Lets Talk ...

Interesting....

2007-11-29T23:10:00.000-08:00

1. Winning isn't everything. But wanting to win is.
2. You would achieve more, if you don't mind who gets the credit.
3. When everything else is lost, the future still remains.
4. Don't fight too much. Or the enemy would know your art of war .
5. The only job you start at the top is when you dig a grave.
6. If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for everything.
7. If you do little things well, you'll do big ones better.
8. Only thing that comes to you without effort is old age.
9. You won't get a second chance to make the first impression .
10. Only those who do nothing do not make mistakes.
11. Never take a problem to your boss unless you have a solution.
12. If you are not failing you're not taking enough risks.
13. Don't try to get rid of bad temper by losing it.
14. If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
15. Those who don't make mistakes usually don't make anything
16. There are two kinds of failures. Those who think and never do, and those who do and never think.
17. Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.
18. All progress has resulted from unpopular decisions.
19. Change your thoughts and you change your world.
20. Understanding proves intelligence, not the speed of the learning.
21. There are two kinds of fools in this world. Those who give advise and those who don't take it.
22. The best way to kill an idea is to take it to a meeting.
23. Management is doing things right. Leadership is doing the right things.
24. Friendship founded on business is always better than business founded on friendship.

B+

2007-11-29T22:58:00.000-08:00

Keeping Yourself Positive
By: Brian Tracy

The most important thing you do for your success is to take control of the suggestive elements in your environment. Be sure that what you are seeing and listening to is consistent with the goals you want to achieve.

Listen Your Way to Success

Listen to educational audio programs in your car. The average person drives 12,000 to 25,000 miles per year which works out to between 500 and 1,000 hours per year that the average person spends in his or her car. You can become an expert in your field by simply listening to educational audio programs as you drive from place to place.

Take Courses in Your Field

Attend seminars given by experts in your field. Take additional courses and learn everything you possibly can. Learn from the experts. Ask them questions, write them letters, read their books, read their articles and listen to people with proven track records in the area in which you want to be successful.

Get Around the Right People

Associate only with positive, success-oriented people. Get around winners. As we say, fly with the eagles. You can't fly with the eagles if you keep scratching with the turkeys. Get away from the go-nowhere types and above all, get away from negative people. Get away from negative coworkers. If you've got a negative boss, seriously consider changing jobs. Associating on a regular basis with negative people is enough in itself to condemn you to a life of underachievement, frustration and failure. Associate only with positive people. Get around winners.

Visualize Your Goals

The last thing before you sleep and the first thing in the morning, think about and visualize your goals as realities. See your goal as though it already existed. Your subconscious mind is only activated by affirmations and pictures that are received in the present tense. See your goal vividly just before you go to sleep. See yourself performing at your best. See the situations that you're facing working out exactly the way you want them to.

Feed Yourself Mental Pictures

See yourself living the kind of life that you want to live. See yourself with the kind of relationships, the kind of health, the kind of car, the kind of home you really want. Visualize just before you fall asleep at night. The first thing you do when you get up in the morning is to feed yourself mental pictures. Those are the two times of the day when your subconscious mind is most receptive to new programming, when you fall asleep and when you wake up.

Action Exercises

Here are two things you can do, all day long, to keep your mind and emotions focused on your goals and financial success:

First, listen to audio programs in your car and when you travel around. Continue feeding your mind with a stream of high-quality, educational, motivational material that moves you toward your goal.

Second, resolve to associate with positive, optimistic people most of the time. Get around winners and get away from negative people who criticize, condemn and complain. This can change your life as much as any other factor.

"Increase Your Contacts, Expand Your Influence and Build Your Business Faster!"
You've heard the saying... "it's not WHAT you know, but WHO you know"... how many times has this proved to be true?

Prashanth Rai

ERI - Desalination - Water - VC - Entrepreneur

2007-02-17T11:14:00.000-08:00

Was reading this interesting interview at Sramana Mitra's Blog , Its an interview of HP Michlet, focussing on ERI (Energy Recovery Inc). I am going to list out some of the points that i found interesting for the interview.

What our device does is it recuperates up to 98% of the energy of the brine or the rejected high pressure stream and circles this energy back into the loop. But the practical consequence of this is that we de facto reduce the energy consumption of converting seawater to fresh water by two thirds.

Amazing economics: today, it costs $6-8 to desalinize one gallon of sea water and turn it into drinkable water; with this (ERI/PX - Ceramic pressure exchanger) technology, one is able to do this for 80c.

Desalination world can typically be divided into two camps. One is called thermal which is really an evaporation technology and the other is reverse osmosis.

Middle East has been all about thermal. Just because they’ve had abundant energy and there really has been no opportunity cost attached to this energy

As a function of isobaric technology that we are part of, is that reverse osmosis is going from a historic share of about one third of the market to 60% and I think we will see it stabilize around 80%.

Current state/ Factors influencing:

depleted ground water wells

increased affluence of the Chinese and the Indian markets

increased urbanization

global warming an accepted fact

rain patterns around the world changes

Desalination becomes a bigger & affordable source of clean water.

Water supply of California is likely to dry up in the next 40 years due to global warming.

Desalination how affordable for california:

California, desalinate a cubic meter of water for a total of 1.58 kilowatt hours.

Colorado today spends about 1.9 kilowatt hours just to pump the state water project water around to California.

In addition to that you spend about 1.6 kilowatt hours just to slush the Colorado River water around in California.

energy being consumed by California today just by pumping water around, you realize that it is actually cheaper to use desalination.

26 major desalination projects along the coast of California

So by saying no to desalination plants you are also able to limit economic growth in various areas

Discovery Channel called the PX the most significant engineering breakthrough that you will see in your lifetime.

California is already into a drought

Desalination as such in the U.S isn’t new. But it’s a lot of brackish. If you go to Florida you see a lot of brackish plants.

Next big thing is Osmotic Power

What is Osmotic Power?- where we go from fresh water through a forward osmosis membrane and into salt water. In that process we generate the pressure that will be used to run the turbines which in turn will create electricity. This is the next big wave, I think, for this technology. And this year will be the first major prototype, with an osmotic power plant built somewhere in Europe with our device in it. This is still a few years away from commercialization.

SCOPE: one of the largest utility companies in the world using renewable energy, estimates an annual market of about 1600 terawatts. That should be equivalent to about 50 billion Euros in annual electricity production. It is sizeable and is really a function of the PX that this is possible.

Source: 1,2,3,4,5,6

Apologies for the SPAM

2007-02-02T05:51:00.001-08:00

Apologies for the SPAM, Will try and find a way around it over the weekend

Interesting facts - Nandan Nilkeni

2007-01-01T23:47:00.000-08:00

The numbers were also encouraging. In 2006, India accounted for 65% of the global offshore IT market and 46% of the BPO market. And, R&D spending grew about four times the global average.

2006 was also the year that India and China came to be spoken of in the same breath. Interestingly, at the start of the industrial revolution, India and China contributed close to 45% of the global GDP. By 1970 this figure had shrunk to 7%. Now it is on the rise again. It is expected to climb to 30% by 2040.

from a post by Nandan Nilkeni in the Infosys Think Flat Blog

Consulting 101

2006-12-19T05:16:00.000-08:00

Consulting 101 by Services Safari
Always travel on your own time, not client time
Always dress one notch better than client's do
Concise, frank, honest communication will win more client loyalty and referrals over time than evasion, obfuscation or avoidance will ever net.
Never accept work that is unnecessary or work you are not qualified to complete. Smart consultants stick to their core competencies.
Always keep the big picture in mind.
Always be a diplomat.
People are always in the heart of every project and great consultants learn to make the most of them.
Solid ethics are not situational.
Always seek second party review.
Lastly, always travel in business attire.

Warren Buffet

2006-12-13T04:42:00.000-08:00

Got this is an email....

THE WORLD'S SECOND RICHEST MAN - SOME INTERESTING ASPECTS OF HIS LIFE:

There was a one hour interview on CNBC with Warren Buffet, the second richest man who has donated $31 billion to charity. Here are some very interesting aspects of his life:

1)He bought his first share at age 11 and he now regrets that he started too late!

2)He bought a small farm at age 14 with savings from delivering newspapers.

3)He still lives in the same small 3 bedroom house in mid-town Omaha, that he bought after he got married 50 years ago. He says that he has everything he needs in
that house. His house does not have a wall or a fence.

4) He drives his own car everywhere and does not have a driver or security
people around him.

5)He never travels by private jet,although he owns the world's largest
private jet company.

6)His company, Berkshire Hathaway, owns 63 companies. He writes only
one letter each year to the CEOs of these companies, giving them goals
for the year. He never holds meetings or calls them on a regular
basis.

7) He has given his CEO's only two rules. Rule number 1: do
not lose any of your share holder's money. Rule number 2: Do not
forget rule number 1.

8)He does not socialize with the high society crowd. His past time after he
gets home is to make himself some pop corn and watch television.

9) Bill Gates, the world's richest man met him for the first time only 5
years ago. Bill Gates did not think he had anything in common with Warren
Buffet. So he had scheduled his meeting only for half hour. But when Gates
met him, the meeting lasted for ten hours and Bill Gates became a devotee of
Warren Buffet.

10)Warren Buffet does not carry a cell phone, nor has a computer on his
desk.

11)His advice to young people: Stay away from credit cards and invest in
yourself.

Amazing individual indeed.

The high performance Entreprenuer....Bagchi

2006-11-26T22:33:00.000-08:00

I recently stumbled (not enough in the press on it) onto the book "The High Performance Entrepreneur" authored by Subroto Bagchi, a author i like, ever since reading his story titled "Making of the Mindtree", It is a great piece and one i will always enjoy and re-read.

Quick review: I like the book , but to be honest i expected much more from Subroto Bagchi, his speeches & past articles have set very high expectation.But I completely agree with CK Prahald the book is "A treasure trove of perspective & advice". The book is simple and provides an indicative thought map for budding entrepreneurs.

Quote

2006-09-07T00:02:00.000-07:00

Hire for attitude and train for skill

How to prepare for meetings:

2006-08-31T06:11:00.000-07:00

1. Do your homework and prepare for the meeting
2. Figure out what you want out of the meeting
3. Have a plan B.
4. Map the meeting
5. Memorize your opening sentence
6. Memorize a closing sentence

Source: 1

Quote

2006-08-31T05:38:00.000-07:00

A good leader listens to other members of a team. A good leader encourages ideas from every member of a team and encourages everyone to debate ideas. But a good leader decides which ideas to pursue herself or himself – and makes clear to the team that this is what’s going to happen at the end of the discussion.

Great Start-Up CEO

2006-08-22T10:01:00.000-07:00

15 elements defining Great Start-up CEOs

Highly intelligent
Terrific negotiator
Charismatic leader
Great communicator
Technical expertise
Management guru
Marketing maven
Tough as nails
Soft as tissue
Flexibility
Zero Ego
Teacher
Creative
Disciplined and hardworking
And most importantly, CRAZY

Source: 1

MindMap on Mobile Internet

2006-08-17T01:57:00.000-07:00

Rajesh Jain at Emergic has a series running on the Mobile Internet, a topic of great interest for me, So i have taken excerpts from his posts and put together a mindmap on the same.

Quote

2006-08-15T00:02:00.000-07:00

You must retain faith that you can prevail to greatness in the end, while retaining the discipline to confront the brutal facts of your current reality.

StockDale Paradox

Source

Quote

2006-08-14T00:23:00.000-07:00

Desicion Makes Destinity - TED Talk

Windows Live Writer

2006-08-13T20:30:00.000-07:00

Microsoft launched Windows Live Writer today. This is a free, downloadable application that runs on your Windows PC and allows you to write blog posts.

Downloadable here

Success Factors

2006-08-09T23:00:00.000-07:00

What’s important to any person in any job/business is :

- UNDERSTAND what the important ingredients of your success are;
- Keep QUESTIONING whether the conditions that made these ingredients important still exits;
- DON’T assume past results predict future results;
- Make a new plan BEFORE the old plan fails.

Source: Fractals of Change

Blogs at Infosys

2006-08-05T13:01:00.000-07:00

In one of the PDF's i downloaded from the infosys site i saw a mention of a web address that goes - blogs.infosys.com.....What do they have there??..Is it just going to be only within the firewall?...Lots of questions...If there is anybody out there who knows? please pitch in and tell us what exactly is happening?

sunsilkgangofgirls.com

2006-08-05T02:34:00.000-07:00

I have been seeing the ad of Sunsilks gang of girls.com for sometime now and have been wondering how successful they have been looks like we will get an opportunity to find out in blogcamp...Chaya Brian the brain behind might be there, looks like Kiruba is going to do a podcast as well.

Update: Website name corrected - thanks suman

How not to lead Geeks!

2006-08-05T02:12:00.000-07:00

Here is a list from the Chief Happiness Officer:

1: Downplay training
2: Give no recognition
3: Plan too much overtime
4: Use management-speak
5: Try to be smarter than the geeks
6: Act inconsistently
7: Ignore the geeks
8: Make decisions without consulting them
9: Don’t give them tools
10: Forget that geeks are creative workers

I agree with all of them and have tried incorporating them in my schedule.

Detailed here

Loyalty programs in Multiplex's

2006-08-04T11:01:00.000-07:00

Satyam the multiplex in Chennai needs to implement a Loyalty program and work on improving the whole movie experience, they have improved the infrastrucutre, the facilties but i think they are missing on a whole set of benefit that they can deliver giving them a huge advantage.

Today there is no competition for Satyam, but thats not going to be the case for too long, Infact the poster boy for multiplex in india - PVR...Could also do the same.

Call Center ....Business ...Is there a future in India?

2006-08-04T10:24:00.000-07:00

Was reading the article at Business Week on Call Center Business in India...Lots of interesting data points:

"Call centers have become commoditized," says B. Ramalinga Raju, chairman of Satyam Computer Services Ltd.

That doesn't mean India won't be doing call center work anymore. But outsourcing powerhouse Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., for instance, has turned away potential clients offering call-center-only work. "We are thinking about whether this is work we really want to do," says TCS Executive Vice-President Phiroz Vandrevala. At Satyam, just 35% of business process outsourcing employees are in call centers, down from 60% 18 months ago, Raju says.

2000, they represented 85% of the total back-office business; now they're about 35%, according to Nasscom, India's outsourcing industry trade association. And while call centers are still growing in India, the business is expanding at about 30% annually, compared with 60% growth for nonvoice back-office work, Nasscom says.

The BPO industry doubled in size last year, to $6.3 billion, and is expected to clock 37% annual growth over the next five years, according to Nasscom.

Genpact, a former General Electric Co. (GE ) subsidiary spun off two years ago, prefers to take on jobs that let it tap its expertise in analyzing zillions of bits of data to help clients work more efficiently. If call centers happen to be part of the equation, that's fine, but Genpact is reluctant to take up contracts for call centers only. "We tell our clients, 'Don't start with call centers -- if you do, do it together with something else,"' says Genpact Chief Executive Pramod Bhasin. "This is harder than customers expect and needs to be handled carefully."

Source Business Week

ServerLess Apps - Future of Consumer Apps?

2006-08-03T22:26:00.000-07:00

I was just reading another post at emergic about Serverless Apps, On how a Client based wiki is using Amazon S3 as storage and there is no server in between, do we think its the best way to go....Thoughts????

Mobile internet to take off in India

2006-08-03T22:15:00.000-07:00

Emergic gives 6 reasons why mobile internet is expected to take off in india

1. User want more, Not just SMS/Voice Calls
2. Excellent Mobile Infrastructure - I have been using Airtel GRPS for some time now to check mail and read blogs, the experience has been great...though i wish they didnt keep deactivating it for some strange reason...trying to work that out with support.
3. Improved phones...i use the nokia 9300 its pretty good, big screen etc, but i wish the o/s was not as sluggish (might need a reinstall of the firm ware, but in genral the capability of the phones has greatly improved, there is a lot more they can do.
4. Economics for mobile operators, today they are focussed on Customer Acquisitions...but tomorrow its going to be a fight to get the ARPU's up....so they will need to start focussing here.
5. WIFI / 3G, the two disruptions, though i agree with this i think the disruption will come else where i dont think the problem is the speed or connectivity i beleive that the disruption will be in the application space, Operators do something hardware infrastructure is good, but what can u do to help me build more usefull applications
6. "More people will access/expereience the internet via thier mobile phone than a pc" i beleive Jonathan schwartz said it some time back, this is particularly true in India, Every body seems to be having a mobile phone...the only thing that they are probably waiting for is an application which would force them to use the data services.

Would love to hear interesting ideas for mobile applications.....comments please.

Mobility....Game Changer

2006-07-18T03:31:00.000-07:00

"Ten years from now, how will we describe how the world is different due to mobility, and how mobility has changed the rules of competition." - Think about it....Got it off the Tech dirt WIKI, I think it was put there by the director of strategy of Sprint mobile service