Knowledge knowledge..

The key to survival success in a knowledge-intensive industry is the knowledge carried around by the people in the organization. Granted, this would be true more for a consulting firm, and less for one which deals with only business research. Yet, this could be the differentiating factor between success and breakthrough for KPO firms in the long run. And perhaps most players in this business are not focusing on the knowledge development aspect as much as they should. Firms tackle this issue by making focused groups, but that is more of an exercise to ease operations than with the intent of providing an environment to learn. These companies now need to provide its people with the freedom, opportunity and encouragement to learn and gather knowledge in these focused environments.

Take Google’s case [via Chad at Infoworld]:

Quite simply, the Google philosophy can be expressed in five general principles: Work on things that matter, affect everyone in the world, solve problems with algorithms if possible, hire bright people and give them lots of freedom, and don’t be afraid to try new things. As a general practice, Google also requires that its engineers spend 20 percent of their time working on personal technology projects unrelated to their primary projects.

Google Suggest was one such project. And if I am not wrong Google Maps was one 20% too. But can the Google 20% time principle be applied in this context? The answer is a big no. With the rate of growth of the KPO industry, that’s a bit too high. But, maybe we can manage a 90-10 principle. Devoting 10 percent of one’s time to a project of related personal interest sounds good and essential. I’d rather go on to say that this is the need of the hour.

I am going to recommend this to my firm.

~ Ankur.

I can't think of a title..

This is one of those posts which have no real purpose, except to let go of the mental barrier of not being able to make an entry, and to cross the threshold.

I have been away for a while, and life has been slightly dull off late. Meanwhile, have got an entirely new machine at workplace, which is very smooth. But that doesn't change much in life.

On a contemplative note, life sucks big time if you don't make any effort. I think I need to make efforts to enjoy life.

~ Ankur.

Pause..

Sitting here on my desk, I suddenly have this sinking feeling - Lost in a herd of people, whom you don't know, whom you don't even wish to know, just there because you're afraid to be anywhere else.

Time flies by, and you are just left thinking about all the good things that you think will happen. People, places, and things you really cared about just go on with their lives. You expect everyone, everything to wait for you, and miss you. But they don't. Everyone has to go on, the world never stops. You are always under the impression that you still care about everyone, everything that you always cared about. But you get so lost in things, which you don't even know for sure are what you wish for, that you never have the time to think about the very same people, the very same things. And you don't even know if you can say that you care. Then slowly you realize that there's a strange gap, with even the people and things closest to you, and it just keeps widening. You are afraid of trivial things like what will you say and what will you type, that you never even make a call, never drop a mail, and never make a visit. You wish to congratulate everyone on what they have achieved, you wish to share with them the sadness that they've gathered, but you just can't. You think that everyone has moved on, leaving you behind. And you never know if they feel the same.

Life just moves on. And sometimes it goes quite a distance before you realize.

And even then, nothing changes.

~ Ankur.

I Love Bloglines..?!

Now, it seems that Bloglines and Ask Jeeves guys came to know that I curse them every now and then. It also seems that they've decided to make me happy in some way or the other, if unable to do that through their service. I received this mail today from a certain Mr. Paul Loeffler -

Dear Ankur,

Congratulations on being one of the first 200 people to email Ask Jeeves about receiving a free "I love Bloglines" t-shirt. We will send your t-shirt to the address that you have provided on March 14, so you should be receiving it in the near future.

If you have any questions/comments, feel free to let us know.

Kind regards,

Paul Loeffler (Fellow Bloglines Enthusiast)
Ask Jeeves, Inc.

Man, they're calling me a Fellow Bloglines Enthusiast :| There's actually nothing like a free lunch. And ya - I did send the mail for the free t-shirt. Whatever.

[Learning for the day: Semantics]

~ Ankur.

Creative Commons..

If you have an eye for detail, you might have observed a new button that has appeared at the bottom of the sidebar of this blog. It says 'Some Rights Reserved' and has been lying there at the bottom for a few days now. This button links to a partial copyright license that I've got from Creative Commons.

Creative Commons is a nonprofit, offering a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors and artists, to build a layer of reasonable copyright. They have built upon the "all rights reserved" of traditional copyright to create a voluntary "some rights reserved" copyright.

Too often the debate over creative control tends to the extremes. At one pole is a vision of total control — a world in which every last use of a work is regulated and in which "all rights reserved" (and then some) is the norm. At the other end is a vision of anarchy — a world in which creators enjoy a wide range of freedom but are left vulnerable to exploitation. Balance, compromise, and moderation — once the driving forces of a copyright system that valued innovation and protection equally — have become endangered species.

Creative Commons is working to revive them. We use private rights to create public goods: creative works set free for certain uses. Like the free software and open-source movements, our ends are cooperative and community-minded, but our means are voluntary and libertarian. We work to offer creators a best-of-both-worlds way to protect their works while encouraging certain uses of them — to declare "some rights reserved."

Thus, a single goal unites Creative Commons' current and future projects: to build a layer of reasonable, flexible copyright in the face of increasingly restrictive default rules.

[from Creative Commons]

Till about a week or two back they had indexed all the webpages that have linked to a license from them, and believed it to be around 5 million. But after it's birthday party, Yahoo did the same and found to everyone's amusement that the number is nearly 10 million! I think everyone should get a license from them. It makes absolute sense. Perfectly absolute sense.

~ Ankur.

Firefox, who?

So I realized that my blog appears all haywire in Internet Explorer, while it's perfect to look at through Firefox. IE cannot even interpret all the colours I use for my blog template - which is very awful in my opinion. And it brings me to my request - please use Firefox. I even thought of a subtitle for my blog: "The Life and Times of Mine - best viewed in Firefox!" Unfortunately, this template doesn't have a subtitle thing, so I couldn't have all that fun.

Anyhow, so I went to one of the IT guys here at workplace, and asked - "Hi. Why don't we have Firefox?". And imagine what he replied - "Firefox? What's that?" Whoa! That's IT for you! Anyway, I said - "It's a browser. It has tabs." Bam this came - "Tabs?". Then I just blurted - "It's free." and started back, but I think I heard him saying - "It won't support our applications." I was like - "We are a business research firm - what applications?!"

No wonder Internet Explorer still has nearly 90 percent market share! But it's falling, and Firefox is increasing fast. Wonder what's up with Opera people - someone said they were ahead of their time! And opera was cool, back in CC :)

By the way, the IT guys here are real nice people, and if I just push a little, we might even have Firefox (at least for me). Should I, then?

*Lights fade off and the spot is on the protagonist, who contemplates life and its meaning*

~ Ankur.

Long time..

It's been a while since I last blogged, as lots of stuff kept me busy. Mostly work - have had an insane last week, and now plan to bring some sanity back to life again. And while I was away, the following happened:

1. I bumped into Hello and Picasa. Both these utilities absolutely rock! Fully recommended to all the people clicking their way to glory with their digicams, and also to those who wish to post images to their blogs.

2. Yahoo turned 10. And idiots, they gave out free icecream to everyone except this big user list in India. Even to Alaska! Now those are the people who can open their mouths and dive towards the ground anytime for free icecream. What a waste!

3. I came across this guy with this blog. An amusing read - his blog, if you go bottom up.

4. I found out that a starter drum kit is for about 8 to 10 grands, but presently that's out of the question for me. Also I think I'm trying to take up too many things together, and that I will have to be selective now in my aspirations. So I think till the time I am done with the digicam, the drums will wait. But I might still do something about starting the learning curve.

I think that's about it for now.

~ Ankur.

The first photo session..

I went for my first photo session today. And I liked it.





~ Ankur.

Updates..

Digicam boy is also here now. And making good use of it, this is the photograph of the 'oh so talked about, now never mention it again' laptop:



And here is the cool red reebok bag to carry it around (or rather to 'keep it secret, keep it safe'):



And if you can really appreciate the art, you can see a glimpse of the cam within this logo:



Cool.

Apart from all this, commenting becomes friendlier on Blogger. Extremely easy now. That's what I like - enhancement of one's product on a regular basis. That's why I like Blogger over LJ, but that discussion had been closed a long time ago.

~ Ankur.

Online Collaboration..

Wikipedia - The Free Encyclopedia, is a wiki, or - a website that not only allows users to add content, as on an Internet forum, but also allows anyone to edit the content already present there. 'Wiki' also refers to the collaborative software used to create such a website.

[from Wikipedia]

What this means is that not only can one access the information on such a site, or append to it, he/she can even edit whatever content is already there, and that too in real-time. I was completely ignorant to the above fact, when I was using Wikipedia all this while. I never noticed the 'edit this page' button at the top of all the pages at Wikipedia (Ok, not all, but they have only the basic pages as non-editable). So if you search for IIT Bombay, and notice that there is a section on distinguished alumni, and out of the blues you feel that Kanwal Rekhi also deserves a mention there, you can add his name on the page then and there, as well as add an entirely new page with some information on him. This is what I did right now, to test the system, and just for kicks! You may have a look :)

Now, the success of Wikis is a very interesting phenomenon. When you allow anyone to edit the content in real-time and without screening, chances are that people would be more busy spoiling what is already there, than doing some good and adding value. This would be particularly true in the initial phases of the development of such an online collaboration. And even though they have monitoring systems, which can ban malicious IPs temporarily or permanently, it still is not tough to do harm. And the fact that such websites have survived such abuse, is great. And Wikipedia in English stands today as the largest Wiki in the world.

Overall, a great concept. Letting people constructively collaborate in a very effective manner. Nice.

~ Ankur.

Cool Thing..

Came across this thing too today - You Send It.

Now send upto 1 Gb documents through email. Ok, not actually send, but it works equally well. No passwords to share, no software to install, no accounts to create, and no full mailboxes - as they put it. Cool utility - short and quick interface.

Seems like I'll get all the songs I need now :)

~ Ankur.

Random Browsing 1..

Links for the day:

1. http://www.mjau-mjau.com/classic.html
2. http://www.imagevuex.com/imagevue/
3. http://www.airtightinteractive.com/news/

I suggest turning up the volume for the first two.

~ Ankur.

Satanic Verses..

I have now got hold of the book 'Satanic Verses' as well along with all the geeky stuff. This was one book which I had wanted for a while, and now that I have it, I have removed it from my wishlist.

Which in turn brings me to the positives of having a wishlist on one's blog. One of my batchmates from insti just wandered off here to my blog, noticed the name of this book in my wishlist, happened to have its e-book, and just mailed it across! So now I have the book as well as e-book of the same. Isn't that just great. Reminds me of the Ministry of Plenty!

~ Ankur.

Hell, am I in heaven?!

Man, am I walking the clouds these days! I have got my laptop now, and it's here right now - right under my fingers, and this is my first post using it :D

I have gone geeker too since its arrival. Have configured the Internet connection on my comp as a shared one, so that I can use it through this thing also. Now, what I need is just a long LAN wire, or a small wireless setup, so that I can use it from anywhere within my home, for as much time - since it is a flat rate connection. I have started using blog aggregators with some ease now, which have made my life as a reader much easier. And now that I have started using them, I notice what a great thing they are! They bring everything to you - blogs, news, cartoon strips, editorials, any information you want, rather than you going to each of them. Everything has a similar future anyways now - reach out to the consumer. That's why information through wireless devices is the hottest thing. Those who can facilitate that, are in the race. But this is almost the present - one can make any information he wants reach him in real-time. The next generation is where one doesn't even have to do that. No need to even set up what you want everywhere, so that it may reach you by itself later - now they'll just review the pattern of information one accesses and present only that sort of stuff to you. Those who'll do that too, will win the race.

I wait for the day when I'll set up a login on an aggregator like Bloglines, and it'll scan my internet history, or cookies, or whatever, and tell me that these are the places I visit most often, and I might want to subscribe to their feeds. And then it'll say that my Google search pattern shows I am interested in such stuff, while the content on my hard drive says I am interested in such and such stuff too, and the most popular feeds on those topics are these and these, so would I like to subscribe to them too? And I'll say - Good going dude, ya subscribe me to them. But then that'll be too much information, and I would like to know stuff in real-time, so it'll then say - Don't worry sir, we'll send sms to you as soon as the feed of your very special interest is generated. And I'll say - Now you're talking! All the information, and no need to go anywhere.

Later, some programs will come up which will say that there is still too much information, and they'll filter all that for me using my recent online information behaviour patterns, and present only that information which they think is most relevant at present. Then there will be programs that'll hide one's online information patterns related to specific subjects which one doesn't want these sniffer programs to detect, and will be information firewalls for us. In the end there will be studies on how such things have increased psyschosomatic diseases in humans, and other studies on the growing number of schizophrenic disorders in children. All this will be combined with crazy dotcoms which will say 'Find out how many people are having exactly the same information patterns as you are doing today!' And then Google will again come up with something revolutionary.

Well, that was future for you. Presently, I just need an aggregator which can get me the feed of the comments posted on the blogs in addition to the blog feed. And I really have no hopes from Bloglines, which has let itself being taken over by a loser like Ask Jeeves.

~ Ankur.

Mad Mad Google..

Google - it has gone mad.

Now till yesterday, I was very bugged by that persistent message on the top of my Gmail, saying 'You have 5 Gmail invitations left'. It's a very unharming message, and one might even not notice it, but somehow I was very bugged by that. To me it felt like 'Dude, you still have 5 Gmail invitations left?!' Kinda get-a-life-dude message from Google. Again, yesterday (or maybe a few days earlier, but then I didn't notice it till yesterday), Google removed that message and placed a search-bar sort of a thing in the left-side panel. This was too much for my self-esteem to take. I mean, these guys were really throwing this at my face! So I decided to do something about it. And yesterday I caught hold of the absolutely fresh, innocent and unsuspecting new joinees here at workplace, cornered them strategically in a way Anand would be proud of me, and yelled with pure brute force - 'You tiny little smudgy new joinee, Do YOU have Gmail? X-(' And dumb guys, some of them, they were really amused at my crazy happiness and samba-dance when they uttered a scared 'No'. And so I made them write their full email ids on a piece of paper and sprinted for my comp.

Alas, there were only 2 of them, and I could send only two invites. But nonetheless, the task was getting done. And I came back today morning so happy thinking the message in that painful search-bar-type thing would say '3 left'. Just 3 more and it would go away for ever and ever. But what do I see there today, and Google is really really mad, it says - '50 invitations left.'

Google is mad. Gmail is mad. Do they really expect me to find 50 people remaining in this world whom I know and they do not have Gmail. Why don't they get off Beta instead now!

And I thought, only the Romans were crazy!

~ Ankur.

These Norms..

It's amazing how some names just become a synonym of a community of things they represent. They are the pioneers of their fields. Read about the same somwhere yesterday, and got this image as a forward today. Just made me wonder again. Give a thought to these names - Google, Xerox, TiVo, and if I go more local and FMCGish - Maggi, Band-aid, Rasna. They simply define what they represent.

Googling is such a common term for students and people like me, working in business research firms. One would invariably find people taking a xerox using their photocopiers! Maybe we aren't as familiar with TiVo here in India, but heard that terms are being coined on it too. And there are so many I don't even remember/know.

I wonder how great would it be to invent something which becomes a norm, a definition. I would like to invent one and say - 'Well, you know, I did that first.'

~ Ankur.

Music, dram, blah..

For some days now my playlist, which has me absolutely satiated, has looked like this:

Romeo and Juliet - Dire Straits
Riders on the Storm - Doors
Layla - Eric Clapton
Coming Back to Life - Pink Floyd
Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin
We Don't Need No Education - Pink Floyd
Comfortably Numb - Pink Floyd
November Rain - Guns and Roses

And I have suddenly started getting a lot many ideas about using this music in PAFs and plays, which never happened with me when I could actually do something about it. Anyhow, since nothing can be done about that now, nothing will be done about it. Though there's a distant possibility of starting a dram club here at workplace, or something of the sort, as my project manager himself is a major actor guy, and sufficiently enthu for the same, but it's still bleak. And bleaker is it's success or model or whatever we are going to do in that club.

By the way, I'd like to add 'Tears in Heaven' and 'Change the World' by Clapton to the above playlist, and in case you have access to them please to make good use of Gmail. I can be reached at ankur[dot]shrivastava[at]gmail.com, or should I add these to my wishlist instead :?

~ Ankur.

The Gadget Guy..

This thing is just a few days away from me now:

Dell Inspiron 700m

Exactly 4 days away to be precise. At 12.1 inches and around 1.6 kgs, it's the smallest multimedia notebook in the world! Absolutely ultraportable. To add to that, I plan to change my cell phone to a Reliance connection, which can now get one on the net anywhere, anytime. Laptop with wireless Internet, cool! In addition, very shortly (in precisely 11 days), I'll also have this with me:

Canon PowerShot A75

I have my backpack fully planned now - Laptop, digicam, and wireless internet :) Fully capable to point, shoot, upload, blog. Now, I feel like a pure gadget guy! What more can one ask for! Wait, I need something to carry all this and myself around. Well, I've been in this dilemma for long now - to go for a bike or a car. Although my mean machine - my dude scooter is doing better now, it does not seem that it'll take me to very far off places. Anyway, there's some time before I decide.

Till then I hope to click and blog on a regular basis. And in the meantime, you can have a look at my updated wishlist. And in case you are rich enough, you very well know my hidden intentions :)

~ Ankur.

Thought for the day..

'When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.'

- The American Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

Essentially - Whenever something goes wrong, those with the ability to do something, have the responsibility to go ahead and do something.

[Courtesy: National Treasure!]

~ Ankur.

Interesting..

Interestingly, and amusingly, the first link I get on putting my name on google and searching these days is my IIT Bombay alumni profile! I have such a smiley photograph up there :) - http://www.alumni.iitb.ac.in/details.asp?scn=28305

This page doesn't seem to get a mention in the search, even though I have put my name in the meta tags of the template. I wonder how can one make a page climb up the google search rankings :?

~ Ankur.