Software Scoping Methods

Program Volume
Lines of Code (break into modules and estimate each)
COCOMO: dev months = K1 * KLocK2
K1, K2 factor in developer abilities, experience in area, tools and practices, efficiency requirements, reliability requirements
Average error: 601%
Putnam model: Average error: 773%

Function points (# inputs, outputs, queries, tables, logic, external interfaces)
Adjustments for environmental factors
Adjusted by complexity (simple, average, complex)
Average error: 85%

GUI Metrics (Client side: Dialog boxes, menus, reports, tables,windows)
We did some experimenting with this on V4 Blogs
Object metrics (OO: # of objects and complexity)

Introduction to Chess - I

This seems very good chess learning Page , first site for any users.
You can print and copy this material for teaching Chess to kids ,, have Anvith do it for Githika's batch

CHESSKIDS ACADEMY LESSONS
The SCHOOL section of our KIDS' ZONE offers an online interactive chess course.

_____________
CHESSKIDS ACADEMY COURSES AND COACHING MATERIAL -- this has all PDF links
example pdf : http://www.chesskids.com/grownups/schles.pdf

We are pleased to announce that chessKIDS academy coaching books are now available in pdf (ADOBE ACROBAT) format. (They work in Acrobat Reader 4 or above but may not work in earlier versions) They are also available in rtf format, which should be readable in your favorite Word Processor.

You can download the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader for free HERE (international site) or HERE (UK site).

Please note that everything on here is currently FREE - but donations (as much as you feel appropriate) are always welcome.
_________________
This course is designed mainly for young kids to work through with their parents but it has also been used by beginners of all levels.

The course is divided into 9 classes, each of which could correspond to a 10-week term at a school chess club. If you want to work through faster than that feel free to do so.

The first three classes will teach you the rules and basic principles of the game. The entire course will provide you with everything you need to know to take part in adult club or tournament chess.

You can also reach the individual lessons from here

35 things every PC user should know

35 things every PC user should know - posted by PCworld on February 20, 2007

Want to speed up your broadband connection? Diagnose mysterious crashes? Move massive files across the internet? Sooner or later, you will--and you'll find step-by-step instructions for these and other common PC tasks right here.

asr: PCworld recommeds work space macro here, so it must be best in the category
For even more complex shortcuts, get a macro recorder that can capture detailed steps and repeat them on command. The Workspace Macro program (US$25) can capture anything you type, as well as mouse movements and clicks. Just click New to record a macro, and click Stop after you've done all your typing and mousing.

Find out what your PC is really up to

The Windows Task Manager provides a good start when you try to discover what programs are running on your system, but it's only a first step. For more detailed data, you need another tool. Your best bet: Sysinternals Process Explorer (Microsoft acquired Sysinternals last year). (For more great how-to articles and PC tips, check out Video editing made easy --- and cheap! and Seven things you never knew your cell phone could do).

Get Process Explorer for Windows v10.21 at Microsoft TechNet. It needs no formal installation. Just unzip it and run the .exe file. It will then list your PC's active processes, much as Task Manager does, but with better descriptions and organization.

Interpreting Process Explorer's information is fairly straightforward (and killing processes works much as it does in Task Manager), but here are some tips to help you make the most of the utility.

* Consider adding the useful 'Handles' column to the view. Handles (a term that refers to programming methodology) are a convenient way to measure a process's resource utilization. Processes with high handle usage should be the first ones you kill when resources run low. Add the column by right-clicking in the header area and clicking the Select Columns option. Click the Process Performance tab and check the box next to Handle Count.
* Note that Handles can also be created for media-based devices like CD-R drives, which may cause errors on eject. If you can't safely eject a disk or memory card, use the Find menu to search for the drive letter followed by a colon (for example, E:), and kill that process directly.
* Instead of outright killing a process, you can suspend it (right-click on a process to see this option). This can be useful in the case of a runaway program stuck in an endless loop.
* Want to know what a program's process identification is to better tell whether it's friend or foe? Open the program, then switch to Process Explorer. In the top-right corner is a target icon (concentric circles). Click this icon and drag it onto the program you want to ID, and Process Explorer will highlight the process.


Expand your collection of Windows-tweaking tools

Microsoft offers a sizable collection of useful yet unofficial and unsupported utilities called PowerToys. Following are the essential PowerToys for any serious computer user. All are downloadable from Microsoft's PowerToys for Windows XP page.

* ClearType Tuner: Dramatically improves font legibility on some LCD screens.
* Image Resizer: Adds a new menu when you right-click a photo on your PC. Just click Resize Pictures to change an image's dimensions without opening an editor.
* Tweak UI: If you don't already have Tweak UI, get it. This essential OS tweaking tool offers more granular control over your privacy settings and operations, and even over the way you log in to your PC (plus much more). It should be one of the first things you install on any new computer.
* Alt-Tab Replacement: Adds previews of each page when you switch between open applications using -.
* SyncToy: Improves the task of synchronizing files among multiple machines, especially compared with Windows Briefcase.

Other list in 35 things every PC user should know
Safeguard Wi-Fi, diagnose your PC
Surf anonymously, test the speed of your internet
Solve Wi-Fi problems, save YouTube locally
Create keyboard shortcuts
Create a disaster recovery disc
Move big files across the internet
Save cell phone data, erase your tracks
Improve monitor colours, decipher digital camera icons
Partition your hard drive, optimize PC settings
Five useful freebies, tighten PC security
Turn off pesky apps
More tips

World Chess Championship

Reunified title (2006 onwards)

VISWANATHAN ANAND THE NEW WORLD CHAMPION 2007
http://chessmexico.com/es/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=22&Itemid=114

After several near misses, Anand won the FIDE World Chess Championship in 2000 for the first time after defeating Alexei Shirov 3.5 - 0.5 in the final match held at Tehran, thereby becoming the first Indian to win that title.
He lost the title when Ruslan Ponomariov won the FIDE knockout tournament in 2002.
Vishwanathan Anand was born in Madras, India the 11th of December of 1969; he obtained the GM title at 16 years old.

World Chess Championship 2007
The World Chess Championship 2007 was held in Mexico City, from September 12, 2007 to September 30, 2007 to decide the world champion in the board game chess. It was an eight-player, double round robin tournament.

Viswanathan Anand of India won the tournament and the title of World Chess Champion. His winning score was 9 points out of 14, with a total of 4 wins and 10 draws, and Anand was the only undefeated player in the tournament. He will defend the title in a 2008 match against the previous world champion, Vladimir Kramnik.

2007 Championship Tournament
Playing conditions
The tournament was a double round robin, with the first round on 13 September 2007 and the final round on 29 September 2007. Rest days were on the 17th, 22nd and 26th, that is after rounds 4, 8 and 11. Games each day began at 2pm local time, which is 19:00 UTC. The time control was 40/2h, 20/1h, 15m+30sec/all meaning that each player had 2 hours per game, plus an extra hour added after the 40th move, 15 extra minutes added after the 60th move, and from there on 30 extra seconds added for each move (Fischer delay).[8] The pairings were made on Wednesday, 12 September 2007.[9]

2007 Candidates Tournament
Matches were best of six games, at normal time controls (40/120, then 20/60, then 15 minutes + 30 seconds per move). Where matches were tied after six games, tie breaks were played on the seventh day:[5]

2007 Qualification process
The top four finishers of the 2005 FIDE World Championship event were granted direct entry into the 2007 event. However, Veselin Topalov, FIDE World Chess Champion 2005, was replaced by Vladimir Kramnik, Classical World Chess Champion, after losing his unification match to him in the 2006 World Championship.

Four further players qualified through the 2005-07 qualification process, which consisted of three stages:
1. Continental championships
2. 2005 World Cup
3. 2007 Candidates Tournament


__________________
World Chess Championship
Further details on the 1984 match, the longest championship match to date and also the last match scored by the number of wins, can be found in the articles on Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov.

Reunified title (2006 onwards)
Kramnik played to defend his title at the FIDE World Chess Championship 2007 in Mexico. This was an 8 player double round robin tournament, the same format as was used for the FIDE World Chess Championship 2005. This tournament was won by Viswanathan Anand, thus making him the current World Chess Champion.

The World Chess Championship 2008, will be a match between the current champion Viswanathan Anand, and 2006 champion Vladimir Kramnik. The World Chess Championship 2009 will be between the 2008 champion; and the winner of a match between 2005 FIDE champion Veselin Topalov, and Chess World Cup 2007 winner Gata Kamsky.[11

Bobby Fischer

My observations:
a) Bobby historic victory in 1972 , inspired chess fever in entire US that is good his victory caused US kids interst (this is unintetional side effect of his victory with out his much effort )good , what followed later? did Bobby toured 1000s of US schools to further advance US kids interest in chess??

b) why he did not play for 3 years after 1972 . Due to lack of practice he demanded first 10 wins as cited by his adviser , this did not sound professionalism. He demanded 9:9 case defending champion keeps title (Bobby ) many consider unfair

c) 1992 match is complete bizarre, what is the need to play against UN and US sanctions. That to this match is against some old player not the actual world chess champion . Is this for pure money or fame or what else??


1) World Championship Match 1972
_____________________________________________________________________
The match took place in Reykjavík, Iceland, from July through September 1972. Fischer lost the first two games in strange fashion: the first when he played a risky pawn-grab in a drawn endgame, the second by forfeit when he refused to play the game in a dispute over playing conditions. Fischer would likely have forfeited the entire match, but Spassky, not wanting to win by default, yielded to Fischer's demands to move the next game to a back room, away from the cameras whose presence had upset Fischer. The rest of the match proceeded without serious incident. Fischer won seven of the next 19 games, losing only one and drawing eleven, to win the match 12.5-8.5 and become the 11th World Chess Champion.

World-class match play (i.e., a series of games between the same two opponents) often involves one or both players preparing one or two openings very deeply, and playing them often during the match. Preparation for such a match also usually involves analysis of those opening lines known to be played by the upcoming opponent. Fischer surprised Spassky by never repeating an opening line throughout the match, and often playing opening lines that he had never played before in his chess career. During the last half of the match, Spassky abandoned his prepared lines and attempted to outplay Fischer in lines that presumably neither of them had prepared, but this also proved fruitless for the defending champion.[38]

Fischer's win was a momentous victory for the United States during the time of the Cold War: the iconoclastic American almost single-handedly defeating the mighty Soviet chess establishment that had dominated world chess for the past quarter-century. The match was called "The Match of the Century", and received front-page media coverage in the United States and around the world. With his victory, Fischer became an instant celebrity. He received numerous product endorsement offers (all of which he declined) and appeared on the covers of Life and Sports Illustrated. With American Olympic swimming champion Mark Spitz, he also appeared on a Bob Hope TV special.[39] Membership in the United States Chess Federation doubled in 1972[40] and peaked in 1974; in American chess, these years are commonly referred to as the "Fischer Boom." Spassky, referring to professional chess, later summarized: "He made chess popular, briefly, and he made us all rich men."[41]

2) Forfeiture of title to Karpov , 1975
______________________________________________
Fischer was scheduled to defend his title against challenger Anatoly Karpov in 1975. Fischer had played no tournament games since winning the title, and he laid down numerous (a total of 64) conditions for the match. While most of them were purely game-oriented in nature, some were as bizarre as a requirement for everyone entering the room where the game is conducted to have uncovered heads. Many commentators supposed that Fischer's objective in making the demands was to avoid having to play the match, the outcome of which Fischer was not certain. Fischer made the following three principal demands:

1. The match should continue until ten wins, without counting the draws.
2. There is no limit to the total number of games played.
3. In case of a 9:9 score, champion (Fischer) retains his title.

Fischer claimed the usual system (twenty-four games with the first player to get 12.5 points winning, or the champion retaining his title in the event of a 12-12 tie) encouraged the player in the lead to draw games, which he regarded as bad for chess. Fischer instead wanted a match of an unlimited number of games. However, a match based on the first two conditions could take several months (In 1927 the Capablanca-Alekhine match to achieve the condition of winning only six games continued for 34 games). Many argued that this would be an exercise in stamina rather than skill. The FIDE commission headed by FIDE president Max Euwe and consisting of both, US and USSR, representatives, ruled that the match should continue until six wins. However, Fischer replied that he would resign his crown and not participate in the match. Instead of accepting Fischer's forfeit, the commission agreed to allow the match to continue until nine wins, leaving only one of the 64 conditions set by Fischer unsatisfied. FIDE postulated that the player achieving nine victories first would win the match, eliminating any advantage for the reigning champion (Fischer). Most observers considered Fischer's demand of his win in case of 9:9 draw to be unfair. It meant that Fischer only needed to win nine games to retain the championship, while Karpov had to win by a 10-8 score. Because FIDE would not agree to that demand, Fischer resigned in a cable to FIDE president Max Euwe on June 27, 1974:

Former US Champion Arnold Denker, who was in contact with Fischer during the Karpov match negotiations, claimed that Fischer wanted a long match to be able to play himself into shape after a three-year layoff.
Garry Kasparov has argued that Karpov would have had a good chance to defeat Fischer in 1975.[52]


3) Spassky rematch 1992
_________________________________________________________________
After twenty years, Fischer emerged from isolation to challenge Spassky (then placed 96-102 on the rating list) to a "Revenge Match of the 20th century" in 1992. This match took place in Sveti Stefan and Belgrade, FR Yugoslavia, in spite of a severe United Nations embargo that included sanctions on sporting events. Fischer demanded that the organizers bill the match as "The World Chess Championship," although Garry Kasparov was the recognized FIDE World Champion. The purse for this match was reported to be US$5,000,000 with two-thirds to go to the winner. The US Department of the Treasury had warned Fischer beforehand that his participation was illegal as it violated President George H. W. Bush's Executive Order 12810[60] that implemented United Nations sanctions against engaging in economic activities in Yugoslavia.[61] In front of the international press, Fischer was filmed spitting on the US order forbidding him to play. Following the match, the department obtained an arrest warrant for him although some dispute the legality of the Department's claim and question why others who broke the embargo have not been prosecuted.[62] Fischer remained wanted by the United States government for his participation in the match.

Fischer won the match, 10 wins to 5, with 15 draws. Many grandmasters observing the match said that Fischer was past his prime. In the book Mortal Games, Garry Kasparov is quoted: "He is playing OK. Around 2600 or 2650. It wouldn't be close between us." Fischer never played any competitive games afterwards.

______________________
USCF President and Executive Director on Fischer:
On behalf of the United States Chess Federation (USCF), I am saddened by the loss of one of the greatest chess minds of all time. Chess players everywhere are in mourning. Though Bobby Fischer was before my time and I never met him, he still had a profound impact on my life. Because of his success in that magical year of 1972, the popularity of chess exploded in America. My hometown’s chess story has been repeated countless time across the country: The Fischer legacy inspired a group to start a chess club, to later introduce chess programs into local schools, and to thereby open up a whole new world to a group of kids from small-town, middle America.

This experience prepared me to move 1,000 miles away from home, graduate from MIT, and later become the USCF’s Executive Director. One of my childhood teammates is now a Lt. Col. With the U.S. Air Force and a Georgia Tech engineering graduate; another has found success in corporate America. This is the untold story of the Fischer legacy. Although he may not have set out to be a popularizer, his success led to many school districts across the country integrating chess into the daily curriculum. Chess opens minds and changes lives. Thank you Robert James Fischer for the impact you had on my life- USCF Executive Director Bill Hall


USCF President Bill Goichberg
I was very saddened to hear of the death of Bobby Fischer, the only official American World Chess Champion. At his peak, he was the best chessplayer who ever lived. His aggressive, uncompromising style, going all out for a win in every game, is rarely seen in top-level chess. His victory over Boris Spassky in 1972 caused an unprecedented chess boom in our country, and the US Chess Federation still has many members who first joined during that period because of all the publicity he created. Bobby's brilliant games and fighting spirit will be remembered forever by those worldwide who love our great game


Former Russian chess champion Garry Kasparov said Fischer would be remembered as "the pioneer, some would say the founder, of professional chess" and called his death "very sad news."

"Fischer was a source of inspiration for all young players," said Kasparov, who said he would be remembered for his efforts to improve conditions for fellow professionals in the game and as a "warrior" on the chessboard.
___________________________

Bobby Fischer

USCF President and Executive Director on Fischer:
On behalf of the United States Chess Federation (USCF), I am saddened by the loss of one of the greatest chess minds of all time. Chess players everywhere are in mourning. Though Bobby Fischer was before my time and I never met him, he still had a profound impact on my life. Because of his success in that magical year of 1972, the popularity of chess exploded in America. My hometown’s chess story has been repeated countless time across the country: The Fischer legacy inspired a group to start a chess club, to later introduce chess programs into local schools, and to thereby open up a whole new world to a group of kids from small-town, middle America.

This experience prepared me to move 1,000 miles away from home, graduate from MIT, and later become the USCF’s Executive Director. One of my childhood teammates is now a Lt. Col. With the U.S. Air Force and a Georgia Tech engineering graduate; another has found success in corporate America. This is the untold story of the Fischer legacy. Although he may not have set out to be a popularizer, his success led to many school districts across the country integrating chess into the daily curriculum. Chess opens minds and changes lives. Thank you Robert James Fischer for the impact you had on my life- USCF Executive Director Bill Hall


USCF President Bill Goichberg
I was very saddened to hear of the death of Bobby Fischer, the only official American World Chess Champion. At his peak, he was the best chessplayer who ever lived. His aggressive, uncompromising style, going all out for a win in every game, is rarely seen in top-level chess. His victory over Boris Spassky in 1972 caused an unprecedented chess boom in our country, and the US Chess Federation still has many members who first joined during that period because of all the publicity he created. Bobby's brilliant games and fighting spirit will be remembered forever by those worldwide who love our great game


Former Russian chess champion Garry Kasparov said Fischer would be remembered as "the pioneer, some would say the founder, of professional chess" and called his death "very sad news."

"Fischer was a source of inspiration for all young players," said Kasparov, who said he would be remembered for his efforts to improve conditions for fellow professionals in the game and as a "warrior" on the chessboard.

Best of the FC Blogs: Business Trends of 2007

Best of the FC Blogs: Business Trends of 2007

social entrepreneurs - Change the World

Change the world. Make some money. Raise more money, and make more change. Here are 45 social entrepreneurs who are making a difference.

45 World-Changers
Slideshow: 45 World-Changers

Fast Company's Most Innovative Business People of 2007

From the pages of Fast Company and FastCompany.com, we examine the creativity and innovation of great minds elevating business.

Slideshow: Fast Company's Most Innovative Business People of 2007
- on each slide if you click below there is detailed story

The 25 Top Jobs for 2005-2009

The 25 Top Jobs for 2005-2009
Note: this is from Magazine Jan/2005 From: FastCompany.com | January 2005 | By: Matt Quinn
What are the best jobs to pursue for the next five years? Fast Company draws on the work of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and an innovation expert to tap the top jobs.

What makes a job a great job? Obviously, different people will give different answers. It's impossible to account for everyone's personal taste and personality traits -- including foibles -- and how they might fit into a particular job. What makes a great job opportunity is much easier to gauge. How much do you get paid? What kind of professional development opportunities are available? How much room for innovation does a role offer?


Fast Company based this year's index of the top jobs on four categories: job growth, salary potential, education level, and room for innovation. Relying heavily on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the work of Dr. Kevin Stolarick, a lecturer at Carnegie Mellon University and an expert on the creative class, Fast Company has assembled a list of the 25 Top Jobs for 2005.

What We Considered

Clearly, you want to pick a career that's in high demand. Because job growth is so important, we weighted our index 35% toward the Bureau of Labor Statistic's projected job growth data through 2012.

Money also matters. We based our salary range -- an indication of the opportunity for salary growth -- on the difference between the 10th percentile earnings and the 90th percentile earnings for a given job, also based on BLS data. This gives a picture of where you might end up in relation to where you started. The greater the divide, the better the score. Salary range was also given a 35% share of the total index score.

A great job, in our opinion, also requires a good deal of investment in education. Our education score is based on what percentage of those working in the field hold a college degree according to BLS data. We weighted this 20%.

Finally, a great job needs to give you room to run. How innovative and creative can you be? How open to new ideas are people in your profession? We turned to Dr. Kevin Stolarick to help determine how creative workers can be in a given field. We weighted this 10%.

Doing the Job

In addition to the rankings and some brief job descriptions, we've profiled 10 leaders actually working in some of these exciting positions. Among them, we've got a Harvard stem cell researcher, a Wal-Mart systems analyst, a personal financial advisor to the nouveau riche, and an actuary who doesn't think his job is boring. Though they come from a wide range of fields and backgrounds, there are some common threads running through them -- besides the fact that they love their jobs. Most find themselves working at the intersection of business and technology, which keeps things fresh. They all give the same advice about being successful at work, too: Stay flexible. These jobs aren't for the rigid of mind, and you need to accept that they might take you places you don't expect to go. That's part of the fun -- and what makes these jobs the best.

The Jobs

* Personal finance adviser
* Medical scientist
* Computer software engineer
* Chiropractor
* Environmental engineer
* Biochemist and biophysicist
* Sales manager
* Epidemiologist
* Computer system analyst
* Athlete
* Agent and business manager for artists, performers, and athletes
* Marketing manager
* Producer and director
* Actor
* Lawyer
* Advertising and promotions manager
* Management analyst
* Postsecondary education administrator
* Financial manager
* Actuary
* Airline pilot, copilot, and flight engineer
* Geoscientist
* Market research analyst
* Securities sales agent
* Medical and health services manager

Computer Software Engineer

What they do: The applications you use on your computer didn't write themselves, you know. That's where these guys -- and gals -- come in. Software engineers not only write programs; they also help companies adopt and integrate new technologies smoothly.

Why the job is hot: It looks like computers are here to stay and that they might have a significant role in the future, so job growth is strong to say the least. In fact, the software industry grew 6% in 2004 alone. Normally, a bachelor's degree in computer engineering or science is sufficient to get a good position, meaning the job ranks high on the education index, but not quite at the top. The profession is well paying, but only a gold mine for those with unique, specialized skills.

Job Growth Index: 61.24
Education Index: 70.80
Salary Range Index: 69.67
Innovation Index: 38

Profile: Colonel Casey Wardynski, project originator and director, "America's Army"

Pfizer OOF Office Of Future program

Come 3 p.m. each day, workers staring at computer screens everywhere share the same dream: a magic button that says click here, and someone else will do thisannoying project for you.
ps: by 9 a.m. tomorrow.

Starting this month, that button will become a reality for 10,000 Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) employees, though their button actually says oof, short for Office of the Future. "Our Harvard MBA staff was spending a lot of time doing 'support' work, not their actual jobs," says Jordan Cohen, senior director of organizational effectiveness. "These are people we hired to develop strategies and innovate. Instead, they were Googling and making PowerPoints."

For OOF services, Pfizer pays $15 to $35 per worker hour, far less than they'd pay the McKinseys of the world, whose rates typically start at $215 per hour.

Who is at the other end of that magic button? Two outsourcing companies in India. Their existence is an extension of the booming Indian outsourcing market, which already handles customer-service and computer programming for U.S. companies, as well as concierge services for executives too busy to answer email and arrange for dry-cleaning. But Pfizer's move is an acknowledgment that companies are wasting resources by saddling their most-prized workers with their own support work.

OOF was born of a financial crisis. In 2005, Pfizer announced a $4 billion annual budget cut to counterbalance the expiration of lucrative drug patents. The company later laid off 10% of its workforce. "It was going to be pretty traumatic," Cohen says. "Were we just going to tighten our belts, or work differently?"

At the time, Cohen was reading Thomas Friedman's The World Is Flat, which profiles India's virtual-assistant companies. After analyzing the activities of Pfizer employees, he learned that they spend 20% to 40% of their time on four activities: creating documents, manipulating and analyzing spreadsheets, scheduling meetings, and researching. So he called the companies in Friedman's book. Could they do this stuff? He found hundreds of operations, many with thousands of employees, specializing in so-called knowledge-process outsourcing--dealing with information and data. He rounded up 30 adventurous souls at Pfizer for a test-drive with four employees at OfficeTiger in Chennai.

The initial test run didn't work well. Assignments came back unusable, sometimes marred with typos, and with data incorrectly analyzed. Cohen realized that the problem stemmed from Pfizer employees not specifying what they ultimately needed, and the Indian companies struggling with multistep projects. He spent months breaking complex Pfizer projects into repeatable tasks and training both sides to handle them. On a trip to India, he learned that OfficeTiger was decentralized and fragmented--the graphics people on one floor and the research people on another. OfficeTiger proposed a team system, putting a dozen skilled workers in one room and passing the project around repeatedly. "I didn't think it would work," Cohen says. "There were too many handoffs."

But it did work, and the pilot took off. Word spread through Pfizer's towers, until the program included 200 employees. Meanwhile, Cohen worked to create a simple interface; now, when a Pfizer employee clicks the OOF button in Microsoft Outlook, a single triage worker in India receives the request and assigns it to a team, and the team leader calls the employee to clarify the larger purpose. The team leader then sends back an email specifying the cost. "At this point, the Pfizer employee can say yes or no," Cohen says. "That's the ultimate measure: Is this research project worth $750?" The verb "OOFable" entered the lexicon of Pfizer's pilot users.

The benefits of OOF are unexpected. It's not a time-saver in the sense that employees can knock off at 2:30 p.m. Instead, people do more in a set period. "Rather than spending six months analyzing a segment to understand whether it's a market opportunity," says Nancy Steele, executive director of new business development, "we spend closer to three months." She recently OOFed a four-week research project on the blood-substitute market, which would have bogged her down for months.

The financial benefits are also impressive. "When questions come in, like who are the key players in the stem-cell market, often I would hire external consultants," says Kristin Peck, head of worldwide strategic planning. "OOF does the same work for me at one-tenth the cost. It's sort of mini-internal consulting, for very specific questions." For OOF services, Pfizer pays $15 to $35 per worker hour, far less than they'd pay the McKinseys of the world, whose rates typically start at $215 per hour.

Pfizer is alone in rolling out a large-scale knowledge-outsourcing program, but many companies are experimenting within individual departments. And U.S. conglomerates have started to scoop up outsourcing companies. RR Donnelley acquired OfficeTiger in 2006; Genpact, which Pfizer has also worked with, is 22% owned by GE.

Pfizer employees, though, don't care about such corporate machinations. They are simply smitten--particularly during budget season, when everyone suddenly needs a PowerPoint presentation. "It's kind of amazing," Cohen says. "I wonder what they used to do."

China Digital Times

asr: seems it has good sections on all topics and it seems balanced news/articles

Youth Culture
online culture
middle class
Tag: 'unpaid wages'

CDT Mission
China Digital Times (CDT) is a collaborative news website covering China's social and political transition and its emerging role in the world. CDT aims to use the new generation of participatory media technology to create a fully interactive network that will track and report news, facilitate conversations and debate, and share resources and knowledge in a virtual China community.

Our goal is to harness the distributive power of the Internet to advance the world's understanding of China. In a time of profound transformation, CDT takes an innovative approach to one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century: China's democratic transition, sustainable development and peaceful emergence in the global community

China Close To Becoming World’s Largest Internet Market By Users

he state-owned China Internet Network Information Center said that China’s total number of Internet users
- rose 53% to 210 million at the end of 2007
- up from 137 million at the end of 2006 and
- 162 million in June 2007.

According to the WSJ, China is now just five million users shy of surpassing the United States as the world’s largest Internet market

asr: see user comments which portrays:

4# Norman
Internet in China is completely different from here at the united states. In the US, internet becomes the backbone of business. It is essential tool for shopping, traveling, marketing and entertainment in additional to news and media. But in China, the internet is pretty much used for games, news and entertainments: video and music. Although the number of users is huge, most of users are playing internet games online. Yes, there are a lot of users who spend a lot of time on line. But the business value of the internet is low.
____________
45# lyy9981
As a Chinese living in Canada, I agree with posting #4 of Norman: the business value of Chinese internet is very low.

I did an experiment last year. I set up a Chinese website with Google AdWords. The website got hundreds visits in China every day, but Google AdWords didn’t record even one cent! In the same period, my another English website, which has only 30-60 visits per day, can generate $.30 - $1.00 dollar daily. Realizing how little value Chinese market was, I closed the website after one week.

This experiments taught me how tough Chinese internet market is. And for anyone who doesn’t speak Chinese and need to hire translators or programmers, the risk is even higher.

Also, don’t expect any original ideas would succeed in China. Because big Chinese websites can easily copy your ideas and promote their own clones with their huge networks and resources. Examples: Chinese version of Youtube （www.tudou.com） and Facebook （www.xiaonei.com）. Other examples: Yahoo China failed in China; and Baidu beats Google as China’s #1 search engine.

To sum up, Chinese internet has low value. If you don’t have much cash to burn, don’t go there.


_____________
48# Norman
Post #45 got to the point! Thanks.

Just forget to mention that I post a very best book I have ever read on how to apply colleges in one of the most popular chinese website in US. There are over 3000 clicks in two days of the post since Chinese parents care about their children’s education very much. The book is linked to my amazon associate which is has 40% discount of retailed price. I am so surprised that not even one person bought the book! Not only in China, even Chinese website here has traffic no business value.

Fed interest rate from 2004

Fed interest rate from 2004

Blackstone May Pull Out Of Eenadu Deal

Blackstone, the world’s largest leveraged buyout firm, is close to scrapping its PE deal for Hyderabad-based media group Ushodaya Enterprises, owners of Telugu publication Eenadu, according to sources familiar with the situation.

The PE giant had recently reduced the size of its original $275-million deal for picking a 26% stake in Ushodaya, announced in January 2007
asr: that is $1 Billion valuation
does this Ushodaya include Ramogi film studio? seems no based on post below ( for $1B valuation purpose? )
______________________
As part of the transaction, Ushodaya was raising $465 million (approximately Rs 2,000 crore), comprising of $275 million investment by Blackstone and $190 million in bank financing. The transaction was subject to regulatory approval by FIPB and Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

Ushodaya owns leading Telugu language newspaper - Eenadu and ETV - a private television broadcasting network. ETV runs regional language general entertainment and news channels. It has a footprint across Telugu, Bengali, Oriya, Kannada, Gujarati and Marathi languages. The parent company of Ushodaya, owns Ramoji Film City which is Asia’s largest studio.

______________________
While one relates to valuation, the other more important factor is that Blackstone reportedly doesn’t want to be seen as pushing through the deal when members of the ruling political party are opposing it. The US-based buyout firm does not want its future investments in the country being affected due to one transaction. According to some reports, certain Andhra Pradesh-based Congress politicians, who have a significant say at the national level of the party, have opposed the deal.

MySQL Performance

Cache Performance Comparison
- see results section
- see section: So what my recommendations would be about using these caches for your application ?
- look at lots of user comments at the end of the post to learn more

How fast can you sort data with MySQL ?
Look at all these posts under benchmarks

Query Optimization
Web Tuesday , Zurich, Switzerland, November 2007
Presentation covers some basic rules of queries optimization for MySQL including application based tuning such as avoiding queries if you do not need their results etc.

mysql-performance-presentations

Memcached: When You Absolutely Positively Have to Get It To Scale the Next Day

Memcached has long been the answer to most questions containing the word scale. There are some spectacular memcached installations out there. Facebook is said to run a 200 server with 3TB of memory solely for servicing memcached; Shopify, twitter, digg, Slashdot and just about every other public facing application depends on it. Facebook’s installation is said to deliver a 99% cache hit rate while servicing tens of thousands of requests a second.

Suppose your team have just finished working feverishly to implement “Virus-a-Go-Go”, your new Facebook widget that is guaranteed to soar to the top of the charts. You launch it, and sure enough you were right. Zillions of hits are suddenly raining down on your new widget.

Translation: they want a lot of time to make things faster, time you don’t have. What to do, what to do?

With appologies to Federal Express, the point of my title is that memcached may be one of the fastest things you can retrofit to your software to make it scale. Memcached when properly used has the potential to increase performance by hundreds or sometimes even thousands of times. I don’t know if you can quite manage it overnight, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Hopefully next time you are headed for trouble, you’ll start out with a memcached architecture in advance and buy yourself more time before you hit a scaling crunch. Meanwhile, let me tell you more about this wonder drug, memcached.

What is memcached?

Simply put, memcached sits between your database and whatever is generating too many queries on it and attempts to avoid repetitious queries by caching the answer in memory. If you ask it for something it already knows, it retrieves it very quickly from memory. If you ask it for something it doesn’t know, it gets it from the database, copies it into the cache for future reference and hands it over.

The beautiful thing about memcached is that it can usually be added to your software without huge structural changes being necessary. It sits as a relatively transparent layer that does the same thing your software has always done, but just a whole lot faster. Most of the big sites use memcached to good effect. Facebook, for example, uses 200 quad core machines that
each have 16GB of RAM to create a 3 Terabyte memcached that apparently has a 99% hit rate.

Here’s another beautiful thought: memcached gives you a way to leverage lots of machines easily instead of rewriting your software to eliminate the scalability bottleneck. You can run it on every spare machine you can lay hands on, and it soaks up available memory on those machines to get smarter and smarter and faster and faster. Cool! Think of it as a short term bandaid to help you overcome your own personal Multicore Crisis.


Cache Performance Comparison
- see results section
- see section: So what my recommendations would be about using these caches for your application ?
- look at lots of user comments at the end of the post to learn more

MySQL and BEA: Oracle and Sun Will Be At Each Other’s Throats!

MySQL and BEA: Oracle and Sun Will Be At Each Other’s Throats!
- One company that won’t be thrilled by the news is Oracle, makers of the Oracle database which has managed to seduce a large segment of the enterprise market into the proprietary Oracle on the basis that the open source options lacked support.
- With Sun backing the free MySQL option (and offering paid support) Oracle suddenly looks a bit expensive.



Welcome to Amazon Web Services -- one of smoothspan blog roll

Blogs about Software Development

Wordpress Blogs about Software Development
- seems lots of blog we need to dig to find specific area like 'project mangement' etc

For Executives, Entrepreneurs, and other Digerati who need to know about SaaS and Web 2.0.

SmoothSpan Blog
For Executives, Entrepreneurs, and other Digerati who need to know about SaaS and Web 2.0.

Bob Warfield , SmoothSpan Principal -- impressive resume

VisualBuzz
Some sites have it, some don't. These all do. Check 'em out!
- Adobe Flex 2 Component Explorer: A quick way of seeing all the stock UI gadgets offered by Flex, and a rich internet UI to do it in.
- ClickShirt: Because even T-shirt design can have visual buzz.

Buzzwords for Webbies
any good startup or even hip larger company wants to be fully buzzword compliant.
( check diagram at bottom )

Is Programming Like Music or Engineering, and Must it Be Unintuitive?

You are probably familiar with the observation many have made that the top 5% of programmers are perhaps 20 times more productive than the average programmer. I know this to be true, and have seen it many times. What does this have to do with the discussion? Simply this: the amount of experience does not seem to matter in determine whether you’re in that 5%. It does not seem to be possible to teach one who is not a 5% performer how to get there. I won’t try to prove that here, take my word for it, or at least ask yourself what it means if it is true.

What is more relevant is my observations on watching that 5% group. What did they do better?
- I used to say the thing that really set them apart was a facility with factoring of all kinds. Those were the words I used, but factoring has so many meanings these days that I feel I should clarify.
- The top performers were really good at flipping problems around and viewing them from many angles.
The top players could do it from extreme “meta” positions that were layers of abstraction away from the core problem.
- These people lived and breathed isomorphisms, whether or not they had any idea what the word meant. I’ve described the application of isomorphisms to creativity in an earlier post on “The Medici” effect. It’s worth a reread.

By contrast, the average performers tended to view everything according to a very limited set of models or formalisms they grasped.
- They would try to hammer every problem into one of those few models.
- In the worst cases, the models they were able to understand and employ were limited simply to basic structured programming constructs.
- With difficulty they could get control flow. They were not especially good at break


Is it any surprise that it takes many formalisms to make the disparate problems we face soluble with fewer clearer lines of code? I’m not surprised. I’ve fiddled with just a few domains and languages in my career, and there are many differences. Here are some I’ve played with:
- User interface is a surprisingly parallel problem space dealing with events. Most frameworks make this painful. I’ll bet there is an opportunity for a great language in this niche. I like Adobe’s Flex a lot, but it is far from perfect. Constraint oriented programming (Thinglab!) is closer, so I am very hopeful about Adobe Thermo raising the bar further.

- Creating new languages and pure computer science concepts seems to benefit hugely from Lisp.

You’ve probably guessed my problem with Joel’s approach. It’s probably fine if you are seeking to create a vocational school for factory programmers. But, the formalisms are the real meat. It isn’t the lines of code. The programmers who got the formalisms could grind out more code than any half dozen of the others combined. They did so almost automatically and unconsciously. I suspect Julliard doesn’t work quite as Joel envisions either. Do students there stretch their thinking about musics “formalisms”, or do they spend most of their time perfecting a single arrangement and composition?

To Build Better Software, You Need Fewer People (But Why?)

The logical conclusion for development managers is they should pay inordinate sums for the very best athletes, because they will only get 10 or so working productively on a team. The other logical conclusion is to invest in improving communication in any form possible.

I like to consider the following as worthwhile communication investments:
- Wikis and other online sources that are easily searchable.

- Sufficient face time. Working separately or at home is good for productivity drives, but you have to allow enough communication face time. I like to create a frequent venue where people tell us what they’re working on, solicit feedback, and give demos. Short self-contained development milestones facilitate opportunities to communicate and apply mid-course corrections.

- Screening for great communicators at interview time. I like to run folks through a mock architecture review. I have them choose some piece of software they’re proud of and present it to the group. I think this matters a lot more than impromptu brain teasers and the other ilk one sees in some interviews.

- Focusing on team chemistry. Some managers think their job is to put as many IQ points in the room as possible. I think it is to assemble a group of people that love the idea they’re working on and love working with the team they’re on.

I’ve put all this into practice for a long time, and gotten excellent results.

America's $400 Billion-Dollar Oil import

said in Jan/2008 McCain
"We are sending $400 billion of your dollars a year to oil-producing countries and look at those countries. They're not our friends," McCain said in Kalamazoo


2004 story
NEW YORK - At the rate things are going, the U.S. oil bill could top $250 billion this year
. If it happens, the bill would be nearly twice as high as two years ago. Also, the total bill to the U.S. for imported oil will exceed--even in real terms--that paid in the early 1980s.


Crude oil prices are hovering above the $49 per barrel mark based on fears of further disruptions in Iraq, clashes with terror forces in Saudi Arabia and the impact of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. The $50 barrier is not far off.

But even if prices fall back slightly, the average price for the year will top $39 per barrel. The result will be the largest oil bill for the U.S. ever. The total U.S. bill for all oil will, taking inflation into account, still fall short of the levels of the early 1980s oil-crisis years. But since the U.S. imports much more of its oil than it did then, the bill for oil imports will be at an all-time high, assuming U.S. usage patterns remain more or less unchanged.

During the first eight months of this year, the price of oil has risen from just under $29. If prices stay at current levels--or even if they fall back a bit--the average price for the year will be around $39 per barrel. Last year, the U.S. consumed about 6.2 billion barrels, up 4.2% from a year earlier. At the same time, imports rose by 6.5%.

If the price of oil stays a bit above $48 for the rest of the year, and usage continues to rise, the quarter-trillion oil bill will be a reality. Just over $170 billion of that total will flow overseas.



Big Bill At The Spigot
Year Price ($) Total Oil Consumption (in billions of barrels) Bill For Imported Oil ($bil) Total Oil Bill ($bil)
1981 $38.00 5.10 $74.91 $193.80
1999 17.51 5.76 63.35 100.94
2000 28.26 5.94 107.77 167.98
2001 22.95 6.10 91.31 139.91
2002 24.10 5.95 92.77 143.31
2003 28.50 6.20 116.89 176.57
2004* 39.00 6.46 170.36 252.02
Prices not adjusted for inflation. * Projected. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration


The total U.S. energy bill is still much less than it was in real terms in 1981 when the price in 2004 dollars was over $79 per barrel. At that time, the U.S. was spending 13% of gross domestic product on energy, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. By 2000, despite a surge in oil prices that year, the U.S. was paying just 7.2% of GDP for its energy. The EIA doesn't report figures for the years following 2000. But with oil prices at current levels, energy costs could reach 7.5% of GDP, the highest level since 1992.

One result of the price increase has been that oil stocks like ExxonMobil (nyse: XOM - news - people ), BP (nyse: BP - news - people ), Chevron (nyse: CVX - news - people ), Halliburton (nyse: HAL - news - people ) and Schlumberger (nyse: SLB - news - people ) are all up by at least 25% since a year ago.

All told, Americans will likely spend about $75 billion or 43% more for oil this year than last year and 76% more than in 2002. To put that increase in perspective, $75 billion is equal to the amount Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) will pay out to shareholders over the next four years, is larger than the budget of any U.S. government department, is about the budget for the state of California and was roughly the same as the Bush Administration's appropriation request for the Iraq war in 2003.

BSNL valued at $100 billion

If BSNL manages to raise Rs 40,000 crore by selling a 10% stake, it would value the company at an amazing Rs 4,00,000 crore (more than $100 billion). The market valuation of India’s largest private telecom operator — Bharti Airtel — is about $46 billion, followed by Reliance Communications which is valued at about $41 billion. Telecom stocks enjoy record valuations in India as the country, which offers the lowest cellular tariffs in the world, also boasts of the fastest-growing mobile market. India has registered average monthly adds of over 7.5 million for the last eight months even as analysts say this figure could touch the 10 million mark from Q2, 2008. From a little over 260 million telephone connections at present, it is projected that the country will have over 500 million telephone connections by 2010.

Apple sold 4 billion songs 4 million iPhones

Apple sold 4 million iPhones to date, selling 20,000 iphones every day
Marketshare in the US is an amazing 19.5% of the smartphone market

4 billion songs sold.
20 million sold on Christmas day.

125 million TV shows.
7 million movies
Steve job says "did not meet our expectations."


Live from Macworld 2008: Steve Jobs keynote -- This has whole keynote pics...
In Pictures: 10 Great Steve Jobs Moments

Apple TV take2 - Flicker, YouTube built-in , It no computer is required(still syncs to your computer), watch pre-programmed podcasts ..... you buy for these

khoslaventures

"An entrepreneur is someone who dares to dream the dreams and is foolish enough to try to make those dreams come true."

"Innovative bottom up methods will solve problems that now seem intractable- from energy to poverty to disease. Science and technology, powered by the fuel of entrepreneurial energy, are the largest multipliers of resources we have to solve our many social problems."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinod_Khosla

Atanu Dey on India’s Development

Khosla's massive bet on renewable energy as the answer to climate change and peak oil (and big profits) may not even be his most ambitious scheme to remake the world. In 2002, Khosla co-wrote a paper with development economist Atanu Dey sketching out a plan to boost economic growth in rural India. It's hard to think bigger than a bid to upgrade the living standards of some 700 million people -- as the paper notes, one out of 10 people on this planet is a rural Indian. (Thanks to the India Economy blog for the link.)

The paper is titled "RISC: Rural Infrastructure Services Commons."

Wide range of topics on India's development at high intellect level.
He authored RISC model for Rural india with Vinod khosla ..

India’s economic growth depends critically on the development of its 700-million strong rural population living in 600,000 villages. The challenge is to manage their transition from a village-centric agricultural-based economy to a city-centric non-agricultural economy urgently.

Economic growth is both a cause and consequence of urbanization. Cities are engines of economic growth because they give rise to economies of scale, scope, and aggregation. The aggregation of supply and demand for economic goods and services (and thus for infrastructure) which accounts for cities. Availability of low cost infrastructure in turn makes the availability of a wide range of services possible in cities as opposed to very small villages.

People need access to a range of services which allow them to engage in economically productive activities. These services include, at a minimum, market access, educational, health, financial, entertainment, transportation, and communications—these enhance life and livelihood. Affordable infrastructure makes service provision commercially viable. However, infrastructure investment is ‘lumpy’ – the average cost of provision of infrastructure is inversely related to the scale of the operation.

Resource limitations preclude the provision of infrastructure at every village. Moreover, instead of 600,000 small villages, the future population distribution has to be in a much smaller number of much larger habitations – if the majority of the labor has to be engaged in non-agricultural activities. The basic geographical structure of population distribution will eventually undergo a change because people migrate out of villages into cities.

RISC (Rural Infrastructure and Services Commons) is an economic model which can catalyze rural economic development by providing rural populations a comprehensive set of relevant services. It works within the constraints of limited resources by focusing attention to and concentrating investments at specific locations to obtain economies of scale, scope, and agglomeration.

A RISC provides a reliable, standardized, competitively-priced infrastructure platform consisting of power, broadband telecommunications, and the physical plant (building, water, air-conditioning, sanitation, security). This is achieved by the coordinated and cooperative investment of firms that specialize in the component activities.

The user services such as market making, financial intermediation, education, health, social services, governmental services, entertainment, logistics, etc, make use of the infrastructure services. Market forces determine the set of services offered at any location. The availability of the infrastructure reduces the cost of the services and therefore the prices that the users face.

The total rural population of India can be covered by about 6,000 RISCs each servicing the needs of approximately 100,000 people. By providing a full complement of services, RISC creates a ‘micro-city’ which seeds the formation of a city by drawing to it the population from the surrounding areas. RISC focuses on the development of the rural population, and not on the development of villages which are destined to be extinct anyway.

[The RISC concept paper was jointly written by Vinod Khosla and Atanu Dey. It is available at www.khoslaventures.com]

Rural Development of India

This site is an expression of a person who consider "Rural development" as his obsession. Here you find his views on Social entrepreneurship, Innovations, Rural Markets, etc.

Social Investing & Rural Entrepreneurship

Aavishkaar's mission is to support rural and semi-urban entrepreneurship with the provision of timely and appropriate financial investment, management support, professional expertise, and other resources.

Aavishkaar looks for start-ups and functioning enterprises that impact the average rural or semi-urban Indian. These startups and enterprises either increase income in or provide valuable goods or services to rural and semi-urban India.

Aavishkaar offers various financial solutions to fledgling enterprises that fulfill its primary investment criteria so as to help them grow to a point whereby they can be self-sustaining or be in a position to acquire funds from larger institutions.


When driven by a passionate desire to see India scale the heights of economic development rapidly and enter the ranks of advanced nations, there are very limited avenues to take to be a participant in the process. How does one become an active participant in the process of development?

Support investments, rather than grants, inculcate a discipline that values capital and the need to grow it, through prudent business decisions. This ensures two vital objectives.
1) The ability of the enterprise to grow on its own steam over a period and
2) give back enough to the investing institution to continue effecting change in and through other ventures.

Huda plans joint development

The state government is planning a joint development to raise revenue out of Empire, which otherwise is popularly known as Kokapet land, in the city outskirts. With Hyderabad Urban Development Authority (Huda) failing to attract buyers for the 75 acres out of 100 acres put for auction, the government has changed its strategy.

Official sources said Huda was asked to explore the possibilities of developing land under the public-private partnership instead of putting up the land for auction again. “Instead of putting land for auction, the agency would ask the developers to compete for the joint development and pick the one that quoted high rates for the government,” said a chief operating officer of a real estate company.

“New Delhi-based Omaxe, which bid for 25 acres in Kokapet, evinced keen interest in joint development,” a senior official said, adding that two more real estate giants — Unitech and DLF — also want to become partners in the new initiative. The officers were also considering restricting access to joint development only to a few companies with credibility. No final decision has been taken yet.

“Companies that already bid will be interested in taking up the project at the same place,” the official said. The state government transferred 400 acres of land in Kokapet to Huda out of which 125 acres were already earmarked for IT SEZ and 25 acres were recently sold out in auction.

Five townships to come up near Hyderabad

January 13, 2008
The Hyderabad Urban Development Authority (HUDA) will develop five world class townships in and around Greater Hyderabad.

The Chief Minister, Dr Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, had given his in-principle approval for HUDA’s proposal on new townships at a review meeting here on Saturday, according to a release.

The five townships proposed to be developed are Jawahar Nagar, Discovery City at Srinagar, an NRI Township at Budvel, Techno City at Tellapur and Medi City in Ameenpur.

Observing that the Hitech City had become very congested without any scope for further development, the Chief Minister had asked the HUDA officials to ensure proper planning of the new townships.

Jawahar Nagar project

On the proposed development of the Jawahar Nagar region (situated to the north of Hyderabad), the HUDA officials explained to the Chief Minister that the township, once fully completed, would provide four lakh direct and indirect jobs and would attract 40 per cent of the population from other areas.

The presence of reputed institutions such as BITS Pilani, and lakes and resorts would be an added advantage, they said.
The proposed township would come up on 2,118 hectares of land.

Other proposed projects

Dr Reddy had also approved the draft master plan of Tellapur Techno City Township, which is to be developed in a self-contained and self-sustainable manner.

For the Discovery City that is to come up at Srinagar in the city, the developers (Ramky Group) had submitted the draft development agreement for HUDA’s approval.

The other townships were proposed to be developed at Budvel near Rajendranagar (for non-resident Indians) and Ameenpur (for medical institutions).

Beyond Hyderabad, cities and towns like Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Tirupati, Kurnool, Guntur, Warangal and Nellore would also be developed, the Chief Minister said, according to a release.

The NANO Effect - India Becoming Hub For Low-cost Innovations

Much has been written about how the Nano from Tata Motors has changed forever the way India is perceived globally. Now after all the euphoria begins to subside, it’s time to ask some key questions. Is this the visible face of a wave of innovation that’s sweeping across India? And is India poised to become a hub for low-cost innovations for the world?

Ujwal Parghi would agree. As director of Shri Kamadhenu Electronics, the Anandbased company founded by seven young entrepreneurs with less than half a million rupees as seed capital, he’s been part of this wave. His firm has developed Akashganga, an automatic milk collection and accounting system that has made lives of dairy farmers in cooperatives, much easier. What previously took over five minutes, now gets done in just 30 seconds, saving dairy farmers from serpentine queues where they had to worry about their milk getting spoilt by the time it was measured. The machine incorporates a milk analyser that provides data on six parameters of milk simultaneously and helps monitor adulteration.

“This electronic system has brought total transparency in the system as farmers immediately come to know about quality and value of their milk with a printed slip in their hands,” says Parghi. Little wonder that Akashganga has, in addition to big dairy and food clients such as Amul and Nestle India, transformed milk collection systems across Maharashtra, Bihar, Jharkhand and Rajasthan and has even found a ready market in countries like Kenya, Uganda, Vietnam and Nepal.

The Akashganga example is just one of the numerous and successful low cost innovations that have been designed to meet the needs of consumers in emerging markets such as India, and go beyond the innovations driven by big businesses that get more attention. Says Prof Anil Gupta of IIM Ahmedabad, “We can’t rely on large corporates alone to produce innovation. The world over it’s small companies that produce the most innovative products and services. But for that we need to build a strong innovation support system.”

In Bangalore, ReaMetrix has devised an immune monitoring test for HIV-positive patients, which has cut the cost of testing by one-fifth, thereby reaching out to the lower sections of the society that tend to have the highest infection rates. Now priced at Rs 125, the test earlier cost Rs 600-750 to administer. Moreover the reagents were in liquid form and had to be maintained and transported at a specified temperature, failing which they were spoilt. ReaMetrix managed to develop the reagents in a dry state, so they can now be transported over long distances without refrigeration even in harsh climatic conditions. “This is innovation, not some reverse-engineering or copying. And it creates sustained economic activity,” says Dr Bala Manian, the company’s founder-CEO, who’s also a serial entrepreneur and a scientist with 35 patents to his name.

ReaMetrix is supplying the product to countries in Africa, which has the highest incidence of AIDS, and to Brazil apart from some of the best-known labs in India.

“There’s a lot of innovative entrepreneurial activity in India today, far more than it was in say 2001, and we have invested in several such companies that show promise to attain leadership position within the next 4-5 years,” says KP Balaraj, founder and MD of Sequoia Capital, a Bangalore-based VC fund.

Similarly, Ahmedabad-based Troikaa Pharmaceuticals has successfully introduced an injectible (Dynapar AQ) of lower dosage volume for relief in post-operative pain, trauma pain, fracture, renal and biliary colic and other acute painful conditions. The Rs 105-crore company managed to bring down the dose from 3 ml earlier to 1 ml now at Rs 14 per unit. “Our aim is to innovate on such products and reach more markets where they are most needed,” says Ketan Patel, CMD, Troikaa Pharmaceuticals, who plans to take the product to Latin America, the EU, CIS and African countries. Says Prof Srinath Srinivasa of IIIT-Bangalore, “India is poised to be at the forefront of low-cost innovations that can have a global market. It is easier to innovate in this sphere because of the low costs involved in setting up an IT-based industry than a brick and mortar factory or say a retail outlet.”

Indeed, technology has played a key role, and most innovations coming out of India are leveraging this combination of low cost and high tech to produce killer products for bottom-of-the-pyramid consumers. Take for instance the Gramateller, an ATM that incorporates a fingerprint reader to authenticate the account holder, obviating the need for an ATM card and PIN. The machine, developed by Chennai-based Vortex Engineering and the Tenet group of IIT Madras, is enabling a low-cost delivery model for banking services in rural areas and locations not covered by banks so far. “India can be an innovation hub if it continues what it has been doing. However, it’s important that companies focus on marketing their products to their target audience as well,” says Vortex’s managing director L Kannan.

Many low-cost innovations actually create new markets where none existed, and kickstart a category for others to follow. Ask Mukesh Bhandari, CMD of Electrotherm India. His is the first company to launch e-bikes in India at an affordable price point of Rs 13,000 in early 2006. The bike runs on an electric battery. “As we are nearing China’s population levels we need to look at providing environmental-friendly means of transportation to our people,” he says.

Bad roads and rising fuel costs prompted this entrepreneur to produce bikes that are 20% cheaper than the even the ones coming in from China. With sales of more than 50,000 bikes, and a share of 60% in the category, Bhandari estimates that his company has helped save $1 million in fuel costs per month for the nation. Now he intends to export these bikes to emerging markets in South East Asia, Africa and Latin America.

There are hurdles though to innovations and that’s the challenge for entrepreneurs. Says Vineet Rai, CEO, Avishkaar Venture Management Service, which finances rural innovations and supports them towards becoming profitable enterprises, “India has always had talent, which is required for any country to become an innovation hub but then what we may lag behind in is infrastructure.”

But that isn’t deterring entrepreneurs who are aiming for that one big revolutionary idea that truly democratises a product or service. Tide Technocrats Pvt Ltd (TTPL), which specialises in rural energy solutions is one such company. It’s pico and micro hydel devices provide cheap power to rural areas that lack consistent access to grid power by utilising locally available natural water flow systems. It’s biomass processing system taps an alternate source of energy for rural consumption. Says K Dinesh, partner TTPL, “We address the alternative fuel need for power plants and make energy affordable for the masses.” While providing electrification in far-flung remote areas the bio mass processing would create employment and entrepreneurship avenues for villagers. The company has developed a direct sales agent based strategy for reaching out to areas interested in micro hydel Installations.

For India this could be just the beginning of a string of innovations that will find applicability across the world. IIMA’s Gupta cautions against getting carried way by the celebrations in the wake of the Nano, and suggests that small businesses look at moving up the value chain, which will spur them to innovate. “We are not there yet,” he says.

Electronic City Project’ At Chevella To See Some Movement Soon… !!??

For starters an electronic city is being proposed to be co-developed along with the Wakf Board at Alur on the outskirts of the city.

A staggering 3,65,000 acres of land all across the state is under the control of the Wakf Board. Half of it is around Hyderabad, but a large part of it has been encroached upon. This is valued at thousands of crores of rupees.

In the model proposed by the government, the Andhra Pradesh Industrial and Infrastructure Corporation will hold 40 per cent of the equity, the remaining 60 per cent will be with the Wakf Board.

R2I forum experiences

R2I jobs:Starting out on your own , dated Feb 2007
asr:Good discussion, one very good post
one good post:
Fifteen years later when I will be 55, keeping my job maybe riskier than maintaining my business.

How true!!! If you think 15 years is a distant future, just look at past 15 years and how fast they went. Its pathetic being a guy 50+ years old trying to keep his job. I cannot wait to quit my job and start on my own...It will be a 5 years struggle but then there is a good chance that I will be able to make a decent income by then (even if its not comparable with what the regular job would bring, I can rule the roost without having to worry about being fired or insulted or having to find another job).

another satyam Program manager post
I've been offered a Program Manager position in Bangalore with a growing telecom firm. The position is a combination of pre-sales and delivery (program management) in the managed services / outsourcing area (networking - not software). Current offer is 25 lacs CTC of which about 3% are benefits (i.e. not payable in cash). There are no stock incentives but company willing to pay for relocation.
I have 15 years US experience (MBA and MS) with leading firms in the telecom sector . Would value your opinion if you think this is a reasonable/good/poor offer.



_________________________________________________________________________________
customs is 15% on ALL electronic items

My experience on customs is 15% on ALL electronic items. If its some value is depreciated and dutied 15% on that depreciated value. However, if there are any duplicate items (like I had 2 DVD players), they'll duty 35% on the second one. One computer (desktop) is duty-free.

Bring all you can and convince the inspector that's it few yrs old and few hundred dollars less and you should be fine.

Bribing isn't really there but the agent kinda tricks you to pay some and might keep it himself or share with his buddies to get the signatures done quickly.

I'll post my R2H experience pretty soon. Been almost 3 months now. :-

OpenOffice my personal usage experiences

Open Office Draw: for drawings, charts, flow charts etc..
observations:
- goood thing you can export drawing to JPG, PNG or PDF formats and have it on blog/web
- for internal software development this is good . This may be time consuming for making and to publish to web. If web based draw tools allow(?) you can export as PJEG so that you can put on blog/web wherever you like. seems you can with zoho "Export to html for off-line viewing."

- seems zoho show is front runner at this time with "Support of shapes, symbols" , google docs is at works soon


Tips in using Darw:
- after you enter text in rectangle boxes select Format->Text->Fit to Frame , this give big text font and adjusts to whole box ( it looks good viewing this big text vs. small text )
- once you make couples of boxes make them as group so that you can resize/move as group
- to increase the draw area go to Format->Page then increase width/height of the page ( on screen ruler drag is not working )
- once you export drawing as jpeg file , take file path like c:\docs\darw1.jpg and paste this file on browser then you see how it looks when added to blog. Adjust page width/height in such a way that it shows as one web page image ( not going beyond viewing area). It seems page size 11 x 6.5 gives good one page jpeg on the blog/web

Here is samle draw:

Home Theater

Atlantic 8-Shelf Steel Multimedia Storage Rack
15 customer reviews 4 starts

Atlantic Multimedia Cabinet (DRA280MM03) (DRA280MM03)

My Modern Living Room

Dream Home Theater System

Home Theater Projectors

second State Reorganisation Commission (SRC)

UPA for new State Reorganization Commission
Zeenews Bureau

New Delhi, Jan 08: With the general elections and the assembly polls in some states approaching fast, the UPA leadership is planning to formally urge the Centre to set up second State Reorganisation Commission (SRC) to look into the demands for creating new states.

The move also gains significance, as Andhra Pradesh, which is gearing up for state Assembly elections 15 months from now, has stood witness to the rising demand for a separate Telengana state.

The demand for creation of new states is bound to intensify in the coming days as similar voices for separate states are gaining momentum in other parts of the country.

The move if actually implemented could well redraw the internal map of India.

However, brushing aside all criticism, UPA has favoured the creation of new states citing administrative reasons.

The second State Reorganisation Commission (SRC) will be an advisory body and recommend altering the boundaries of existing states and carving out new ones.

The recommendations of the first State Reorganisation Commission that was set up in the 1950s, led to the formation of the country’s southern states on the basis of linguistic division.
Similarly Gujarat got separated from Maharashtra.

The second SRC is also expected to look deeper into the legitimacy and usefulness of demands for new states coming from places like Vidharbha, Telengana and the Darjeeling Hills.

There have been speculations in the national media and in the political circles that Uttar Pradesh – the nerve centre of Indian politics - should be broken up to ensure better governance.

Commodity trading message boards groups

we need to find and recored Commodity trading message boards groups

IndianCommodityMaster · Indian Commodity Master
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/IndianCommodityMaster/
( got from http://groups.yahoo.com/search?query=crude+oil+futures ) -- good to tap some indian traders

http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/Berjangka_Derivatives/

http://thewall.pitnews.com/

- seesm motly fool do not have commodity boards

Gold rallies to new record on Bernanke comments $897

Jan. 10, 2008: Gold futures rallied to a new all-time high Thursday, after the dollar fell sharply as investors interpreted Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's prepared remarks as a sign that the central bank will further cut interest rates.
Jan. 10, 2008
Gold for February delivery soared as high as $897.30 an ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange, a new record high that surpassed the previous record of $894.40 set on Wednesday.

In light of recent changes in the outlook for and the risks to growth, additional policy easing may be necessary," Bernanke said in a speech to a business group in Washington.
Bernanke added the central bankers "stand ready to take substantive additional action as needed to support growth and to provide adequate insurance against downside risks."
The dollar fell sharply following Bernanke's comments. The dollar index, which tracks the performance of the greenback against a basket of major currencies, dropped 0.7% to 75.885. See Currencies.

"Bernanke's comments indicate the Fed had done nothing to dissuade the market from expecting a 50 basis-point rate cut later this month," said Marc Chandler, senior currency strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., in a note. "The dollar has been hit on the news, and the equity market has moved higher."


Mark O'Byrne, director at Gold and Silver Investments Ltd., said that "momentum remains with gold, and the $900 mark could be reached."
"The fact that many analysts and traders are now expecting a pullback could be a contrary indicator, and gold could rally to $900 prior to a correction," O'Byrne said in a note early Thursday.

commodity markets basic education

following links provide basic education on trading commodity markets

http://www.investorsdepot.com/futures101.htm#buying

The 12 Golden Rules for Successful Trading

https://www.lind-waldock.com/quotes_charts_news/ -- provide prices on commodities
After logging into trail account, go to Accoutts->Margin Requirements ( click this link). These margin requirements are automatically updated on a daily basis, but can change at any time. --
IM = Initial (Original) Margin
MM = Maintenance Margin


https://www.lind-waldock.com/ on this link there is a paper-trade account link .. see
Practice Trading Risk-Free
Paper-trade commodities in a virtual trading environment with a free $50,000 simulated trading account. Login to Lind SimTrade.

menu The Markets-->Contracts-> has all contracts
note: for Crudu oil every $1 ( one dollar) changes in prices translate to $1000 profit/loss per contract
for gold every $10 change in gold price translate to $1000 profit/loss per contract

http://www.thepitmaster.com/futures/trad1a.htm

Most often asked questions and answers

http://www.kshitij.com/oil/oilcontract.shtml

http://ezinearticles.com/?Commodities-Trading-101---Do-You-Know-The-Basics-Of-Commodities-Trading?&id=461959

_________________________________________________________________________
Lind-waldac Margin Requirements

Margin requirements below indicate initial margin to take a new position and maintenance margin to hold a current position in the market, on a net basis.

These margin requirements are automatically updated on a daily basis, but can change at any time. Please contact your Trade Desk or broker for current requirements.

Abbreviations:
IM = Initial (Original) Margin
MM = Maintenance Margin

Margins are listed in the currency in which the contract is denominated. Please contact your Trade Desk or broker for margin rates on:

* Non-U.S. markets
* Spreads
* Hedge rates for qualified clients

Delivery month margins generally go into effect either on the first business day of the month or when the daily price limit is removed from the contract, whichever comes first.

All margin calls must be met on the same day your account is called for additional margin. Information derived from sources believed to be reliable.

Security futures margins are the greater of 20% of the contract value, based on the previous day's settlement price, or $120.

Commodity Exchange IM MM
10YR INT SWAP CBT 2,025 1,500
30-DAY FED FUND CBT 1,013 750
AUSTRALIAN $ CGBX 2,430 1,800
B-POUND CGBX 2,700 2,000
BARLEY (WCE) WCE 203 150
BIG NASDAQ CGBX 16,250 13,000
BIG S&P CGBX 22,500 18,000
BIG SILVER ECBT CBT 4,050 3,000
C-DOLLAR CGBX 3,105 2,300
CBOT 5-YR NOTE CBT 1,013 750
CBT 10-YR NOTE CBT 1,620 1,200
CBT-2-YR NOTE CBT 945 700
CCI INDEX NYF 4,000 4,000
CFE S&P VARIANC CFE 6,875 5,500
CFE VIX INDEX CFE 2,250 1,800
CME AA BUTTER CMEP 1,215 900
CME EUROYEN CGBX 10,125 7,500
CMX ALUMINUM CMX 2,700 2,000
CMX GOLD CMX 4,050 3,000
CMX SILVER CMX 6,075 4,500
COCOA CSC 1,260 900
COFFEE CSC 3,780 2,700
COPPER CMX 6,413 4,750
CORN CBT 1,080 800
CRUDE OIL NYM 6,075 4,500
DJ AIG INDEX CBT 2,295 1,700
DJ STOX 50 EURX 2,650 2,650
DOW JONES CBT 7,005 5,604
E-MINI S&P CGBX 4,500 3,600
EC/JY XRATE GBX CGBX 540,000 400,000
EMINI FX-EURO CGBX 1,283 950
EMINI J-YEN CGBX 1,350 1,000
EMINY CRUDE NYM 3,038 2,250
EMINY HEAT OIL NYM 3,038 2,250
EMINY NO-LEAD NYM 3,038 2,250
EU/BP (GLBX) CGBX 1,215 900
EU/SF XRATE GBX CGBX 1,755 1,300
EURODOLLAR CGBX 878 650
EURX 3-EURIBOR EURX 625 625
EURX DAX INDEX EURX 14,288 14,288
EURX E-BOBL EURX 800 800
EURX E-BUND EURX 1,400 1,400
EURX E-BUXL EURX 3,000 3,000
EURX E-SCHATZ EURX 350 350
EURX SWISS10YR EURX 1,300 1,300
FEEDER CATTLE CMEP 1,350 1,000
FNX BP/JY NYF 864,500 650,000
FNX BP/SF NYF 4,123 3,100
FNX EU/BP NYF 998 750
FNX EU/JY NYF 465,500 350,000
GLBX CASH BUT CMEP 608 450
GOLD 100 ECBT CBT 4,050 3,000
GSC INDEX CMEP 5,700 3,800
HKE HANG SENG HKFE 159,850 159,850
HKE HIBOR 3M HKFE 3,633 3,633
HTG OIL NYME NYM 6,075 4,500
ICE WTI CRUDE IPE 6,500 6,500
IMM 2K RUSSELL CMEP 26,250 21,000
IMM FX EURO CGBX 2,565 1,900
IPE BRENT CRUDE IPE 5,600 5,600
IPE GAS OIL IPE 4,500 4,500
J-YEN CGBX 2,700 2,000
KC VALUE LN ELC KBT 1,000 800
LCE BARLEY LIF 200 200
LCE COCOA LIF 540 540
LCE COFFEE$ LIF 455 455
LCE WHEAT LIF 170 170
LEAN HOGS CMEP 1,215 900
LFFE EURIBOR LIF 575 575
LFFE EUROSWISS LIF 450 450
LFFE FTSE 100 LIF 3,000 3,000
LFFE JGB LIF 1,630,000 1,630,000
LFFE LG GILT LIF 1,610 1,610
LFFE MINI FTSE LIF 1,228 909
LIFFE SUGAR LIF 1,820 1,820
LIVE CATTLE CMEP 1,080 800
LUMBER CMEP 1,650 1,100
ME 10YR CAN BND ME 1,280 1,280
ME 3MO BA ME 311 311
ME S&P CD60 ME 5,026 5,026
MEFF E-10YR MFF 3,000 3,000
MEFF IBX35E MFF 2,700 2,000
MEXICAN PESO CGBX 1,875 1,500
MIDCAP 400 CGBX 20,000 16,000
MINI BEANS CBT 540 400
MINI COFFEE CSC 1,260 900
MINI CORN CBT 216 160
MINI DOW ECBT CBT 3,503 2,802
MINI GOLD ECBT CBT 1,350 1,000
MINI MIDCAP E CGBX 4,000 3,200
MINI RBOB GAS CGBX 3,375 2,500
MINI RUSSELL CGBX 5,250 4,200
MINI SILVER ECB CBT 810 600
MINI WHEAT CBT 405 300
MTF CAC40 JMB MATF 2,600 2,600
NATURAL GAS NYM 6,750 5,000
NEW ZEALAND $ CGBX 2,430 1,800
NIKKEI 225 CGBX 5,000 4,000
NY COTTON CTN 1,680 1,200
NYME NO-LEAD NYM 6,075 4,500
OATS CBT 608 450
ORANGE JUICE CTN 1,890 1,350
PALLADIUM NYM 2,025 1,500
PB BELLY FZN CMEP 1,620 1,200
PLATINUM NYM 3,375 2,500
R/J CRB NYF 1,600 1,600
RBOB GASOLINE NYM 6,750 5,000
ROUGH RICE CBT 675 500
S-FRANC CGBX 1,755 1,300
SFE 10Y BOND SFE 1,600 1,600
SFE 3YR BOND SFE 950 950
SFE 90DY BILL SFE 500 500
SFE SPI 200 SFE 8,000 8,000
SHRT STERLING LIF 312 312
SMALL NASDAQ100 CGBX 3,250 2,600
SMX EUROYEN SMX 10,125 7,500
SMX MINI JGB SMX 108,000 80,000
SMX NIKKEI SMX 387,500 310,000
SOY MEAL CBT 1,823 1,350
SOY OIL CBT 945 700
SOYBEANS CBT 2,700 2,000
SUGAR CSC 910 650
T-BILL CMEP 405 300
T-BOND CBT 2,295 1,700
TSE JGB10 TSE 750,000 750,000
TSE TOPIX TSE 335,000 335,000
US DOLLAR IND NYF 1,064 800
WHEAT CBT 2,025 1,500
WHEAT KCBT KBT 1,875 1,500
WHEAT MPLS MGE 1,885 1,450
WHITE SUGAR LCE LCE 1,670 1,670
WPG CANOLA WCE 216 160
WPG FLAXSEED WCE 270 200