneer in the life coaching field and the author of several bestselling books, including "Take Yourself to the Top."
Nevertheless, Fortgang cautions that people should remain flexible in their goals: "Being too tethered to one specific outcome can jeopardize one's ability to recognize other opportunities when they become available."
In your 20s: Establish a positive work record
Relax -- you don't need to know exactly what you're going to do with your life just yet. It makes sense to explore your options at this early stage of your working life, as long as you build skills and make contacts along the way.
"Deciding what to do long-term is more organic than most people think," Fortgang says, adding that what is essential during this decade is to establish a good work record.
"The people you work with ... in your early years could become life-long supporters, mentors and references for years to come. So building a good reputation is important even if you don't see yourself sticking in your current job for long."
In your 30s: Focus on becoming a leader
People often enter their first management positions in their 30s, and the "switch from being a worker-bee to a leader-in-training ... [requires] a change in mindset," Fortgang asserts.
"The goal here," Fortang says, "is to get recognized for all you have done, and parlay that into a more focused path." Document your accomplishments so that when it comes time for annual reviews, you have proof of your hard work and leadership experience (or potential).
In your 40s: Re-examine your definition of success
In this decade, people get very serious about their earning power and [set their sights on] top roles that could potentially be theirs now or in the next decade, Fortang reveals.
"This is also the time of mid-life crises," Fortgang warns, which often result in people questioning their careers.
This decade is a good time to take stock of the direction your career path is headed and to evaluate your work-life balance.
What will make you feel successful? Occupying a high-level position within your company or field? Reaching your full earning potential? Having the flexibility to spend more time with your family? Retiring early?
Re-examine your definition of success and adjust your career path accordingly.
In your 50s: Envision your future
"People are usually well established now and peeking over the horizon to retirement," Fortgang says. "Even if [retirement] is not immediately eminent, they are setting themselves up now for what they want in the future."
Set a tentative timetable for the working years ahead. No matter what you see in your future -- whether it's retirement, a second career or more years on your current career path -- it's important to be aware of your financial savings and investments.
Understand your vision of the future and be sure you've planned for as many unforeseeable twists as possible.
In your 60s (and beyond): Reap what you've sown
You've worked hard, and perhaps you have no plans to slow down now. Whatever the future of your career path looks like at this point, your goal should be to enjoy the fruits of your labor.
"This is a time when many people seek some final educational goals that they might have missed out on," Fortgang reveals. "Or they plan to take advantage of all that their employer can offer them in terms of opportunity -- education, travel, maximum financial benefits, a final promotion -- whatever the case may be. It's the 'reap what you've sewn' time."
Thursday, December 13, 2007
whitepapers / case studies / productivity
Note: Start up should read these rearsh papers to learn what are the pain points in business today , how they are addressed and how some of not addressed and to see what is the new business startup oopertunity.
Research Areas: Wow what a great number of technology white papers collected in one place.
http://whitepapers.zdnet.com/ - every area from human capital management to networking software etc..
another white papers - searchable
good current technology issues/trends podcasts http://podcasts.zdnet.com/
_______________________________________________________________________________
Case Studies
- great number of case studies how technology was used to improve produtivity
- use tags to go to specific area like 'wrok force' , 'It Operations' etc..
Case studies… (17229 results) - wow 17,229 case suties
example here ...
Real-time Remote Workforce Enablement
________________________________________________________________________________
productivity
What a great articles to learn from others practical experiences, mistakes and reviews:
Migration to Java 5 at walmart.com
Does code generation matter to Java developers?
Conclusion:Many developers turn their noses up when code generation is mentioned, but given all the benefits of code generation it's hard to understand why. I strongly encourage using code generation wherever it is applicable on a project. The rewards are well worth the effort, and the occasional upturned nose.
Best Practices for Risk-Free Deployment
_______________________________
you can search on Fast Comapany archives get lots of article which company used what process/technology to gain competitive advantage
following following sample search
office productivity
you can all archives magazine articles here
Research Areas: Wow what a great number of technology white papers collected in one place.
http://whitepapers.zdnet.com/ - every area from human capital management to networking software etc..
another white papers - searchable
good current technology issues/trends podcasts http://podcasts.zdnet.com/
_______________________________________________________________________________
Case Studies
- great number of case studies how technology was used to improve produtivity
- use tags to go to specific area like 'wrok force' , 'It Operations' etc..
Case studies… (17229 results) - wow 17,229 case suties
example here ...
Real-time Remote Workforce Enablement
________________________________________________________________________________
productivity
What a great articles to learn from others practical experiences, mistakes and reviews:
Migration to Java 5 at walmart.com
Does code generation matter to Java developers?
Conclusion:Many developers turn their noses up when code generation is mentioned, but given all the benefits of code generation it's hard to understand why. I strongly encourage using code generation wherever it is applicable on a project. The rewards are well worth the effort, and the occasional upturned nose.
Best Practices for Risk-Free Deployment
_______________________________
you can search on Fast Comapany archives get lots of article which company used what process/technology to gain competitive advantage
following following sample search
office productivity
you can all archives magazine articles here
on-demand Business Appications without software
asr note:
- google apps on Infrastructure applications side (email, word, excel, collaboration tools )
- appexchange/force.com/salesforce.com on Busuiness applicaitons side
These two categories will cover entire spectrum of the on-demand software applications and they are dozens of other companies "coming up/serving" in these two categories ( see below LongJump etc. from the url.
But there are also a slew of startups that have focused on allowing people to easily create and deploy database driven applications - DabbleDB, Zoho Creator, LongJump, Coghead and WyaWorks, among others.
Finally, Focus on Innovation, Not Infrastructure
Force.com is the world’s first Platform as a Service (PaaS), enabling developers to create and deliver any kind of business application, entirely on-demand and without software. It’s a breakthrough new concept that is making companies radically more successful by letting them translate their ideas into deployed applications in record time.
- Mouse over flash boxes , you see all services offered
- See on the above page: Platform-as-a-Service vs. Traditional Platforms
- see the visual editor and controller in the video for UI and code editing, they are good examples how a best 'web based developer' platform should look like in this video http://www.salesforce.com/campaigns/zdnet/index.jsp
- Pricing is a flat $25/month/user.
- Electronic Arts Builds Extensive Global Talent Acquisition Platform on Robust Salesforce and AppExchange Solution
Salesforce Enters Custom Application Market With Force.com
- see these in the above techcrunch blog DabbleDB, Zoho Creator, LongJump, Coghead and WyaWorks, among others.
- appexchange
-Jasper4Salesforce - Exception reports, reports on any combination of standard and custom objects and fields, drag & drop ad hoc, create highly complex and ready-to-print reports.
- HR applications
- High Tech :: Software
___________________________________________________________________________
Welcome to Google Apps
Want simple, powerful communication and collaboration tools for your organization without the usual hassle and cost? see here
Google innovation. Powerful solutions. Low cost.
- Organizations can spend less time and money managing email and other IT services, and focus more on what they do best, whether that's teaching kids, creating award-winning products, developing creative advertising campaigns or helping non-profits organizations.customers
- see enterprise , small business , educational institutes ..
_________________________________________________________________________
Amazon SimpleDB is a web service for running queries on structured data in real time. This service works in close conjunction with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), collectively providing the ability to store, process and query data sets in the cloud. These services are designed to make web-scale computing easier and more cost-effective for developers.
Look at Amazon S3 , cloud and simpleDB now
- google apps on Infrastructure applications side (email, word, excel, collaboration tools )
- appexchange/force.com/salesforce.com on Busuiness applicaitons side
These two categories will cover entire spectrum of the on-demand software applications and they are dozens of other companies "coming up/serving" in these two categories ( see below LongJump etc. from the url.
But there are also a slew of startups that have focused on allowing people to easily create and deploy database driven applications - DabbleDB, Zoho Creator, LongJump, Coghead and WyaWorks, among others.
Finally, Focus on Innovation, Not Infrastructure
Force.com is the world’s first Platform as a Service (PaaS), enabling developers to create and deliver any kind of business application, entirely on-demand and without software. It’s a breakthrough new concept that is making companies radically more successful by letting them translate their ideas into deployed applications in record time.
- Mouse over flash boxes , you see all services offered
- See on the above page: Platform-as-a-Service vs. Traditional Platforms
- see the visual editor and controller in the video for UI and code editing, they are good examples how a best 'web based developer' platform should look like in this video http://www.salesforce.com/campaigns/zdnet/index.jsp
- Pricing is a flat $25/month/user.
- Electronic Arts Builds Extensive Global Talent Acquisition Platform on Robust Salesforce and AppExchange Solution
Salesforce Enters Custom Application Market With Force.com
- see these in the above techcrunch blog DabbleDB, Zoho Creator, LongJump, Coghead and WyaWorks, among others.
- appexchange
-Jasper4Salesforce - Exception reports, reports on any combination of standard and custom objects and fields, drag & drop ad hoc, create highly complex and ready-to-print reports.
- HR applications
- High Tech :: Software
___________________________________________________________________________
Welcome to Google Apps
Want simple, powerful communication and collaboration tools for your organization without the usual hassle and cost? see here
Google innovation. Powerful solutions. Low cost.
- Organizations can spend less time and money managing email and other IT services, and focus more on what they do best, whether that's teaching kids, creating award-winning products, developing creative advertising campaigns or helping non-profits organizations.customers
- see enterprise , small business , educational institutes ..
_________________________________________________________________________
Amazon SimpleDB is a web service for running queries on structured data in real time. This service works in close conjunction with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), collectively providing the ability to store, process and query data sets in the cloud. These services are designed to make web-scale computing easier and more cost-effective for developers.
Look at Amazon S3 , cloud and simpleDB now
How You Tube started
http://vfquarterly.blogspot.com/2006/08/founders-of-youtube_13.html
Sunday, August 13, 2006 -Founders of YouTube
Here is a interview I came across from Paul Kedrosky's blog about YouTube and how it started. It's always interesting to listen about the myth of how entrepreneurs start their company out of their garage.
Aug 06: seems this is before Google acquisiton
If you can't find above working, here is direct YouTube url
Sunday, August 13, 2006 -Founders of YouTube
Here is a interview I came across from Paul Kedrosky's blog about YouTube and how it started. It's always interesting to listen about the myth of how entrepreneurs start their company out of their garage.
Aug 06: seems this is before Google acquisiton
If you can't find above working, here is direct YouTube url
Meet the PayPal mafia
November 26 2007
An inside look at the hyperintelligent, superconnected pack of serial entrepreneurs who left the payment service and are turning Silicon Valley upside down. Fortune's
Max Levchin (left) and Peter Thiel hatched the idea for PayPal over breakfast.
Levchin runs one of the hottest companies on the web, a photo-sharing site called Slide that draws 134 million users a month.
Peter Thiel has a butler. The 40-year-old entrepreneur runs a $3 billion hedge fund. He's the founder of a new venture capital firm that's the talk of Silicon Valley. He's got an early $500,000 stake in Facebook that's now worth about $1 billion on paper. The man has bankrolled everything from restaurants to movies and is lauded by many as some kind of free-market genius.
They'd sign up more than 20 million users and burn $180 million in funding before breaking even and selling out to eBay (Charts, Fortune 500) for $1.5 billion.
And then things got interesting. The eBay deal, remarkable only because it happened in the bleakness of 2002, wasn't so much an exit as an explosion.
Besides Facebook and Slide, there's Yelp, Digg, and YouTube. Thiel and Levchin, the don and consigliere of the mafia, figure that all told, there are dozens of enterprises worth a total of roughly $30 billion - and that value is growing rapidly, as evidenced by Thiel's good fortune with Facebook.
Thiel and Levchin also wanted workaholics who were not MBAs, consultants, frat boys, or, God forbid, jocks. "This guy came in, and I asked what he liked to do for fun," Levchin recalls. "He said, 'I really enjoy playing hoops.' I said, 'We can't hire the guy. Everyone I knew in college who liked to play hoops was an idiot.'"
A bilingual immigrant from Kiev, Ukraine, Levchin is the hypercompetitive son of a playwright father and a physicist mother. He's numerate in the extreme and is an accomplished clarinetist whose athletic pursuits don't typically take him beyond table tennis. He lives to work.
Born in Germany, Thiel has a J.D. from Stanford and did some time as a corporate lawyer. But finance has always been more his thing - Institutional Investor named his hedge fund, Clarium Capital, "global macro fund of the year" in 2005. (He was once ranked among the top under-21 chess players in the country, but he gave up playing competitively.
"Taken too far, chess can become an alternate reality in which one loses sight of the real world," he says. "My chess ability was roughly at the limit. Had I become any stronger, there would have been some massive tradeoffs with success in other domains in life.")
Thiel's leadership style is as unconventional as his worldview. His hallmark management MO at PayPal (at least, pre-IPO) was the all-hands open-book session. Customer logs, revenue flow, fraud losses, burn rate: He'd display it all for every employee to see. This access to information, coupled with the lack of offices, created a flat structure where any idea could win the day.
Recruiting underclassmen from the middle of the country assured Levchin that his charges would have few preconceived notions and fewer social distractions. "Most of them were very introverted anyway," Levchin recalls. "They'd come in, eat crappy food all day, and sleep under their desks.
Of course Google (Charts, Fortune 500) is also famous for a relentless pursuit of brainiacs. But PayPal was no Google. "The difference between Google and PayPal was that Google wanted to hire Ph.D.s, and PayPal wanted to hire the people who got into Ph.D. programs and dropped out," says Roelof Botha, PayPal's onetime CFO who went on to become a general partner at one of the nation's most powerful VC firms, Sequoia Capital, and put the first venture money into YouTube. "It's a different temperament."
The PayPal-ers who didn't possess Thiel's anti-establishment streak as new hires had it by the time they left. The PayPal culture wasn't just antigovernment. It was anti--mainstream thought.
"Good decision-making flows out of details," says former COO David Sacks, who now runs both the online genealogy startup Geni and the Hollywood production studio Room 9 Entertainment, which made Thank You for Smoking. "We did not subscribe to the idea that managers are this special class of employee."
An inside look at the hyperintelligent, superconnected pack of serial entrepreneurs who left the payment service and are turning Silicon Valley upside down. Fortune's
Max Levchin (left) and Peter Thiel hatched the idea for PayPal over breakfast.
Levchin runs one of the hottest companies on the web, a photo-sharing site called Slide that draws 134 million users a month.
Peter Thiel has a butler. The 40-year-old entrepreneur runs a $3 billion hedge fund. He's the founder of a new venture capital firm that's the talk of Silicon Valley. He's got an early $500,000 stake in Facebook that's now worth about $1 billion on paper. The man has bankrolled everything from restaurants to movies and is lauded by many as some kind of free-market genius.
They'd sign up more than 20 million users and burn $180 million in funding before breaking even and selling out to eBay (Charts, Fortune 500) for $1.5 billion.
And then things got interesting. The eBay deal, remarkable only because it happened in the bleakness of 2002, wasn't so much an exit as an explosion.
Besides Facebook and Slide, there's Yelp, Digg, and YouTube. Thiel and Levchin, the don and consigliere of the mafia, figure that all told, there are dozens of enterprises worth a total of roughly $30 billion - and that value is growing rapidly, as evidenced by Thiel's good fortune with Facebook.
Thiel and Levchin also wanted workaholics who were not MBAs, consultants, frat boys, or, God forbid, jocks. "This guy came in, and I asked what he liked to do for fun," Levchin recalls. "He said, 'I really enjoy playing hoops.' I said, 'We can't hire the guy. Everyone I knew in college who liked to play hoops was an idiot.'"
A bilingual immigrant from Kiev, Ukraine, Levchin is the hypercompetitive son of a playwright father and a physicist mother. He's numerate in the extreme and is an accomplished clarinetist whose athletic pursuits don't typically take him beyond table tennis. He lives to work.
Born in Germany, Thiel has a J.D. from Stanford and did some time as a corporate lawyer. But finance has always been more his thing - Institutional Investor named his hedge fund, Clarium Capital, "global macro fund of the year" in 2005. (He was once ranked among the top under-21 chess players in the country, but he gave up playing competitively.
"Taken too far, chess can become an alternate reality in which one loses sight of the real world," he says. "My chess ability was roughly at the limit. Had I become any stronger, there would have been some massive tradeoffs with success in other domains in life.")
Thiel's leadership style is as unconventional as his worldview. His hallmark management MO at PayPal (at least, pre-IPO) was the all-hands open-book session. Customer logs, revenue flow, fraud losses, burn rate: He'd display it all for every employee to see. This access to information, coupled with the lack of offices, created a flat structure where any idea could win the day.
Recruiting underclassmen from the middle of the country assured Levchin that his charges would have few preconceived notions and fewer social distractions. "Most of them were very introverted anyway," Levchin recalls. "They'd come in, eat crappy food all day, and sleep under their desks.
Of course Google (Charts, Fortune 500) is also famous for a relentless pursuit of brainiacs. But PayPal was no Google. "The difference between Google and PayPal was that Google wanted to hire Ph.D.s, and PayPal wanted to hire the people who got into Ph.D. programs and dropped out," says Roelof Botha, PayPal's onetime CFO who went on to become a general partner at one of the nation's most powerful VC firms, Sequoia Capital, and put the first venture money into YouTube. "It's a different temperament."
The PayPal-ers who didn't possess Thiel's anti-establishment streak as new hires had it by the time they left. The PayPal culture wasn't just antigovernment. It was anti--mainstream thought.
"Good decision-making flows out of details," says former COO David Sacks, who now runs both the online genealogy startup Geni and the Hollywood production studio Room 9 Entertainment, which made Thank You for Smoking. "We did not subscribe to the idea that managers are this special class of employee."
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Venture Capital: VC firm targets the early, risky stages
A NEW Seattle venture capital firm, led by real estate and board game entrepreneur Craig Kinzer, is looking to place 20 to 30 early-stage bets in a diverse crop of startup businesses.
The firm -- which has raised about a quarter of its $35 million target -- is currently dubbed Highside Capital.
Kinzer also is attempting to fill a gap that exists in the Seattle venture capital industry, funding companies with investments of $100,000 to $3.5 million. That's usually too much money for angel investors and not enough to justify the involvement of a venture capital firm.
That's also the strategy Kinzer employed in his previous two venture funds, which he said performed much better than industry averages. Among the more than 50 investments of Kinzer Capital and Capital Partners were companies such as HouseValues, Verdiem, Targeted Growth and Sunstream.
Kinzer, who describes most venture capitalists as "snotty," wants to bring a new spirit to early-stage investing. By engaging the firm's well-connected advisers and tapping a diverse group of entrepreneurs, Kinzer said, the goal is to "make early-stage investing fun."
The firm -- which has raised about a quarter of its $35 million target -- is currently dubbed Highside Capital.
Kinzer also is attempting to fill a gap that exists in the Seattle venture capital industry, funding companies with investments of $100,000 to $3.5 million. That's usually too much money for angel investors and not enough to justify the involvement of a venture capital firm.
That's also the strategy Kinzer employed in his previous two venture funds, which he said performed much better than industry averages. Among the more than 50 investments of Kinzer Capital and Capital Partners were companies such as HouseValues, Verdiem, Targeted Growth and Sunstream.
Kinzer, who describes most venture capitalists as "snotty," wants to bring a new spirit to early-stage investing. By engaging the firm's well-connected advisers and tapping a diverse group of entrepreneurs, Kinzer said, the goal is to "make early-stage investing fun."
VC Deal Announcements
VC funding all the way back to year 2000
In the P-I's Venture Capital Notebook, technology reporter John Cook examines the latest funding for new companies in the region
VC Notebook - see at the bottom A-Z list urls it gives all companies in the alphabet list
___________________________________________________
VC funding deals - it gives last one year deals
VentureDeal is a venture capital database that provides the latest information about venture-backed technology companies, venture capital firms and transactions in the United States.
VentureDeal is updated daily and offers convenient access to detailed and actionable information for business development, funding search and venture investment goals. VentureDeal is based in Menlo Park, CA.
In the P-I's Venture Capital Notebook, technology reporter John Cook examines the latest funding for new companies in the region
VC Notebook - see at the bottom A-Z list urls it gives all companies in the alphabet list
___________________________________________________
VC funding deals - it gives last one year deals
VentureDeal is a venture capital database that provides the latest information about venture-backed technology companies, venture capital firms and transactions in the United States.
VentureDeal is updated daily and offers convenient access to detailed and actionable information for business development, funding search and venture investment goals. VentureDeal is based in Menlo Park, CA.
Splunk is the IT Search Engine
Can you imagine trying to find things on the internet without a search engine? Now you can navigate the complexity of your data center with IT Search. Splunk is the IT Search Engine that indexes and lets you search, navigate, alert, and report on IT data from any application, server, or network device. Securely access logs, configurations, scripts and code, message, traps and alerts, activity reports, stack traces and metrics across thousands of components, from one place, all in real time.
SAN FRANCISCO – September 11, 2007 – Splunk, creators of the original IT Search engine for logs and IT data, today announced $25 million in Series C funding led by Ignition Partners of Bellevue, Washington.
This funding round follows Series A investment of $5 million in December 2004 from August Capital and Sevin Rosen, and $10 million Series B in January 2006 led by JK&B Capital.
Total: $40 million funding , It's been 3 years old company (2004 funding first )
Splunk is a Silicon Valley company inventing large-scale, high-speed indexing and search technology for IT infrastructures. Splunk indexes and makes it possible to search and navigate data from any application, server or network device in real time. Logs, configurations, messages, traps and alerts, scripts and metrics. If a machine can generate it - Splunk can eat it.
Our IT Search innovations take advantage of the time series nature and highly unstructured form of IT data. By making it possible for humans to interact with terabytes of machine data, Splunk is fundamentally changing how we manage, secure and understand increasingly complex computing environments.
Arm your network engineers, system administrators, security and compliance analysts, developers, customer support and help desk staff with an up to the moment understanding of what’s happening in your IT infrastructure. Splunk is easy to download, install and use - and it's very powerful.
Splunk has not built an application. Nor is Splunk merely selling software.
Splunk has created a software enabled platform that continues to be extremely broadly applicable.
Is Splunk mission critical when it comes to maintaining availability of large scale enterprise systems? Yes.
Is Splunk invaluable in the fight to maintain the security of your data center? Yes. Does Splunk uniquely simplify the process of data compliance? Yes.
Can Splunk help you dig into your data and analyze it like no other solution? Yes. But, frankly, that's just the tip of the iceberg -- once you are able to query individual pieces of data across your entire data center in real time, the applicability of the platform is limited only by the creativity of its end users.
SAN FRANCISCO – September 11, 2007 – Splunk, creators of the original IT Search engine for logs and IT data, today announced $25 million in Series C funding led by Ignition Partners of Bellevue, Washington.
This funding round follows Series A investment of $5 million in December 2004 from August Capital and Sevin Rosen, and $10 million Series B in January 2006 led by JK&B Capital.
Total: $40 million funding , It's been 3 years old company (2004 funding first )
Splunk is a Silicon Valley company inventing large-scale, high-speed indexing and search technology for IT infrastructures. Splunk indexes and makes it possible to search and navigate data from any application, server or network device in real time. Logs, configurations, messages, traps and alerts, scripts and metrics. If a machine can generate it - Splunk can eat it.
Our IT Search innovations take advantage of the time series nature and highly unstructured form of IT data. By making it possible for humans to interact with terabytes of machine data, Splunk is fundamentally changing how we manage, secure and understand increasingly complex computing environments.
Arm your network engineers, system administrators, security and compliance analysts, developers, customer support and help desk staff with an up to the moment understanding of what’s happening in your IT infrastructure. Splunk is easy to download, install and use - and it's very powerful.
Splunk has not built an application. Nor is Splunk merely selling software.
Splunk has created a software enabled platform that continues to be extremely broadly applicable.
Is Splunk mission critical when it comes to maintaining availability of large scale enterprise systems? Yes.
Is Splunk invaluable in the fight to maintain the security of your data center? Yes. Does Splunk uniquely simplify the process of data compliance? Yes.
Can Splunk help you dig into your data and analyze it like no other solution? Yes. But, frankly, that's just the tip of the iceberg -- once you are able to query individual pieces of data across your entire data center in real time, the applicability of the platform is limited only by the creativity of its end users.
YellowPages Restaurants
YellowPages.aol.com
All Category List - you can enter "zip code" , pick a category You can get other business listing/phone numbers from this main yellow page url.
Restaurants
Restaurants » Indian Restaurants in San Jose, CA
Restaurants » Chinese Restaurants in San Jose, CA
Tandoori oven http://www.thetandoorioven.com - North Indian Bistro locations below
Campbell
Pruneyard Shopping Center
1875 S. Bascom Avenue
Campbell, CA
Tel: 408-559-3885
Downtown Los Gatos
133 N. Santa Cruz Avenue
Los Gatos, CA
Tel: 408-395-1784
Palo Alto
365 California Ave.
Palo Alto, CA
Tel: 650 324 2111
San Jose First Street
150 S First St #107
San Jose, CA 95113
Tel: 408 292 7222
__________________________________________________________________
All Category List - you can enter "zip code" , pick a category You can get other business listing/phone numbers from this main yellow page url.
Restaurants
Restaurants » Indian Restaurants in San Jose, CA
Restaurants » Chinese Restaurants in San Jose, CA
Tandoori oven http://www.thetandoorioven.com - North Indian Bistro locations below
Campbell
Pruneyard Shopping Center
1875 S. Bascom Avenue
Campbell, CA
Tel: 408-559-3885
Downtown Los Gatos
133 N. Santa Cruz Avenue
Los Gatos, CA
Tel: 408-395-1784
Palo Alto
365 California Ave.
Palo Alto, CA
Tel: 650 324 2111
San Jose First Street
150 S First St #107
San Jose, CA 95113
Tel: 408 292 7222
__________________________________________________________________
Wisdom
God give me the strength to change the things I can, the courage to accept the things that I can't, and the wisdom to know the difference.
2 nd definition here
2 nd definition here
Success vs. Significance
“Success means using your knowledge and experience to satisfy yourself
Significance means using your knowledge and experience to change the lives of others”
- Bob Buford
Just assume that you agree with Bob’s definitions of success and significance. If you do, try and answer these questions:
1. What am I going after - success or significance?
2. Are you happy about it?
Significance means using your knowledge and experience to change the lives of others”
- Bob Buford
Just assume that you agree with Bob’s definitions of success and significance. If you do, try and answer these questions:
1. What am I going after - success or significance?
2. Are you happy about it?
The 25 Most Influential People on the Web
Best of the Web:The 25 Most Influential People on the Web
Readers and BW staffers nominate movers and shakers in cyberspace
- The list provides influential sites in addition to people behind it
asr: I agree with BW pick of Micheal Arlington , Amazon Jeff Bezos , Jobs .
Readers and BW staffers nominate movers and shakers in cyberspace
- The list provides influential sites in addition to people behind it
asr: I agree with BW pick of Micheal Arlington , Amazon Jeff Bezos , Jobs .
Why you can not build global software company from Europe
Why you can not build global software company from Europe : In the words of accomplished European entrepreneur
In Europe, it’s much more difficult to have a global goal and a global vision because you struggle at first in your own market.”
He attributes this to the fact that the region (Europe) has 22 languages and geography that complicates deal-making. In contrast, San Francisco is at the epicenter of deals, he says.
“The way you do partnerships here, everyone’s a block away or 20 minutes away in Palo Alto. If I need to set up a partnership with [micro-blogging service] Twitter, I call them, we have coffee, and two hours later the deal is done. If I were in France, there’s a nine-hour time difference and it’s like you don’t matter.”
He has won the support of influential bloggers such as Michael Arrington of Techcrunch and Robert Scoble by including them at an early stage. “I have applied my own rules here, which are share ideas to the maximum possible and then involve the actors like Arrington and Scoble in the conversation.
“I love the spirit here. By default, it is ‘How can I help?’ and you have the trust of a person. In Europe, by default, you have zero trust. That is the big difference.”
In Europe, it’s much more difficult to have a global goal and a global vision because you struggle at first in your own market.”
He attributes this to the fact that the region (Europe) has 22 languages and geography that complicates deal-making. In contrast, San Francisco is at the epicenter of deals, he says.
“The way you do partnerships here, everyone’s a block away or 20 minutes away in Palo Alto. If I need to set up a partnership with [micro-blogging service] Twitter, I call them, we have coffee, and two hours later the deal is done. If I were in France, there’s a nine-hour time difference and it’s like you don’t matter.”
He has won the support of influential bloggers such as Michael Arrington of Techcrunch and Robert Scoble by including them at an early stage. “I have applied my own rules here, which are share ideas to the maximum possible and then involve the actors like Arrington and Scoble in the conversation.
“I love the spirit here. By default, it is ‘How can I help?’ and you have the trust of a person. In Europe, by default, you have zero trust. That is the big difference.”
Loic Le Meur’s Ten Rules For Startup Success
Loic is an accomplished entrepreneur - he founded uBlog (merged with Six Apart), organizes the annual Le Web conference and has now created Seesmic (note that I’m an investor in Seesmic). So even though he’s French, his advice, when given, is worth listening to.
Included in the article are his ten rules for startup success. Reprinted below.
1. Don’t wait for a revolutionary idea. It will never happen. Just focus on a simple, exciting, empty space and execute as fast as possible
2. Share your idea. The more you share, the more you get advice and the more you learn. Meet and talk to your competitors.
3. Build a community. Use blogging and social software to make sure people hear about you.
4. Listen to your community. Answer questions and build your product with their feedback.
5. Gather a great team. Select those with very different skills from you. Look for people who are better than you.
6. Be the first to recognize a problem. Everyone makes mistakes. Address the issue in public, learn about and correct it.
7. Don’t spend time on market research. Launch test versions as early as possible. Keep improving the product in the open.
8. Don’t obsess over spreadsheet business plans. They are not going to turn out as you predict, in any case.
9. Don’t plan a big marketing effort. It’s much more important and powerful that your community loves the product.
10. Don’t focus on getting rich. Focus on your users. Money is a consequence of success, not a goal.
Included in the article are his ten rules for startup success. Reprinted below.
1. Don’t wait for a revolutionary idea. It will never happen. Just focus on a simple, exciting, empty space and execute as fast as possible
2. Share your idea. The more you share, the more you get advice and the more you learn. Meet and talk to your competitors.
3. Build a community. Use blogging and social software to make sure people hear about you.
4. Listen to your community. Answer questions and build your product with their feedback.
5. Gather a great team. Select those with very different skills from you. Look for people who are better than you.
6. Be the first to recognize a problem. Everyone makes mistakes. Address the issue in public, learn about and correct it.
7. Don’t spend time on market research. Launch test versions as early as possible. Keep improving the product in the open.
8. Don’t obsess over spreadsheet business plans. They are not going to turn out as you predict, in any case.
9. Don’t plan a big marketing effort. It’s much more important and powerful that your community loves the product.
10. Don’t focus on getting rich. Focus on your users. Money is a consequence of success, not a goal.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Track Blog Reactions To Your Brands With Scout Labs
Scout Labs, a San Francisco based company, is in my opinion one of the more interesting startups to launch this year. It isn’t consumer focused. Rather, it helps companies make sense of the mass of positive and negative things that are said about their brands in blogs, user generated videos, and images.
The company has been in private beta for months with 40 or so companies. I have list of participants, which is impressive but mostly confidential. A few that have given permission to be named are CBS, eBay, AvenueA/Razorfish and BBDO West. Today they are opening up the private beta to additional users who request an invitation on their site.
feature 1:Brand managers start by creating “scouts” for each brand they want to track. This can be anything that people might talk about - a thing (coca cola), a person (Hillary Clinton), a slogan (Just Do It), etc.
Scout Labs then creates the “scout,” going back in time to January 2007 when they first started populating their database of user generated content from blog search engines.
Any mention of the brand is cataloged. Users can then see each blog post, video or image that has to do with the brand, and the interface shows how mentions increase and decrease over time. But that’s when the difficult part begins. Scout Labs then analyzes each blog post and decides if it’s, broadly speaking, negative, positive or neutral to the brand. They also rank the source of the content to highlight more influential sources.
feature 2:asr: rating broadly positive, negative or neutral is will make summary of the blog/post and is useful to brand managers. Ranking of the source is also good thing to see how much influence they have (readership etc.. )
feature 3: Users view the information on a single page dashboard. I’m including a few screen shots, although founder Jennifer Zeszut says they are in the process of redesigning the interface based on feedback from current beta testers.
asr: we may use this single page dashboard for consumer feedback rating system
feature 3: Any data source can be clicked on and read via a pop up window, where it can be bookmarked, sent to others, marked for follow up, etc. Scout Labs will also facilitate commenting on the blog post if the brand manager feels that they need to respond.
The company created a Scout for both TechCrunch and Michael Arrington and let me review it last week. For the most part they got the hard part right - determining if a blog post was positive, negative or neutral. They don’t deal with irony well, though. One blog post about me called me “high and mighty.” Scout Labs thought it was positive when it was in fact highly critical. But I hit a button and switched the post to negative in a click. The company uses this feedback to train its system towards better future results.
The really cool part of the product is the fact that it looks at historical data, too (as I said, back to January 2007). So a brand manager can create a new scout and within moments see how the number of daily, weekly or monthly mentions increases or decreases, and how they fluctuate from negative or positive over time. I could easily see how periods where we were heavily criticized for something led to an increase in negative posts, and vice versa.
Zezsut gave me a number of examples of how beta testers have used this to help manage brands. In one case a company tracked a celebrity employee to help them decide if a contract renewal should be given (it was). Any startup could use this to easily track feedback on their new product, and respond to that feedback.
Scout Labs is pursuing a Salesforce-type business mode and charging per user per month. Beta testers are not being charged, and the company is still figuring out the appropriate fee structure.
Competition
Brand analysis was once done almost exclusively through human labor - consultants would clip stories, read them for opinions and aggregate the data. It was time consuming, trailed real time by weeks or months, and very costly. Using software to do this work speeds things up and is far cheaper. But correctly identifying opinions and categorizing them is very, very hard.
A number of companies try to automate part or all of the process. Key competitors include Umbria, BuzzLogic and Nielsen BuzzMetrics.
The company is part of the Minor Ventures incubator, which also launched Grand Central (acquired by Google for a rumored $50 million), 8020 Publishing, Swivel, Open DNS and others. Minor Ventures was founded by CNET cofounder Halsey Minor and is run by Ron Palmeri.
Look for a full public launch of Scout Labs in February or March 2008. The company has been through two rounds of financing with Minor Ventures (October 2006 and December 2007).
The company has been in private beta for months with 40 or so companies. I have list of participants, which is impressive but mostly confidential. A few that have given permission to be named are CBS, eBay, AvenueA/Razorfish and BBDO West. Today they are opening up the private beta to additional users who request an invitation on their site.
feature 1:Brand managers start by creating “scouts” for each brand they want to track. This can be anything that people might talk about - a thing (coca cola), a person (Hillary Clinton), a slogan (Just Do It), etc.
Scout Labs then creates the “scout,” going back in time to January 2007 when they first started populating their database of user generated content from blog search engines.
Any mention of the brand is cataloged. Users can then see each blog post, video or image that has to do with the brand, and the interface shows how mentions increase and decrease over time. But that’s when the difficult part begins. Scout Labs then analyzes each blog post and decides if it’s, broadly speaking, negative, positive or neutral to the brand. They also rank the source of the content to highlight more influential sources.
feature 2:asr: rating broadly positive, negative or neutral is will make summary of the blog/post and is useful to brand managers. Ranking of the source is also good thing to see how much influence they have (readership etc.. )
feature 3: Users view the information on a single page dashboard. I’m including a few screen shots, although founder Jennifer Zeszut says they are in the process of redesigning the interface based on feedback from current beta testers.
asr: we may use this single page dashboard for consumer feedback rating system
feature 3: Any data source can be clicked on and read via a pop up window, where it can be bookmarked, sent to others, marked for follow up, etc. Scout Labs will also facilitate commenting on the blog post if the brand manager feels that they need to respond.
The company created a Scout for both TechCrunch and Michael Arrington and let me review it last week. For the most part they got the hard part right - determining if a blog post was positive, negative or neutral. They don’t deal with irony well, though. One blog post about me called me “high and mighty.” Scout Labs thought it was positive when it was in fact highly critical. But I hit a button and switched the post to negative in a click. The company uses this feedback to train its system towards better future results.
The really cool part of the product is the fact that it looks at historical data, too (as I said, back to January 2007). So a brand manager can create a new scout and within moments see how the number of daily, weekly or monthly mentions increases or decreases, and how they fluctuate from negative or positive over time. I could easily see how periods where we were heavily criticized for something led to an increase in negative posts, and vice versa.
Zezsut gave me a number of examples of how beta testers have used this to help manage brands. In one case a company tracked a celebrity employee to help them decide if a contract renewal should be given (it was). Any startup could use this to easily track feedback on their new product, and respond to that feedback.
Scout Labs is pursuing a Salesforce-type business mode and charging per user per month. Beta testers are not being charged, and the company is still figuring out the appropriate fee structure.
Competition
Brand analysis was once done almost exclusively through human labor - consultants would clip stories, read them for opinions and aggregate the data. It was time consuming, trailed real time by weeks or months, and very costly. Using software to do this work speeds things up and is far cheaper. But correctly identifying opinions and categorizing them is very, very hard.
A number of companies try to automate part or all of the process. Key competitors include Umbria, BuzzLogic and Nielsen BuzzMetrics.
The company is part of the Minor Ventures incubator, which also launched Grand Central (acquired by Google for a rumored $50 million), 8020 Publishing, Swivel, Open DNS and others. Minor Ventures was founded by CNET cofounder Halsey Minor and is run by Ron Palmeri.
Look for a full public launch of Scout Labs in February or March 2008. The company has been through two rounds of financing with Minor Ventures (October 2006 and December 2007).
Monday, December 10, 2007
a feed reader for your friends
Spokeo 2.0: A Feed Reader For Your Friends
But what if you want to keep track of what all your friends are doing on other parts of the Web, whether they just added a photo to Flickr, a bookmark to Digg, a product to their Amazon wish list, or sent out a new Twitter?
There are so many social sites out there that it is hard to keep track of them all. Harrison Tang, the founder of Spokeo, just made it easier with the relaunch of his site today.
But what if you want to keep track of what all your friends are doing on other parts of the Web, whether they just added a photo to Flickr, a bookmark to Digg, a product to their Amazon wish list, or sent out a new Twitter?
There are so many social sites out there that it is hard to keep track of them all. Harrison Tang, the founder of Spokeo, just made it easier with the relaunch of his site today.
Research a disease , support groups
As per Techcrunch post When you are sick or need to research a disease for an ailing relative, the two best places to go online are health search engines like Healthline or patient support group sites like Daily Strength
Astma on Health line
DailyStrength.org is the largest, most comprehensive health network of people sharing their advice, treatment experiences, and support. Keep a wellness journal, read members’ stories, and chat with new friends. Come in and explore! Join one of over 500 -
http://www.imedix.com/ a vertical health search engine with a patient-to-patient social network.
Astma on Health line
DailyStrength.org is the largest, most comprehensive health network of people sharing their advice, treatment experiences, and support. Keep a wellness journal, read members’ stories, and chat with new friends. Come in and explore! Join one of over 500 -
http://www.imedix.com/ a vertical health search engine with a patient-to-patient social network.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
ICICI leader Kamath Forbes annual recognition award
Kamath is the third Indian to be honored with the Forbes annual recognition in the last four years. The previous winners were Nandan Nilekani of Infosys Technologies last year and Ratan Tata in 2004. Kamath said 90 percent of the credit for the award goes to ICICI employees and the remaining 10 percent to him for picking the right people.
“No leader succeeds without a team,” he said. Under Kamath’s watch, ICICI’s market capitalization has risen to US$31 billion (euro21 billion) compared to $1.6 billion in 2002, when the original corporate lending institution merged with its commercial banking offshoot.
Asked what is one trait that no businessman should be without, Kamath said it is the “ability to take a decision.” “It might sound funny, but most businessmen hesitate to take a decision. Decisions are not easy a lot of time … how to process all the information and come to a decision you think is appropriate and go ahead and execute it.”
“No leader succeeds without a team,” he said. Under Kamath’s watch, ICICI’s market capitalization has risen to US$31 billion (euro21 billion) compared to $1.6 billion in 2002, when the original corporate lending institution merged with its commercial banking offshoot.
Asked what is one trait that no businessman should be without, Kamath said it is the “ability to take a decision.” “It might sound funny, but most businessmen hesitate to take a decision. Decisions are not easy a lot of time … how to process all the information and come to a decision you think is appropriate and go ahead and execute it.”
auction about 100 acres Gandipet near Chaitanya Bharati Institute
The state government has 370 acres in Gandipet near Chaitanya Bharati Institute of Technology and Huda has been allowed to auction about 100 acres.
The government got a favourable judgment in October 2007 after a prolonged legal battle in the AP High Court. Huda is very keen on the auctions since it has to raise Rs 5,210 crore in the current financial year. It will have to provide around Rs 2,500 crore to the government but will be able to use the rest of the money to complete ongoing projects including the Outer Ring Road.
The government got a favourable judgment in October 2007 after a prolonged legal battle in the AP High Court. Huda is very keen on the auctions since it has to raise Rs 5,210 crore in the current financial year. It will have to provide around Rs 2,500 crore to the government but will be able to use the rest of the money to complete ongoing projects including the Outer Ring Road.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Harddisk Camcoder
Sony DCR-SR300 6.1MP 40GB Hard Disk Drive Handycam Camcorder with 10x Optical Zoom
- One-touch disc burn
- DVDirect compatibility The DVDirect system allows for easy transfer to a stand-alone DVD burner via USB 2.0. The VRD-VC30 allows for easy transfer of video for DVD burning, while the VRD-MC3 allows for seamless transfer of both video and still images for archiving on a DVD.
Simple & Compact, November 24, 2007
- I made the transition from Hi-8 to Hard Drive Disk (HDD) after an intensive review of all available options. Consumer Reports recently reviewed this camcorder and placed it at the top of it's list.
- The Video is awesome with the recording of 4 GB of Video for 1.5 hrs of recording. Thats huge , you do need a bigger Hard Drive if are gonna save it on your Laptop.
Camera and Camcorder in one, November 13, 2007
I bought this camera because I was tired of lugging around both a camcorder and a hi resolution digital camera. I have had it for a month now, and it fits well for what I wanted. The photos are very sharp and the video is what you would expect from Sony. I do agree that not having a view finder is a disadvantage, but overall I am very happy with this camera.
Worth every penny, June 2, 2007
- No, it's not HD but I honestly don't feel that it's worth paying 2x as much for the marginal (if even noticeable since this camcorder shoots video at 3.1 megapixels) difference in video quality.
ZD review
CNet Review
- One-touch disc burn
- DVDirect compatibility The DVDirect system allows for easy transfer to a stand-alone DVD burner via USB 2.0. The VRD-VC30 allows for easy transfer of video for DVD burning, while the VRD-MC3 allows for seamless transfer of both video and still images for archiving on a DVD.
Simple & Compact, November 24, 2007
- I made the transition from Hi-8 to Hard Drive Disk (HDD) after an intensive review of all available options. Consumer Reports recently reviewed this camcorder and placed it at the top of it's list.
- The Video is awesome with the recording of 4 GB of Video for 1.5 hrs of recording. Thats huge , you do need a bigger Hard Drive if are gonna save it on your Laptop.
Camera and Camcorder in one, November 13, 2007
I bought this camera because I was tired of lugging around both a camcorder and a hi resolution digital camera. I have had it for a month now, and it fits well for what I wanted. The photos are very sharp and the video is what you would expect from Sony. I do agree that not having a view finder is a disadvantage, but overall I am very happy with this camera.
Worth every penny, June 2, 2007
- No, it's not HD but I honestly don't feel that it's worth paying 2x as much for the marginal (if even noticeable since this camcorder shoots video at 3.1 megapixels) difference in video quality.
ZD review
CNet Review
Monday, November 26, 2007
TWiki, enterprise wiki enterprise collaboration platform
Twiki:
Welcome to TWiki, a flexible, powerful, and easy to use enterprise wiki, enterprise collaboration platform and knowledge management system. It is a Structured Wiki, typically used to run a project development space, a document management system, a knowledge base, or any other groupware tool, on an intranet or on the internet. Web content can be created collaboratively by using just a browser
compare different Wikis
Testimonials
Success Stories: SAP when SAP( and yahoo ) are using this should be the best enterprise wiki-- lots of high end corporations, seems paypal is also using it.
Texas Instruments - read all success stories you get problems they solved ..
good Twiki pdf presentaton
-reviews: "Wikis have changed the way we run meetings, plan releases, document our product and generally communicate with each other" - Eric Baldeschwieler, Director of Software Development of Yahoo!
TWiki Plugins: Enhance the TWiki functionality with server side Plugin modules. Developers can create Perl Plugins using the TWiki Plugin API. Some example Plugins:
- It seems all teh Twiki programming is in PERL
Database Plugin
Provide secure access (read and write) to data in an SQL database, with flexible results formatting.Any database that has a DBI interface can be used.
examples:
let's say you wanted to display the next two upcoming scheduled events in the Kalendus calendar.
%DATABASE_SQL{description="calendar_events" command="SELECT subject,body,startdate FROM kalendus_event WHERE to_days(startdate) > to_days(now()) order by startdate limit 2" format="$startdate
$subject
$body"}%
_____________________________________________________________________________
Twiki seems good for enterprise where you have your sensitive project data connectivity to databases . The following may be more for general purpose small shop easy setup project Wikis ..
PBWiki Gets An Overhaul - comparision of google sites etc ..
As Google gets into the wiki space with Google Sites (the relaunch of Jotspot), all the other little wiki startups out there will need to keep one step ahead. Those includes Wikia, Socialtext, Wetpaint, and PBWiki. As it approaches 500,000 wikis, PBWiki is now putting the 2.0 version of its site into beta. The latest version includes an updated UI, folders, enhanced access controls and an easy way to customize the look and feel of your wiki page (see the screenshot of a customized TechCrunch page below or this generic demo page). The 2 million people a month that the company says visit PBWiki should like that.
google sites -- see the sample sites they are interesting UI
_____________________________________________________________________________
Welcome to TWiki, a flexible, powerful, and easy to use enterprise wiki, enterprise collaboration platform and knowledge management system. It is a Structured Wiki, typically used to run a project development space, a document management system, a knowledge base, or any other groupware tool, on an intranet or on the internet. Web content can be created collaboratively by using just a browser
compare different Wikis
Testimonials
Success Stories: SAP when SAP( and yahoo ) are using this should be the best enterprise wiki-- lots of high end corporations, seems paypal is also using it.
Texas Instruments - read all success stories you get problems they solved ..
good Twiki pdf presentaton
-reviews: "Wikis have changed the way we run meetings, plan releases, document our product and generally communicate with each other" - Eric Baldeschwieler, Director of Software Development of Yahoo!
TWiki Plugins: Enhance the TWiki functionality with server side Plugin modules. Developers can create Perl Plugins using the TWiki Plugin API. Some example Plugins:
- It seems all teh Twiki programming is in PERL
Database Plugin
Provide secure access (read and write) to data in an SQL database, with flexible results formatting.Any database that has a DBI interface can be used.
examples:
let's say you wanted to display the next two upcoming scheduled events in the Kalendus calendar.
%DATABASE_SQL{description="calendar_events" command="SELECT subject,body,startdate FROM kalendus_event WHERE to_days(startdate) > to_days(now()) order by startdate limit 2" format="$startdate
$subject
$body"}%
_____________________________________________________________________________
Twiki seems good for enterprise where you have your sensitive project data connectivity to databases . The following may be more for general purpose small shop easy setup project Wikis ..
PBWiki Gets An Overhaul - comparision of google sites etc ..
As Google gets into the wiki space with Google Sites (the relaunch of Jotspot), all the other little wiki startups out there will need to keep one step ahead. Those includes Wikia, Socialtext, Wetpaint, and PBWiki. As it approaches 500,000 wikis, PBWiki is now putting the 2.0 version of its site into beta. The latest version includes an updated UI, folders, enhanced access controls and an easy way to customize the look and feel of your wiki page (see the screenshot of a customized TechCrunch page below or this generic demo page). The 2 million people a month that the company says visit PBWiki should like that.
google sites -- see the sample sites they are interesting UI
_____________________________________________________________________________
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Amazon Reviews
Amazon top Reviewers
#1: Harriet Klausner : I am a speed reader( a gift I was born with) and read two books a day
- Reviews written: 15208 , Helpful Votes: 93634
#2: Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota)
- Reviews written: 6666 , Helpful Votes: 94816 ( with just 40% of #1 reviews he got equal Helpful votes speaks for better quality of reviews )
Consider ideas for upgrading Amazon's software -- what a detailed descriptions of customer giving software improvements.
- P D Harris reviewer rank: #17
last updated: 9/7/07
Read: 1,893 times
Rated: 13 out of 19 helpful
Don't Go to the Cosmetics Counter Without Me
- this 6 th edition has 280 reviews and has used books for $2 , 7 th ed coming in December
- this book reviewed by Jennifer L. Metcalf's ( all her reviews has good helpful votes )
#1: Harriet Klausner : I am a speed reader( a gift I was born with) and read two books a day
- Reviews written: 15208 , Helpful Votes: 93634
#2: Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota)
- Reviews written: 6666 , Helpful Votes: 94816 ( with just 40% of #1 reviews he got equal Helpful votes speaks for better quality of reviews )
Consider ideas for upgrading Amazon's software -- what a detailed descriptions of customer giving software improvements.
- P D Harris reviewer rank: #17
last updated: 9/7/07
Read: 1,893 times
Rated: 13 out of 19 helpful
Don't Go to the Cosmetics Counter Without Me
- this 6 th edition has 280 reviews and has used books for $2 , 7 th ed coming in December
- this book reviewed by Jennifer L. Metcalf's ( all her reviews has good helpful votes )
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Archive-1: Hyderabad Real Estate Discussions
Archive-1: Hyderabad Real Estate Discussions
View Full Version : Hyderabad Real Estate -- This has all Forums , see Naren plots example ..
View Full Version : Hyderabad Real Estate -- This has all Forums , see Naren plots example ..
Good response to APIIC auctions at Rayadurg
The auction conducted by Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation Ltd., for 90 acres of land in Knowledge City at Rayadurg, near Hi-Tech City, saw intense bidding from three major competitors on Tuesday.
While two plots of 30 acres each were taken yielding APIIC a revenue of Rs.1,296 crore, ( asr: this money may be funding Roads(ORR?) and other developments ..)
The second plot was taken by Bangalore-based company, Purvankar, at Rs.21 crore per acre. All the three plots were locked up in triangular competition between BPTP, Purvankar and DLF. ( asr: good open competition )
Out of 414 acre- knowledge City, the APIIC so far auctioned 140 acres,(asr: seems this is Govt. acquired/reserved? land when created Hi-Tech city ) including 60 acres auctioned on Tuesday. While the first 30 acres about an year ago was bid for at Rs.16 crores per acre, DLF after few months acquired 25 acres at Rs.18.81 crores per acre. ‘My Home’ had bid for 10 acres at Rs. 20.01 crores per acre and ITC acquired five acres at Rs.25.5 crores per acre.
While two plots of 30 acres each were taken yielding APIIC a revenue of Rs.1,296 crore, ( asr: this money may be funding Roads(ORR?) and other developments ..)
The second plot was taken by Bangalore-based company, Purvankar, at Rs.21 crore per acre. All the three plots were locked up in triangular competition between BPTP, Purvankar and DLF. ( asr: good open competition )
Out of 414 acre- knowledge City, the APIIC so far auctioned 140 acres,(asr: seems this is Govt. acquired/reserved? land when created Hi-Tech city ) including 60 acres auctioned on Tuesday. While the first 30 acres about an year ago was bid for at Rs.16 crores per acre, DLF after few months acquired 25 acres at Rs.18.81 crores per acre. ‘My Home’ had bid for 10 acres at Rs. 20.01 crores per acre and ITC acquired five acres at Rs.25.5 crores per acre.
Global players line up $25 bn for Indian realty pie
The Indian real estate industry is estimated to grow by 33% to $50 billion by 2010 and India is looking to remain an appealing investment option for both domestic and foreign investors.
Global real estate majors such as Dubai World, Trump Organisation of US, Smart City of Dubai, Kishimoto Gordon Dalaya, Khuyool Investments, Bonyan Holding, Plus Properties, ABG Group and Al Fara’s Properties are descending on the Indian real estate market with an investment of around $20-25 billion in the next 12-18 months.
It is estimated that an additional 16.8 million people annually adding to the surging demand for infrastructure, housing, schools, hospitals, retail as well as hospitality and commercial property. According to property consultants, with many property markets around the world already on the cusp of recession, India offers ideal investment opportunities.
Global real estate majors such as Dubai World, Trump Organisation of US, Smart City of Dubai, Kishimoto Gordon Dalaya, Khuyool Investments, Bonyan Holding, Plus Properties, ABG Group and Al Fara’s Properties are descending on the Indian real estate market with an investment of around $20-25 billion in the next 12-18 months.
It is estimated that an additional 16.8 million people annually adding to the surging demand for infrastructure, housing, schools, hospitals, retail as well as hospitality and commercial property. According to property consultants, with many property markets around the world already on the cusp of recession, India offers ideal investment opportunities.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Can you handle suddenly changing terrains?
You have some knowledge of flying but you want to learn more. So you take some professional lessons and a few days later, you are ready to fly on your own.
It’s a big day. You get into the plane and start the engine and you are on the runway. You are just about to ready to take off and something magical happens.
The plane has now transformed into a speedboat - only without the breaks. Before you realize what happened you see that you are going straight towards some big rocks. You are confused, scared but you don’t want to give up and die. You take control and start navigating the dangerous territory
If you are a first-time entrepreneur and want to be one - be prepared to face this. If you are fortunate enough to have GOOD help, you may not notice the sudden change in terrains (product development, financing, hiring, growing, managing boards, mergers, acquisitions, firing…l)
It’s a big day. You get into the plane and start the engine and you are on the runway. You are just about to ready to take off and something magical happens.
The plane has now transformed into a speedboat - only without the breaks. Before you realize what happened you see that you are going straight towards some big rocks. You are confused, scared but you don’t want to give up and die. You take control and start navigating the dangerous territory
If you are a first-time entrepreneur and want to be one - be prepared to face this. If you are fortunate enough to have GOOD help, you may not notice the sudden change in terrains (product development, financing, hiring, growing, managing boards, mergers, acquisitions, firing…l)
learning
“Those who stop learning find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists”
- Eric Hoffer Philosopher
- Eric Hoffer Philosopher
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Chess Ratings
FIDE Ratings Latest
Country rank by average rating of top 10 players
USA : Country Top players list
Ukraine: Country Top players list
India: Country Top players list
FIDE - Federation Internationale d'Echecs
USCF - The United States Chess Federation
Approximating Formulas for the USCF Rating System
Rating Distributions("What's an Average Player?" ) The average adult USCF tournament player is rated about 1450. Many beginners start out with ratings of 1000 or so, with scholastic players starting out at around 600. The average of all USCF players is about 1100. In the US, if your rating gets up to 2000, you get your first professional title: Expert. Masters are those rated 2200 or higher. A Grandmaster would normally be rated about 2500. (See the next section, which explains International Titles.) The highest rated players in the world on the FIDE system have ratings of about 2800. So, to get a rating, contact your national organization and find out when they have rated events that are open to new players.
Different Kinds of Ratings: Most countries keep separate ratings databases for:
* Standard (regular speed) chess
* Blitz (very fast) chess
* Correspondence (chess by mail), and
* Online (chess played via Internet)
Each of these have different qualities. Some people are great at correspondence, but not that strong at OTB (Over the Board) play. Some good Standard players have trouble with Blitz. So it makes sense to have separate ratings for the different kinds of chess.
2002 REGULAR RATING DISTRIBUTION CHART
Three Different Kinds of Time Controls
International Titles
* Grandmaster (GM) - title awarded by FIDE for GM norms
* International Master (IM) - title awarded by FIDE for IM norms
* FIDE Master (FM) - minimum FIDE rating of 2300 after 24 games
* National Senior Master (SM) - e.g., USCF Senior Master--USCF 2400+
* National Master (Master or NM) - e.g., USCF Master--USCF 2200+
* National Expert or Candidate Master (E or CM) - e.g., USCF Expert--USCF 2000+
National US Amateur Classes
* National Class A (USCF 1800- 1999) - top amateur class
* National Class B (USCF 1600-1799) - above average tournament player
* National Class C (USCF 1400-1599) - average tournament player
* National Class D (USCF 1200-1399) - a strong social player
* National Class E (USCF 1000-1199) - social/scholastic players
* National Class F (USCF 800-999) - novice/scholastic players
* National Class G (USCF 600-799) - beginner II/scholastic players
* National Class H (USCF 400-599) - beginner I/scholastic players
* National Class I (USCF 200-399) - early beginner/scholastic players
* National Class J (USCF 100-199) - minimum rating
Remember, though, that an average tournament player is much better than most chess players in the world, and would probably be the best at their local cafe or even in a school club. A starting rating of 900 or 1100 shows that you're a good solid player at a nontournament level, and you're ready to start learning the intricacies of The Royal Game.
October 2006 Top 100 Rating Lists
These Top 100 lists are updated every two months by the United States Chess Federation. Ages are as of the first day of the month in which the lists are first published. These lists only include current USCF members.
Top under 13
Country rank by average rating of top 10 players
USA : Country Top players list
Ukraine: Country Top players list
India: Country Top players list
FIDE - Federation Internationale d'Echecs
USCF - The United States Chess Federation
Approximating Formulas for the USCF Rating System
Rating Distributions("What's an Average Player?" ) The average adult USCF tournament player is rated about 1450. Many beginners start out with ratings of 1000 or so, with scholastic players starting out at around 600. The average of all USCF players is about 1100. In the US, if your rating gets up to 2000, you get your first professional title: Expert. Masters are those rated 2200 or higher. A Grandmaster would normally be rated about 2500. (See the next section, which explains International Titles.) The highest rated players in the world on the FIDE system have ratings of about 2800. So, to get a rating, contact your national organization and find out when they have rated events that are open to new players.
Different Kinds of Ratings: Most countries keep separate ratings databases for:
* Standard (regular speed) chess
* Blitz (very fast) chess
* Correspondence (chess by mail), and
* Online (chess played via Internet)
Each of these have different qualities. Some people are great at correspondence, but not that strong at OTB (Over the Board) play. Some good Standard players have trouble with Blitz. So it makes sense to have separate ratings for the different kinds of chess.
2002 REGULAR RATING DISTRIBUTION CHART
Three Different Kinds of Time Controls
International Titles
* Grandmaster (GM) - title awarded by FIDE for GM norms
* International Master (IM) - title awarded by FIDE for IM norms
* FIDE Master (FM) - minimum FIDE rating of 2300 after 24 games
* National Senior Master (SM) - e.g., USCF Senior Master--USCF 2400+
* National Master (Master or NM) - e.g., USCF Master--USCF 2200+
* National Expert or Candidate Master (E or CM) - e.g., USCF Expert--USCF 2000+
National US Amateur Classes
* National Class A (USCF 1800- 1999) - top amateur class
* National Class B (USCF 1600-1799) - above average tournament player
* National Class C (USCF 1400-1599) - average tournament player
* National Class D (USCF 1200-1399) - a strong social player
* National Class E (USCF 1000-1199) - social/scholastic players
* National Class F (USCF 800-999) - novice/scholastic players
* National Class G (USCF 600-799) - beginner II/scholastic players
* National Class H (USCF 400-599) - beginner I/scholastic players
* National Class I (USCF 200-399) - early beginner/scholastic players
* National Class J (USCF 100-199) - minimum rating
Remember, though, that an average tournament player is much better than most chess players in the world, and would probably be the best at their local cafe or even in a school club. A starting rating of 900 or 1100 shows that you're a good solid player at a nontournament level, and you're ready to start learning the intricacies of The Royal Game.
October 2006 Top 100 Rating Lists
These Top 100 lists are updated every two months by the United States Chess Federation. Ages are as of the first day of the month in which the lists are first published. These lists only include current USCF members.
Top under 13
Learning Chess
Chessmaster 10th Edition -- Having a computer program is a must for practice( and a little learning)
Chess-Become an aggressive gambiteer-tactician with only 10 books
- Baco says: "I recommend only the essential books needed for this.Each area of the game is covered, though tactics naturally get more attention.If you've never read a chessbook before start with Patrick Wolff's 'The complete idiot's guide to chess',then move on down the list."
- asr: we buy List books as we advance our rating ( mostly in the order of this List)
- asr: I agree with this list mania author Baco because, I read above Patrik Wolff book and it is best first book as Baco pointed, so I validated Baco's recommendations. I assume same must be true with all Baco Recommendations in the List Mania.
- asr: what a great time/money saving using Amazon List mania. I spent so much time in finding books on chess this List helped finally. Only thing is there are many lists on a given subject ( chess , nutrition etc..) you need to validate ONE of List author recommendations by knowing/experiencing ( book or prouduct ) so that you can be sure of rest of the List mania items.
Next Level Books:Next level books recommended by many List are:
Practical Chess Exercises: 600 Lessons from Tactics to Strategy - I had this book very good
How to Reassess Your Chess: The Complete Chess-Mastery Course
The Reassess Your Chess Workbook
Art of Attack in Chess
- Rapidly improve your chess to Class D -- this List aggress with Baco List, see List author comments: 1100 rated player who drastically improved in 2 months ( on this page)
- Best Chess books that will improve your game -- this List shows books with high review ratings
__________________
Here is review talks about different Chess books on problems puzzles
A fine addition to a crowded field
-- you can search book names in amazon to get links for books
If you are looking for an exercise set from which to train your tactical muscles, there is no clearly better choice. The closest competitor is [Emms], which has 1001 positions (including two known pairs of duplicates), and a roughly similar structure. I would say that those two are the front-runners. [Blokh] has 1206 positions, many of which are solvable with either player to move; it differs also in that the exercises are sorted by theme and labeled by difficulty; it costs a bit more, too. The old potboilers by [Reinfeld] have 1001 positions each, sorted by theme but not by difficulty; the binding and print are marginal, but they cost much less, too. If you want to mix your tactics problems with strategic/positional/defensive ones (a good idea), you should go with [Cheng]'s 600 positions, or the 300 in [Alburt]. Now, all of the above are appropriate for the wide intermediate range. Advanced players might prefer [Gaprindashvili] or [Nunn]; [Volokitin] looks great, too, though I have only skimmed it. I am less familiar with the books aimed at beginners, but I can recommend [Heisman]. [Sukhin] doesn't quite compare with these books since many of its 1000 puzzles are concerned with historical chess variants, and this is not something many readers would expect or want.
Blokh, Combinative Motifs
Emms, The Ultimate Chess Puzzle Book
Reinfeld, 1001 Brilliant Ways to Checkmate; 1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations
Cheng, Practical Chess Exercises
Alburt, Chess Training Pocket Book
Gaprindashvili, Imagination in Chess
Nunn, John Nunn's Chess Puzzle Book
Volokitin, Perfect Your Chess
Heisman, Back To Basics: Tactics
Sukhin, Chess Gems
Chess-Become an aggressive gambiteer-tactician with only 10 books
- Baco says: "I recommend only the essential books needed for this.Each area of the game is covered, though tactics naturally get more attention.If you've never read a chessbook before start with Patrick Wolff's 'The complete idiot's guide to chess',then move on down the list."
- asr: we buy List books as we advance our rating ( mostly in the order of this List)
- asr: I agree with this list mania author Baco because, I read above Patrik Wolff book and it is best first book as Baco pointed, so I validated Baco's recommendations. I assume same must be true with all Baco Recommendations in the List Mania.
- asr: what a great time/money saving using Amazon List mania. I spent so much time in finding books on chess this List helped finally. Only thing is there are many lists on a given subject ( chess , nutrition etc..) you need to validate ONE of List author recommendations by knowing/experiencing ( book or prouduct ) so that you can be sure of rest of the List mania items.
Next Level Books:Next level books recommended by many List are:
Practical Chess Exercises: 600 Lessons from Tactics to Strategy - I had this book very good
How to Reassess Your Chess: The Complete Chess-Mastery Course
The Reassess Your Chess Workbook
Art of Attack in Chess
- Rapidly improve your chess to Class D -- this List aggress with Baco List, see List author comments: 1100 rated player who drastically improved in 2 months ( on this page)
- Best Chess books that will improve your game -- this List shows books with high review ratings
__________________
Here is review talks about different Chess books on problems puzzles
A fine addition to a crowded field
-- you can search book names in amazon to get links for books
If you are looking for an exercise set from which to train your tactical muscles, there is no clearly better choice. The closest competitor is [Emms], which has 1001 positions (including two known pairs of duplicates), and a roughly similar structure. I would say that those two are the front-runners. [Blokh] has 1206 positions, many of which are solvable with either player to move; it differs also in that the exercises are sorted by theme and labeled by difficulty; it costs a bit more, too. The old potboilers by [Reinfeld] have 1001 positions each, sorted by theme but not by difficulty; the binding and print are marginal, but they cost much less, too. If you want to mix your tactics problems with strategic/positional/defensive ones (a good idea), you should go with [Cheng]'s 600 positions, or the 300 in [Alburt]. Now, all of the above are appropriate for the wide intermediate range. Advanced players might prefer [Gaprindashvili] or [Nunn]; [Volokitin] looks great, too, though I have only skimmed it. I am less familiar with the books aimed at beginners, but I can recommend [Heisman]. [Sukhin] doesn't quite compare with these books since many of its 1000 puzzles are concerned with historical chess variants, and this is not something many readers would expect or want.
Blokh, Combinative Motifs
Emms, The Ultimate Chess Puzzle Book
Reinfeld, 1001 Brilliant Ways to Checkmate; 1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations
Cheng, Practical Chess Exercises
Alburt, Chess Training Pocket Book
Gaprindashvili, Imagination in Chess
Nunn, John Nunn's Chess Puzzle Book
Volokitin, Perfect Your Chess
Heisman, Back To Basics: Tactics
Sukhin, Chess Gems
Monday, November 12, 2007
India Stocks: When Will the Party End?
India's Best Blue-Chips marketcap in Billion $
we all understand company Marketcap in $ terms , Ever wonder how does the Marketcap of Indian Blue-chip comapnies compare in terms of Billion $ follow this link , click on "Next button on top" or "bottom Images" ...
For months, India's stock market defied gravity. On Oct. 29 2007 the Sensex—the Bombay Stock Exchange's index of 30 top stocks—touched 20,000, up 1,000 points in just 11 trading sessions, and a gain of 41% since January. It has dropped 5% since, as markets worldwide have fallen amid renewed concern about subprime fallout from the U.S. Still, the stock market capitalization is now $1.3 trillion, much higher than India's gross domestic product of $900 billion.
According to the Securities & Exchange Board of India (SEBI), in October alone foreign inflows touched $5 billion, compared to the $17 billion total inflow this year. In all, about $30 billion worth of foreign investment has poured into the market since February, 2006.
Back then ( February 2006) the Sensex was at 10,000 points. Now ( October 2007 ) it's almost at 20,000. While some people worry about a correction, Andrew Holland, managing director of Merrill Lynch's (MER) Indian joint venture, DSP Merrill Lynch, is ecstatic about longer-term prospects. "I continue to be bullish on the market," he says. "GDP will continue to grow over the next five years, and corporate earnings will be strong."
In the past year, Indian companies have raised about $13.5 billion in debt and equity from global markets, according to data tracker Prime Database.
we all understand company Marketcap in $ terms , Ever wonder how does the Marketcap of Indian Blue-chip comapnies compare in terms of Billion $ follow this link , click on "Next button on top" or "bottom Images" ...
For months, India's stock market defied gravity. On Oct. 29 2007 the Sensex—the Bombay Stock Exchange's index of 30 top stocks—touched 20,000, up 1,000 points in just 11 trading sessions, and a gain of 41% since January. It has dropped 5% since, as markets worldwide have fallen amid renewed concern about subprime fallout from the U.S. Still, the stock market capitalization is now $1.3 trillion, much higher than India's gross domestic product of $900 billion.
According to the Securities & Exchange Board of India (SEBI), in October alone foreign inflows touched $5 billion, compared to the $17 billion total inflow this year. In all, about $30 billion worth of foreign investment has poured into the market since February, 2006.
Back then ( February 2006) the Sensex was at 10,000 points. Now ( October 2007 ) it's almost at 20,000. While some people worry about a correction, Andrew Holland, managing director of Merrill Lynch's (MER) Indian joint venture, DSP Merrill Lynch, is ecstatic about longer-term prospects. "I continue to be bullish on the market," he says. "GDP will continue to grow over the next five years, and corporate earnings will be strong."
In the past year, Indian companies have raised about $13.5 billion in debt and equity from global markets, according to data tracker Prime Database.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Virtualization , VMware equivalent
----------
Parallels Workstation is an easy-to-use, easy-on-the-pocket solution that lets you run Windows, Linux, and more side-by-side on a single PC without rebooting.
How it does it: Run your favorite software at near native speeds! Workstation is optimized to take full advantage of hardware virtualization through support of Intel VT and AMD’s Security and Virtual Machine (AMD SVM) for secure, high-performance virtual machines.
- how I got this web link: from eapps control panel used HSPcompelte software who does this virtualization software
- what is it for: for Web QA engineer have a Mac and test on Mac and Widows browser with one machine instead of two machines with Parallel for Mac product below. Not only that it can have linux , mac, windows , solaris all on same machine ...
- can have auto builds deployed on virtual server for every developer change and perform automated testing. Once done developers can look for difference of test result run for a given test case and make sure bug is fixed in server environment.
Use Windows? Like Linux? Have it all on a single PC.
review 1
- review 1 says: Bottom Line: Parallels Workstation and Desktop equip Windows, Linux, and OS X with the fastest client virtualization yet seen. Parallels’ thin hypervisor layer is key, and with Intel or AMD on-CPU virtualization acceleration turned on, Desktop and Workstation really take off. CPU, disk, and network performance are exceptional and meet, and in some ways can exceed, the vendor’s claim of native speed. Parallels has created a new class of virtualization.
review 2
Windows on Map case study
virtualization white papers
Virtualization on servers:
- -- what is it for: In a company different teams test different different modules or different applications. Having one big server with ton of memory ( 20 GB ), 1,000 GB hard disk you can have this kind of software and allocate different virtual machines to each team. companies like Foursoft etc. can reduce number of machines drastically so less physical space .
- can have auto builds deployed on virtual server for every developer change and perform automated testing. Once done developers can look for difference of test result run for a given test case and make sure bug is fixed in server environment.
- big companies with 10s of teams can give self serve of these virtual servers to developers so that developers can build their dev builds and test quickly instead of waiting for IT to allocate these machines ( like GE kansas company ).
Open Fusion is a long-term initiative launched by SWsoft to address software integration issues in the web hosting industry and to enable new sources of revenue for both hosting providers and 3rd party application vendors.
SWsoft Sitebuilder is an easy to use, scalable web application designed to create and manage websites. This next-generation software can be integrated into any business process. Sitebuilder is the ideal marketing tool for converting your site traffic into a new client base
price is cheap: $200 for 500 sites: Sitebuilder for Linux/Unix is designed to publish sites to a single server by default (Plesk or non-Plesk).
Parallels Workstation is an easy-to-use, easy-on-the-pocket solution that lets you run Windows, Linux, and more side-by-side on a single PC without rebooting.
How it does it: Run your favorite software at near native speeds! Workstation is optimized to take full advantage of hardware virtualization through support of Intel VT and AMD’s Security and Virtual Machine (AMD SVM) for secure, high-performance virtual machines.
- how I got this web link: from eapps control panel used HSPcompelte software who does this virtualization software
- what is it for: for Web QA engineer have a Mac and test on Mac and Widows browser with one machine instead of two machines with Parallel for Mac product below. Not only that it can have linux , mac, windows , solaris all on same machine ...
- can have auto builds deployed on virtual server for every developer change and perform automated testing. Once done developers can look for difference of test result run for a given test case and make sure bug is fixed in server environment.
Use Windows? Like Linux? Have it all on a single PC.
review 1
- review 1 says: Bottom Line: Parallels Workstation and Desktop equip Windows, Linux, and OS X with the fastest client virtualization yet seen. Parallels’ thin hypervisor layer is key, and with Intel or AMD on-CPU virtualization acceleration turned on, Desktop and Workstation really take off. CPU, disk, and network performance are exceptional and meet, and in some ways can exceed, the vendor’s claim of native speed. Parallels has created a new class of virtualization.
review 2
Windows on Map case study
virtualization white papers
Virtualization on servers:
- -- what is it for: In a company different teams test different different modules or different applications. Having one big server with ton of memory ( 20 GB ), 1,000 GB hard disk you can have this kind of software and allocate different virtual machines to each team. companies like Foursoft etc. can reduce number of machines drastically so less physical space .
- can have auto builds deployed on virtual server for every developer change and perform automated testing. Once done developers can look for difference of test result run for a given test case and make sure bug is fixed in server environment.
- big companies with 10s of teams can give self serve of these virtual servers to developers so that developers can build their dev builds and test quickly instead of waiting for IT to allocate these machines ( like GE kansas company ).
Open Fusion is a long-term initiative launched by SWsoft to address software integration issues in the web hosting industry and to enable new sources of revenue for both hosting providers and 3rd party application vendors.
SWsoft Sitebuilder is an easy to use, scalable web application designed to create and manage websites. This next-generation software can be integrated into any business process. Sitebuilder is the ideal marketing tool for converting your site traffic into a new client base
price is cheap: $200 for 500 sites: Sitebuilder for Linux/Unix is designed to publish sites to a single server by default (Plesk or non-Plesk).
Friday, November 9, 2007
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Google's new mobile-software strategy, which includes the Open Handset Alliance
Tim Wu, Freedom Fighter
His wireless-phone manifesto was the inspiration for Google's new mobile-software strategy, which includes the Open Handset Alliance.
A Trigger for Innovation
The paper spread like juicy gossip around the Googleplex. Wu's vision resonated because Google had become frustrated with phone companies that were blocking some Google applications from being used on phones attached to their networks. Like Wu, Google believes an alliance based on openness will trigger a new wave of innovation. "Tim helped us catalyze a strategy," says Chris Sacca, head of special initiatives at Google. "He's a singular force in this space. You're just seeing the start of what he's going to accomplish."
His wireless-phone manifesto was the inspiration for Google's new mobile-software strategy, which includes the Open Handset Alliance.
A Trigger for Innovation
The paper spread like juicy gossip around the Googleplex. Wu's vision resonated because Google had become frustrated with phone companies that were blocking some Google applications from being used on phones attached to their networks. Like Wu, Google believes an alliance based on openness will trigger a new wave of innovation. "Tim helped us catalyze a strategy," says Chris Sacca, head of special initiatives at Google. "He's a singular force in this space. You're just seeing the start of what he's going to accomplish."
How Speculators Increase Oil Volatility
1/16/2007 article:
On Jan. 16 2007, oil prices tumbled yet again, dropping 3% to settle at $51.21 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Oil is down 35% from its high of $78 in July 2006. It's already off 16% so far in 2007.
Financial firms remain influential players in the energy markets. Stephen Schork, energy consultant and editor of The Schork Report, says that speculators have wielded significant influence on oil prices over the past five years—and have played a major role in both July's price spike and the current slide. "Speculators are definitely playing the market," he says. "They were bullish last summer, and now they're pulling back."
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How Hot Money Inflames Oil Prices
- Without any major changes in supply or demand, the price of oil has been tumbling, dropping below $59 on Oct. 3. That's 25% off the peak of $78 in July. Natural gas prices have fallen even more sharply, to $5.80 per million Btus from $15 last December, a drop that likely precipitated the $6 billion blowup at hedge fund Amaranth Advisors (see BusinessWeek.com, 9/19/06, "Behind Amaranth's Sudden Swoon").
Out of every dollar that gets put in the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index, 70 cents goes into energy," notes Sol Waxman, who follows hedge funds for the Barclay Group financial advisory firm. "Does that have an impact on price? I would suspect so.
Hedge funds and other investors may have helped push oil prices up. Now, they're helping push them down—and fast.
How low could oil prices go? Despite the recent fall in prices, the consensus among Wall Street analysts is that oil will still average $65 a barrel in this year's fourth quarter before falling to $62 next year. Those estimates could be quickly adjusted downward if prices continue to slide. "If you see a lot of money getting out, it could get pretty ugly," says Dell. "You could see crude drop past $40." Good news for motorists, bad news for energy investors.
On Jan. 16 2007, oil prices tumbled yet again, dropping 3% to settle at $51.21 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Oil is down 35% from its high of $78 in July 2006. It's already off 16% so far in 2007.
Financial firms remain influential players in the energy markets. Stephen Schork, energy consultant and editor of The Schork Report, says that speculators have wielded significant influence on oil prices over the past five years—and have played a major role in both July's price spike and the current slide. "Speculators are definitely playing the market," he says. "They were bullish last summer, and now they're pulling back."
_________________________________
How Hot Money Inflames Oil Prices
- Without any major changes in supply or demand, the price of oil has been tumbling, dropping below $59 on Oct. 3. That's 25% off the peak of $78 in July. Natural gas prices have fallen even more sharply, to $5.80 per million Btus from $15 last December, a drop that likely precipitated the $6 billion blowup at hedge fund Amaranth Advisors (see BusinessWeek.com, 9/19/06, "Behind Amaranth's Sudden Swoon").
Out of every dollar that gets put in the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index, 70 cents goes into energy," notes Sol Waxman, who follows hedge funds for the Barclay Group financial advisory firm. "Does that have an impact on price? I would suspect so.
Hedge funds and other investors may have helped push oil prices up. Now, they're helping push them down—and fast.
How low could oil prices go? Despite the recent fall in prices, the consensus among Wall Street analysts is that oil will still average $65 a barrel in this year's fourth quarter before falling to $62 next year. Those estimates could be quickly adjusted downward if prices continue to slide. "If you see a lot of money getting out, it could get pretty ugly," says Dell. "You could see crude drop past $40." Good news for motorists, bad news for energy investors.
As Oil Nears $100, Look Out Below
11/7/207
Analysts say that if speculators flee the market en masse, prices could drop even more quickly than they've risen.
There are 595 hedge funds that engage in at least some energy trading now, more than triple the 180 funds involved just three years ago. Fusaro estimates the assets involved in such trading total more than $200 billion, up more than 60% from the beginning of the year.
It's tough to get a firm handle on the speculation. A large portion of trading takes place in the unregulated, over-the-counter market. Still, some of the trading in crude oil takes place on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), and there the market is approaching a record in terms of the number of crude oil contracts that predict a price rise.
Traders have committed to 135,000 contracts—each representing 1,000 barrels of crude—betting that prices will continue to rise. That's just shy of the record 155,000 contracts reached this summer.
Some analysts say that if the number of contracts rises sharply, oil prices could fall. "The exit signal for investors could be breaking through the 150,000 or 160,000 contract barrier," says Joel Fingerman, president of OilAnalytics.net, an energy consulting firm. "At that point investors could feel they're using all their bullets."
Analysts say that if speculators flee the market en masse, prices could drop even more quickly than they've risen.
There are 595 hedge funds that engage in at least some energy trading now, more than triple the 180 funds involved just three years ago. Fusaro estimates the assets involved in such trading total more than $200 billion, up more than 60% from the beginning of the year.
It's tough to get a firm handle on the speculation. A large portion of trading takes place in the unregulated, over-the-counter market. Still, some of the trading in crude oil takes place on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), and there the market is approaching a record in terms of the number of crude oil contracts that predict a price rise.
Traders have committed to 135,000 contracts—each representing 1,000 barrels of crude—betting that prices will continue to rise. That's just shy of the record 155,000 contracts reached this summer.
Some analysts say that if the number of contracts rises sharply, oil prices could fall. "The exit signal for investors could be breaking through the 150,000 or 160,000 contract barrier," says Joel Fingerman, president of OilAnalytics.net, an energy consulting firm. "At that point investors could feel they're using all their bullets."
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