Magic Hat Winter Seasonal

With Old man winter quickly approaching, most breweries are switching from their October Fest offerings to their thick, heavy Winter offerings. The first one of these I tried was the Magic Hat "Howl" winter seasonal. It is brewed by the Magic Hat Brewing company in Vermont.

The original Magic Hat, 'Not quite pale ale' is one of my favourites. This one is a little more bitter, heavy and smooth. Not bad, is my verdict.

Making sense of Google Voice

As mentioned in a recent Tweet, I just got my Google Voice account and I love it. Unfortunately, getting one is by special invitation from the other evil empire, Google. So what is Google voice?

It is an answering machine on steroids. A prerequisite for using Google voice is that you must have a Gmail account. Another prerequisite is that you must have atleast one phone(Mobile, LAN line or a workphone).

To begin with, you get your own phone number from Google. This will be your primary phone number which you will hand off to your contacts.

Many Phones, One number

By logging into your Google account and customize your Google voice. Let us assume you have a mobile phone, a LAN line and a work phone. Hopefully, you have all your contacts in your Google/gmail account. For each of your contacts, you can now decide which of your three phones to ring when that particular contact tries to call you using your Google Voice number.

Changing to a new phone number is painless and trivial

If ever, any of your three numbers(LAN, mobile or work) should change, simply log into Google voice and change the respective entry to the new number. Google voice will forward an incoming call to the new number/phone as long as you hand out your Google voice number to all your contacts as your main phone.

Your voice mail as email

One killer feature of Google Voice is its ability to transcribe your messages into text. This means that when someone leaves a message for you on Google voice, it is transcribed as text and shows up in your Gmail mailbox like any email message.

I experimented with this feature leaving a few messages for myself. The transcription process works reasonably well. It even tries to make some educated guesses when it cannot understand some words I use.


Your voice mail online

In addition to the transcribed message, your message is also available as an audio file that is playable from an embedded media player on your Google voice web page.


Unlimited Space

You will never have a full message box again. Messages are saved in your gmail account. As there is no limit on the size you your email message box, there is none on the size of your voice message box as well.

Integrated Interface
You have a choice. You can either use the Google voice interface or the gmail interface. Your choice. Each is intuitive and bear a striking similarity to the other.

Contact me when I am overseas
When I travel, I can still continue to get Google voice messages. I could check them whenever I have Internet access.

Its free!
Isn't this enough reason to get a Google voice account?

Do I have to hand out a new number to all my contacts now?
Google admits that it is a pain to replace your existing number but for now, there seems to be little they can do about this problem for now. There is some good news on the horizon, though. Google plans to give Google Voice users the ability to use an existing phone number that belongs to them as their Google voice number.

Google has permeated yet another facet of my life.

Two forgettable Flicks

I liked the X-men trilogy. In fact I liked it more than the Spiderman series. Then add all the media hype on X-men Origins: Wolverine, there was no way I was going to miss X-men origins: Wolverine.

Wish I had missed it. This movie was a disaster. With cheesy stunts, an inane plot and terrible dialogs, this would easily be among the worst movies I had seen. Even Hugh Jackson could not revive this one. This movie is a disaster. Skip it.

Now lets look the second, Street Fighter, Legend of Chun Li. Well, there is nothing much to look at. This movie was hilarious, without any such intention. It was so bad- it was good! The dialogs were an anachronism. They belonged in a bad martial arts movie from the 80s with all the new age cliches about finding one's real self.

If you ever wanted to relive your Grindhouse memories a la Tarantino/Rodriguez, rent these movies on the same night and invite friends over. You are guaranteed to have a blast if you follow the plot and dialog carefully.

Only one question persists after I watched the second movie: What was an actor like Michael Clark Duncan of the Green Mile fame doing in the movie. The big guy plays a side kick to the caricature of some sort of mob boss.

On second thoughts, steer clear of both these flicks.

Wachusett Octoberfest

With fall upon us here in New England, it is time to transition from the watery summer brew to the October beers from various breweries.

Wachusett Octoberfest is a great way to make this transition. This ale is smooth without aftertaste and has a great flavor. It reminds one of another great New England beer, Magic hat.

Wachusett Octoberfest is brewed in Wachusett Brewery in Westminster MA. (While looking for it in your local liquor store, remember to drop the last 'S' from Wachusetts for savings :)

GTD and the Monkey

I recently read 'One Minute Manager meets the Monkey by Ken Blanchard and Bill Oncken. If you have not read this book, it is a classic from the 90s. Reading it is both an enlightening and entertaining experience.

Let us first begin to define the monkey. A monkey is any task that ends up in your care, thanks to the tactfulness of a subordinate, family member(typically your offspring) that you should NOT be doing. This is a task that shoul have been handled by the person who gave you this task.

Monkeys typically travel upward from employee to boss or offspring to parent. As mentioned in my prevoius blog entry, I was very impressed with David Allen's Getting Things Done, a classic on completing tasks.

Allen suggests that we have 'buckets' to handle tasks. The proverbial bucket may be a paper or electronic to-do list or some variation of the two. We then record all the tasks that need to be done in them.

The Monkey book reveals a potential weakness of the GTD system. Left unabated, the GTD system could be a breeding ground for monkeys. Well, I found a problem that others may have discovered by themselves.

I can only prescribe vigilance as the only solution for now. Be watchful of monkeys in your to-do list.

Movie Review: Gone Baby Gone

What do 'Seven', 'The Pledge', 'No Country for Old men' and 'There will be blood' have in common? These are all movies with non-conventional endings. 'Gone Baby Gone' (GBG) joins this list.
This movie marks the directorial debut of Ben Affleck, and stars his brother Casey Affleck in the lead role. The ensemble cast also includes Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris.

GBG begins as a thriller involving the kidnapping of a young little girl in a Boston suburb. Casey plays a sleuth brought in by the girl's family to find the girl. As the plot evolves, it opens up an intricate web of evil and unholy alliances forged among the girl's relatives, gangsters and even members of the police force.

Finally the story becomes fodder for a philosophical discussion about making ethical choices. The raw dialogs enhance the realism of the movie and add to the mounting tension.

The camera work is impressive. One particular scene is quite graphic adding more to the film's intensity. Kudos to Ben Affleck, who hails from my present hometown, Boston. With GBG, Affleck has made a decent directorial debut. I look forward to seeing more of his talents.

Book summary: Flextactics -I

Though this book was written in the late eighties, It has a few nuggets well worth preserving. Few writers can articulate ideas like Dennis Waitley. Here are some of my takeaways

• The new millennium needs a whole new way to set and achieve goals. Waitley christens his strategy, 'Flextactics'.
• The following are the essence of his strategy

• Tactic1: Risks
  
• Embrace risks: Risks can enable one excel and be a force for good. They reap outstanding rewards. Taking a risk can be going with a new business idea and refusing to retreat at seeming reversals.
• Incorporate yourself: See yourself as a virtual corporation offering services to others: your customers or even your current employer
• Prepare for the naysayers. Prepare to be unstoppable
  
• Expect the world to be indifferent to your ideas
• Challenge your own assumptions. Talk to risk takers on the upside and the downside of taking risks.
• You do not have to take all the risk at one time
• You do not have to take the risk alone
• You are never ever fully ready to take risks. Indeed fortune favors the brave.
• Ask yourself:

If money or time were no consideration, what would you be doing?
What did you love to do as a child?
Are you now doing something you love?
Are you making a valuable contribution to others?

• Tactic 2: Use the present to chart your future
• Get a baseline by writing down

Your character strengths
Your natural talents
Your formal qualifications and skils acquired through self-study

• Make a list of primary and professional mentors

• Tactic 3: Set lifeforming goals to keep you on track

• Ask yourself:
• Do you want to stay in the same house/city/state/country?
• Do you want to learn a new language?
• Familiarize yourself with new technology?

• Are your goals truly your own?
• Do your goals benefit others as well?
• Do not compare yourself with others. There will always be someone better than you in anything you are or do.
  

Time and Tide

You probably knew that denial was a river in Egypt, but did you know that Time and Tide were laundry detergents? Oh yeah, one of them is only available at the dollar store.

Rajiv's Sun Jars

Inspired by this article on Lifehacker, one of my favourite sites, I decided to make my own sunjars.
A trip to Walmart for the landscape lights, a trip to Michaels for the jars and frost paint, and a half hour of work did the trick.

These jars are great. They light up small area around my house. The blue jars serve as great bedlights. Then there are the usual advantages: No need to shut them off, good for the enviroment and soul, green and ...

Well, they simply look good and are a great way to get on the Solar bandwagon, if nothing else. All I need to do is leave them in the sun in the morning.

With this day being the hottest day of the year, I think I put the sun to some good use today. These lamps are really bright today.

A Korean Touch to New York,New Jersey - Part 3

HMart
(Apologies: No pictures this time)
Shopping at HMart, the Korean grocery chain is another great experience. While many grocery stores offer a few samples, every nook and corner of the store has an employee( Usually polite) offering samples of Korean delicacies.

These include noodles of several varieties, seaweed with rice, marinated meats, and more. One could fill oneself just by walking the aisles.

Coming from Massachusetts, I found this place a shoppers heaven. Many of the products offered here were a fraction of the cost of similar items in Massachusetts.

Rumor has it that HMart plans to expand into Massachusetts. I am eagerly waiting.

A Korean Touch to New York,New Jersey - Part 2

King Sauna
321 Commercial Ave, Between Central Blvd & Palisades Blvd

It would be hard for me not to exaggerate any of the offerings of King Sauna. To the average man, this spa is an escape from the reality of the daily grind.

Do not be fooled by the unassuming exterior of this spa. King Sauna has several floors offering variety of services. These include saunas of increasing temperature and even a cold sauna. Further the services include massages, a sports bar and a restaurant serving delicious Korean food. Try the curry rice with beef.

The decor is exquisite with chesstables, relaxing lounges, zen rock gardens, mini indoor waterfalls and giant TVs for those who want to watch a (Yankees) game. Geod stones, bamboo and indoor foliage enhance the tranquil experience. The spa also has a video gaming area and offers wifi to its customers

The men's facility in addition to lockers, has a steam sauna and four hot tubs within it. It also has a sleeping room. For the convenience of its patrons, the spa offers disposable toothpastes, razors and other toiletries to ensure a comfortable nuisance free experience

I was very impressed with how well-maintained the facility were. The shinny wooden floors were spotless and the whole place despite the intricate decor, was almost dust free. Best of all, King Sauna is very affordable for all its offerings and gives group discounts.
It is well worth your while to spend an afternoon at the venue if you are near or close to the area.

A Korean Touch to New York,New Jersey - Part 1

Wonjo
23West 32nd Street
New York, NY 10001

The Wonjo restaurant in New York City gives one a taste of Korea and many of its delicacies.

Many dinner tables had two built-in ovens to allow the waiters to quickly place marinated meat and for the patrons to savor it by placing it on lettuce and adding dashes of spicy Korean sauces. As part of the Korean tradition, the meal is washed down with cold noodle soup which was a bit sour for me. Having a meal here is an unforgettable experience and is well worth the visit.

Watchmen the Movie

Alan Moore's larger-than-life classic book has finally made it to the big screen, much to the anticipation of geeks like me. Big Screen, indeed! 

Watching any movie in IMAX is an experience in itself. The Jordan's IMAX in Natick is a remarkable venue equipped with audio-sensitive seats in addition to its giant screen to enhance both the visual and auditory experience.
Watchmen is one of those movies that should be watched in such a theatre.

Years ago, I reviewed the comic book as one of the best graphic novels of all time. Needless to say, expectations were high when I went to see the movie. Well, on the plus side, the movie was not completely a let down. Having said that, only a handful of movies have managed to bring the magic of the penned word (or image) to the big screen, and Watchmen, much as I liked it, does not make this cut. It probably went as far as a movie could go in such a reproduction.

The story takes place in an altered reality where Nixon is enjoying his fourth term, and the cold war has taken on a new form. The United States is on the verge of anarchy and the future of life itself depends on costumed heroes who exist among the public. Most of these superheoes have a secret identity. 

So beings a murder-mystery where one of these superheroes, christened 'The Comedian' is thrown off a building. The Comedian, intentionally or unintentionally bears a striking resemblance to Robert Downey Jr, which is an interesting observation by yours truly.

Back to the plot. Was the killing of the Comedian an isolated case, or is someone bumping off superheroes, one by one? As the plot unfolds, revelations begin to unravel in quick succession leading to a frightful climax that none of the protagonists can anticipate.

Watchmen asks the philosophical question as to whether humanity could decide the future based on intelligence alone, without the presence of ethics and morality. It goes on to say, that even those with the most noble of intentions must answer their own internal questions of right and wrong.  And sometimes, this linebetween good and bad is not always clear cut. 

The movie features some excellent special effects and the fight sequences are intense. The violence in this film is non-stop and extremely graphic, keeping up the spirit of the 'Graphic Novel'.

Despite the movie's shortcomings, I would recommend it. Watch it at the IMAX, if you have not seen it yet.

Here is the movie's official website.

Robots of Christmas Past - II

The Robopet, a contemporary to I-Cybie is another quality robot dog worth examining. Created by Wowwee, one of the most innovative toy manufacturers today, the robopet like his then ancestor I-Cybie and his recent descendant Wrex the Dawg, the Robopet also has a mind of his own.

Its legs do not pack the muscle or the elaborate gear and lever system as the I-Cybie but the Robopet has a flexible waist that aid in its abilities to twist and turn. Its waist can help it stand up even when the robot finds itself on its back. Its sounds are more robotic than canine. The robopet does not respond to voice control though a hacking community has successfully made it do so with a PC and Blue tooth adapters.

So how does the I-Cybie compare with the Robopet? This excellent short article analyses both these robots.

Robots of Christmas Past - I

While kids of all ages embrace the Pleo as a companion, an almost forgotten robot dog from almost a decade ago, I-Cybie demands attention for being a technological marvel and for manifesting the talents of its creators, Silverlit Electronics.

Released in 2000 and marketed by Tiger Electronics and then by Hasboro, the I-Cybie packs personality along with its innate cuteness factor. Along with the soon to be reviewed Wowwee Robopet, I-Cybie was intended to be a cheaper alternative to the then famous Sony Aibo.

The I-Cybie, like its cousin the Aibo is now discontinued. I was lucky to get my hands on on. There are three ways to make the I-Cybie obey its human lord-master. You are hereby warned that none of these ways is guaranteed to work all the time. The I-Cybie responds to sound. You can use your voice to give it simple commands or use claps to make it respond to you.

Like most other robots, the I-cybie can also respond to a remote control. The I-Cybie also came with a charger but unfortunately a four to six hour charge could disappear after a two hour play with the I-Cybie.

These two hours could however, be two hours of indulgent fun as you watch and play with the I-Cybie. I-Cybie is e effortlessly and realistically walks about, negotiating obstacles in his environment using his eyes that pack light sensors. His eyes can change from yellow to green to red.

His limbs are among the most amazing mechanical marvels I have seen. As he comes to life after a fresh charge, he goes through a few amazing motions which include push ups and some dexterous twists and turns.

His master can also set his moods to friendly, disobedient and so on. When commanded either by voice, clap or a remote the I-Cybie responds, often, in unpredictable ways.

Growing up, I remember an old TV ad that said, ' A thing of quality has no fear of time.' Undoubtedly the I-Cybie qualifies as such a 'thing'.

While the I-Cybie was not intended to be hacker friendly, some brave souls have actually managed to hack it. The bravest among them have actually taken I-cybie apart and dug deep into his wiring. This is a realm I will avoid... for now.

Movie review: Eagle Eye

Well, its good to be back after a long hiatus. I'll begin (or try to) with a movie review. Eagle Eye stars Shia LaBeouf of Transformers fame and is directed by D. J. Caruso and is another cat and mouse game a la Enemy of the State, and more recently the Bourne Ultimatum. LaBeouf, however is the unwilling victim in a tense situation and not like the 'professional' macho men of the other flicks. He is confused and is not in control right until the climax The plot is also a cliche of the 'big brother' variety. Having said that, Eagle Eye is worth watching, just for the action sequences.

Book Review: Black Wind

While the last two James Bond movies seemed to focus more on Bond, Clive Cussler's novels are more reminiscent of the Bond movies of old and seem to have all the necessary ingredients. The tall handsome hero, Dirk Pitt is Cussler's own alter ego who shares with his creator,many commonalities like working for NUMA, the National Underwater and Marine Association, NASA's counterpart in the ocean. Another commonality is that both Pitt and Cussler have a common hobby of collecting vintage cars.

Clive Cussler's Pitt has been around for more than a decade and unlike Bond, he has aged since then. As the plots came along, Cussler realized he had to remedy this situation. He decided to clone Pitt. One of his older novels featured the adventurer unite a son, Dirk Pitt Jr. and a daughter Summer, the older Pitt never knew he had.

Black Wind is a Dirk Pitt Jr and Summer adventure. It has all the ingredients of an older James Bond movie: the damsel in distress, the dashing hero and of course the maniacal villain with a plan that threatens the future of humanity. There are the other Bond cliches including the one Austin Powers always picked on: the failure of the villain to kill the hero when the hero is in his captivity and providing the opportunity for the hero to escape.

This tale begins in 1944 when a Japanese submarine armed with biological weapons is headed for the US to carry on a mission of mass carnage on the Americans. the sub does not complete its mission and lies harmlessly in the depths of the ocean causing no threat to anyone.

This is until a North Korean tycoon decides to seek the deadly contents of the sub and wreak havoc on the US in his demonic plan. The stage is set for Dirk Pitt, his sidekick, his twin sister and all the other Cussler characters to join hands and save the day.

Black Wind is an enjoyable read and is highly recommended.

Portable Web Server Sandbox

In my previous post, I did mention that I am hooked on portable applications. Taking the initiative further, I followed Gina Trapani's advice on life hacker and soon had a MediaWiki up and running on XAMPP server right from my thumb drive. For those who are new to XAMPP, it is a packaged version of Apache, MySql, and PHP. Perl and Tomcat come as optional add-ons.
As my drive was big enough(8G) I was able to install the complete XAMPP server on my drive and did not have to settle for the lite version. It was a breeze to install and fire it up!

I was now totally into configuring my web server. Soon I had Gallery2, Joomla, Drupal and Wordpress all running from the webserver instance on the thumb drive. This thumb drive has become my official sandbox for web application testing.

Taking the concept further, I now have Tomcat and the Sun Glassfish server running from my thumb drive and use them to test out many J2EE applications with struts and hibernate.


Xampp can be downloaded with Tomcat and Perl addons here.

Portable Applications

After reading enough articles on Lifehacker.com, I've become a big believer in Portable thumbdrive applications. For software geeks, a portable application is one that can be run on several platforms or operation systems. 

However, they mean something a little different in this context. Here  A portable application is an application that resides on a removable hard drive, music player or as a growing trend on a thumbnail drive. To use them on another machine, you simply remove the removable device, plug the device on the other machine and voila, they simply start working.

Over the last year, it is safe to say that the thumb drive has moved from a mere hot swapping tool for data,video, audio and image files to a hard drive hosting executable applications. This is mainly due to the fact that over the last year their capacity for holding data has grown substantially. It was just over a coupel of years ago when I used a 256MB thumb drive. Today, buy.com sells a thumb drive with a capacity of 32 GB at $50. The 64GB version sells for $100

Consider that my 20GB Arhcos Jukebox purchased in the pre-iPod era is slightly larger than an audio cassette and uses a hard drive.  I could carry three of those in a 64G thumb drive.

In the recent past, we carried our data with us on CDs or DVDs which we though was convenient. Today, thanks to high capacity disk drives, we can carry entire programs with us like the entire Open Office suite, Development tools, Image, Audio and Video processing software and other utilities for FTP, chat tools and so on. In fact, we could carry with us a portable Apache web server along with tomcat and MySQL on it. If that is not impressive enough, I have a Linux operating system on my flash drive in addition to the above mentioned utilities.

This is most useful for several reasons

• We do not need to lug around a laptop everywhere we go.
• All one needs is access to a computer (and maybe with Internet access)
• We can recreate our environment on any other computer with all the programs and data we need, along with our personalized setting, bookmarks, etc.
• Think of the savings in time and productivity.

Here are a few extremely useful websites:

Portable Apps: This site has numerous portable application choices that you can install on your pen drive.

Pendrive Apps: This is another good site that lists numerous portable applications.

PendriveLinux :This site details  a variety of choices of Linux that one may install on a USB drive.

Mac on a Stick: This website details how you could be up and running with an older version of Mac on your USB drive.

Here is a listing of all Lifehacker articles on Portable applications.

It's time all of us jumped on the Portable Apps bandwagon.

Movie Review: Infernal Affairs

Having seen the Departed a few years ago, a movie that picked up several academy awards, including Best Picture, I finally got around to seeing the original Hong Kong movie that it's screenplay was based on.

Infernal Affairs is the movie and is, at least more riveting than the Departed. Andy Lao and Tony Leung deliver a tour the force performance and an offbeat end that is quite different from the one in the Departed.

Infernal Affairs is a cat and mouse game at two levels. One is between a top police and his nemesis, a notorious gang leader. Each of them has a mole in the other's team. So there is another cat and mouse game between the moles. 

The movie is fast paced, slick and violent and has an end that leaves the viewer  breathless, even if the viewer has seen the Departed. It is a must see for lovers of action movies.

Web 2.0 Summit 08: Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), John Battell

Web 2.0 Summit 08: Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), John Battell
John Batell is a take-no-prisoners interviewer. Seen here is the interview with Mark Zuckerberg the CEO of Facebook, the world's youngest billionaire. He asks a few tough questions on the 15 Billion Microsoft handed to Facebook. Mark is a tough kid to scare. He speaks of Facebook's two revenue channels, brand direct and online advertising. He says that revenue is in the 100s of millions.

Batelle continues to question him on the Microsoft deal. Mark Zuckerberg mentions that the Microsoft deal is a smaller part of the revenue. He does mention that they are working of late on search and that Microsoft is a good partner for Facebook.

Is Balmer happy with the price, Batelle asks and Mark evades the question.He goes on to say that Facebook will not go public for a few years and feels no pressure to justify the 15 B.

Facebook has more than 700 employees says Mark. They continue to hire great technical people and expanding the sales force, he adds.

Facebook Connect has been announced for a while and now the closed Beta is going to be opened says Mark.

Bartelle then asks Zukerberg about facebook being a walled garden that is not jumping on the Open Source bandwagon. There is a transition from closed to open system and Facebook was one of the first to provide a development API, counters Mark.

Microsoft's claim to fame was its opening up its software to several hardwares says Mark. Facebook is now faced with the challenge of getting people to share their information online.


There is no way for Facebook to serve all the ways people share information concedes Mark. Over time people will have websites and use the Facebook platform to make it more decentralized, says Mark.

Facebook and connect are evolutions, says Mark. As poeple add applications, a new ecosystem has evolved. Now the model is more feed based, he claims. One example is the election conversations in the system..

Budweiser American Ale

I must admit that I am not a big fan of Budweiser beer but this new ale offering from Budweiser was a pleasant offering. It is a little bitter compared to other ales but still good. I liked the design on the label which was a great decoy for those like me who are programmed to avoid anything that says 'Bud beer'.

Hibernator Long Trail

The Hibernator Long Trail from the Long Trail Brewing Company is a great offering from the Long Trail Brewing Company. It is very similar to another of my favorite ales, MagicHat, also brewed in VT. It is heavier than Magic Hat and does not have a subtle flavor like MagicHat.

Mindmapping

Mindmapping is a note taking technique invented by Tony Buzan and popularized by many, including Michael Gelb. It is based on the notion that the mind does not think with language and sentences and instead thinks in patterns, logic and pictures.

The left side of the brain is associated with logical thinking and the right with creativity and intuition. The traditional method of note taking is a left brain activity and is based on logic.  The problem with this approach is that the mind does not think linearly and thus makes forced list making inefficient. 

The mind mapping mechanism designed by Buzan integrates both sides of the brain and is thus a great tool for any task or set of tasks like making a simple to-do list, writing a novel or managing many projects simultaneously.

It is one technique that that has worked for me well over the years. When Buzan first introduced it, the lack of good software for mind mapping prompted Buzan to promote mindmapping on large sheets of paper. 

While this may still be effective in some cases, there are enough tools today from Mindjet Mindmanager to free software like my favorite, Freemind. 

Here is a list of mindmapping tools from Mashup.com

Below is a list of LifeHacker articles on mindmapping applications

Mind42

Freemind

Personal Brain

How to mindmap

MindMester

Using a mindmap to organize your week

Lastly, as mentioned in my one of my previous posts, I have been using Tiddlywiki a lot,of late. I have successfully been able to add  Minmapping features thanks to a plugin from TiddlyTagMindmap. I like it so far. Mindmapping is the most effective  and efficient way to take down and review notes.

David S Rose on TED

David S. Rose on Pitching to VCs

In this talk, David S. Rose, former serial entrepreneur and now serial investor talks about pitching to VCs. The most important aspect that the VC is interested in is you.  You have about 15 minutes to about half an hour to make your pitch.

The most important part of your pitch is your integrity. The second most important thing is passion. Then comes experience. (I have done this before). If you have failed, maybe you have learned from this. You must have domain expertise(knowledge). Then come the skills to run the organization. You must exhibit leadership. 

Commitment comes next. You must have vision but still be a realist. Finally, you must be coachable. Your pitch must include all of these without your mention of them. 

You have 10 to 30 seconds to grab their attention. The rest of your pitch must have an upward path. It must get better and better and at the end, knock them out of the park. Make sure that no threads are missing. 

Begin with the market, the how and why you are going to do it. Reference things the VC can relate to.  Show validation through something that has been done before or awards you have received.

You must then have a believable upside. There may be things that may take a VC's mind down. It is your job to recover from these. One of these is when you speak of competition. The VC may have heard of a widget similar to the one you are creating. Some things mentioned may not be true.  Even things that make the VC think could be detrimental.

Make sure the figures add up. Watch out for silly mistakes and typos. If you cannot make a good presentation, how can you run a company? 

Bullet points are OK. Headlines are better but images are best.(A picture is worth a thousand words)

Your presentation need not have introductions like 'I am presenting...' (The VC knows all this.) It must have your company logo. Then proceed with a overview of the business and give a sense of context.  Then talk about the product. Do not do a live demo. Then tell them how you make money on it. Talk about your distribution relationship or a partner.  This helps validation. 

Tell them exactly what the competition is and then tell them how you are special. Your pitch must have Financials. Speak about your growth plan for about four years. (About a 100 customers the first year...) . 

How is the money you get from a VC going to help you get there? How much are you looking at? Two or Five million? Are you invested in it? Do you have other angel investors?

The conclusion: Go back to the logo. Wrap it up by 'sending the VC into space'. 

• Use ovation or other presentation software.
  
• Always use the remote control.
  
• Your handouts are NOT the presentation. The handout must stand out without you.
  
• Never look at the screen. Connect to your audience instead
  

 

Movie Review:Quantum of Solace

The street fighting, error prone, jilted Bond is back and back with a vengance in this action packed sequel. In addition to the task before him, he has issues of his own. He is conflicted from the loss of a woman heloved, his anger towards her from betraying him and his anger towards himself for allowing himself to be played.

Quantum of Solace begins almost exactly where Casino Royale left off. Once again, the focus is more on Bond than on the evil designs of madmen. It is more about Bond seeking redemption for himself and his prior deeds.

Bond is still prone to recklessness. This time he is after the person who was responsible for the death of his woman. His assignment is not assigned by the British Government. In fact he must seek out the evil minds and then find out the the evil designs on these minds.This chase takes Bond from Italy to Bolivia. Bond joins forces with a woman who has a vendetta of her own.

Physically, Craig is the biggest of the Bonds and prefers fist fights and in chasing the bad guys on foot through elaborate sets. The movie is action packed and intense, but I expected more after watching Casino Royale. There are some great car chases and one particular chase has no doubt, been 'inspired' the the Bourne Ultimatum.

I also noticed that the last couple of Bond movies have cut down on gadgets that we had come to expect from these movies.This is probably a wise decision from the movie makers in realizing that audiences worldwide have probably seen the cutting edge of technology and would not be awestruck by electronic devices created by Hollywood.

Quantum of Solace is worth watching but I would recommend that you wait till it comes on on DVD/Blue Ray.

Movie Review: Casino Royale

Few fictional characters have gone through as many avatars as Ian Flemming's creation, James Bond. In five decades, Bond has been unemotional rugged(Connery), one hit wonder(Lazenby), wisecracking philanderer(Moore), Shakespearean (Dalton), runway model(Brosnan) and finally, street fighter(Craig).

Daniel Craig has indeed created a phenomenon with the street fighting, no nonsense Bond, a big contrast to the one played by Brosnan. Many have criticized Casino Royale, including Roger Moore, for excessive violence but as Moore himself would concede, it is a sign of our times that we prefer more 'high Octane' action.

Bond movies have had many fixtures, notably the scantily clad bond girls, high tech gadgets, fancy cars and of course, maniacal villains with grand designs of destroying or altering the planet. This is where Casino Royale breaks away from many Bond cliches.

As one would expect, it has more violence than any of the bond movies made before it. There are women, but unlike in past movies many are more than mere showpieces. In fact, Casino Royale continues the trend from the Brosnan movies of portraying Bond's Boss, 'M' as a woman.

Unlike the earlier Bond films that focus on a madman hellbent on causing world destruction this one focuses on Bond himself and how he got to be 007. Unlike his predecessors, this Bond is not infallible and does not make the right judgement. He gives into his emotions more than once, incurring the wrath of his demanding boss. He is also vulnerable to feminine charm and this could jeopardize his future with the Secret Service.

Casino Royale is the tale of a vigilante Bond trying to destroy the entire supply chain of an illegal arms trade. The endeavor would take Bond from Africa to the Bahamas and the United States and finally land him in a high stakes Card Game.

Could Bond keep his emotion and the villains at bay and win the game? The climax, however is not the game but its aftermath, that would force Bond to make judgment calls on who to trust.

Casino Royale is among the best of Bond movies and humanizes 007 for the first time. It is the tale of how Bond becomes 007.

Restaurant: Chilli's Braintree

Braintree-Chili's
170 Pearl Street Ivory Plaza
Braintree, MA 02184
Call: (781) 849-6151

Sometimes one neglects a quality place because of the 'familiarity' trap. By this I mean, as one sees more and more of something, like a Chilli's Restaurant, it slips his attention and he fail to notice it or care to visit the place.

This Chilli's restaurant in Braintree is located conveniently at the Pearl Plaza with ample parking. The restaurant has a large bar and a spacious seating area. The servers are friendly and courteous.

The menu features many choices, including delicious burgers, fish or my favorite, the Fajita trio, shown in the picture which comes with steak, chicken and shrimp. The guacamole costs another $1.29.

They also serve great margaritas like the Blue Pacific or Presidente margaritas. Do not let familiarity stop you from a quality meal.

Full Moon Winter Ale

This is the winter version of the Blue Moon White Belgian Ale, an offering from Molson Coors Brewing Company.

It is smooth and heavy like most winter ales and not as sour as the original. I prefer the original Blue Moon, though this one is OK.

Movie Review:Mississippi Burning

Created almost two decades ago, the cinematography in this movie could put most modern camera people to shame. Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe lead an outstanding cast of both black and white actors in this epic movie on racially motivated crimes in the sixties.

In a small isolated town in Mississippi, three young one, two white and one black, drive out in the dead of night. These civil rights activists have no idea about the evils that await them that very night.

Their disappearance would bring into town, two FBI agents. The older of these men(Hackman) is a wise cracking cynical individual who holds no illusions about the ability of justice to come out through conventional methods of interrogation.

His boss, the younger agent(Dafoe) is a play-by-the-book official, who does not approve of his colleague's methods. Needless to say, the there is tension between the two men. However, both are committed in finding out the truth, and in prosecuting the guilty parties.

These are not easy tasks. The clan has a strong foothold in the town. Both blacks and those who sympathise with them are unwilling to cooperate with the FBI agents, as they afraid of repercussions and fear for their own lives. The clan members who have high political clout are hell-bent in getting the outsiders out of the town.

The movie picked up two Oscars, one for best actor(Hackman) and another for cinematography. Dafoe picked up one of the movie's six other nominations. Hackman looks the same, and seems to have aged little in these years. He is bound to go down as one of the greatest that Hollywood has produced.

Many movies on this theme have been made, but few have the raw intensity and the cinematography that are part of this movie. While this movie was criticized for not having blacks in leads roles, one has to admit that the blacks and the supporting white actors in the movie have performed in outstanding capacity even in their small roles. Mississippi Burning is an important and entertaining movie, that simply cannot be missed.

Tiddlywiki: The ultimate organizational tool

Tiddlywiki
For the last few days, following the advice of Gina Trapani of LifeHacker, I decided to give TiddlyWiki a spin. I have always been on the lookout for productivity and organization tools. I have read numerous books on this subject too.Among the best of them is Getting Things Done by David Allen.

Over the years, after playing with Outlook and numerous online and desktop tools and was not satisfied with any of them. This was until I found Tiddlywiki.

Tiddlywiki is a wiki/ online notebook that is customizable into a to-do list, a collaboration tool, etc.(Visit their site for other uses of Tiddlywiki).


I was surprised to find flavors of tiddlywiki modeled on the methodology of David Allen's Getting Things Done. Here are a few

• Tom Otvos' d-cubed adaptation
• Simon Baird's Monkey GTD adaptation
• Clint Checkett's GTDTiddlyWiki plus adaptation

I played with the first of these, the d-cubed adaptation. This is one of the most impressive, customizable and flexible tools I had used.

This is a single html file that can be used to keep all of one's appointments, tasks, notes, reminders, etc.
Along with this file, the download package also includes a jar file(Java executable archive). By merely saving the tiddly html and jar file in a folder on your computer, you create a powerful versioing system. Each time you make changes to the tiddly file, a backup of the previous version which enable you to track changes or revert to a previos version

The beauty of the wiki is that it can be stored with the jar file in a thumb drive and can be immensely useful for those of us on the go. One person describes in a lifehacker article, how he carries around his wiki and Firefox portable in his thumb drive and has access to it on any PC.

The tiddly file can also be hosted on a site.
Hosting Tiddlywiki Online

• The most popular of these is tiddlyspot. I must admit that I had problems hosting it on this site.
• Here is an example of tiddlywiki hosted on Googlepages.

Then I realized there was a whole community of developers creating plugins to customize the wiki.

Tiddlywiki Plugin Sites

Here are two sites that have some of the most innovative plugins one can incorporate into the wiki:

• TiddlyVault,
• Eric Shulman's TiddlyTools.

My tiddlywiki has also an addressbook that I integrated from twab. In addition to saving contact information, this addressbook also has tools to import contacts from Yahoo, Google or CSV files.
It also includes an export mechanism

Further, I have a mini browser with my bookmarks I got from Shulman's site. The Tiddlywiki is a small and powerful tool and is testimony that great software functionality can some in the smallest of packages.


Gina Trapani of Lifehacker is a big fan of Tiddlywiki and warns about its addictive abilities. You are well adviced to take her example seriously. Here are links to several articles on LifeHacker about Tiddlywiki.


Lifehacker Articles on Tiddlywiki

Getting Things Done TiddlyWiki
How to use GTD TiddlyWiki
Get organized with GTDTiddlyWiki
Host your TiddlyWiki at Tiddlyspot
Embed any web page inside Thunderbird
Add an Interactive Address Book to your TiddlyWiki with twab
Integrate a Personal Wiki into Outlook's Today pane
TiddlyWiki-SE
Get things done with MonkeyGTD
Grab Text for your TiddlyWiki with TiddlySnip
Ask Lifehacker: Opening one file with a different program?
Hack Attack: Quicklaunch your USB workspace
Take In-Browser Notes to Read Anywhere with TiddlySticky
Tagged single-page wiki, TagglyWiki
ServerSideWiki, hosted GTDTiddlyWiki
Top 10 Underhyped Webapps

John Battelle , Jerry Yang (Yahoo! Inc.)

John Battelle , Jerry Yang (Yahoo! Inc.)
This interview of Jerry Yang by John Battelle is important for many reasons. The two that come to mind are that this event served as a precursor to the end of Yang's tenure as CEO of Yahoo and the fact the 'Jerry Yanging' actually became and expression.

It is surprising that Yang refers to the year as being 'extraordinary' for Yahoo. I would have used different words but then, that's just me. Battelle is a 'take-no-prisoners' interviewer who asks Yang all the questions.

He asks Yang if it was an ego issue for Yang in rejecting Microsoft's offer of $33 per share for Yahoo. Yang goes on to say that they did go back to Microsoft with the latter's offer but this time Microsoft walked away. Yang realizes that he may be blamed for this supposed blunder, possibly forever.

Yang says that despite this debacle, he respects Balmer and that none of it is personal.

Batelle next questions Yang on the Google deal which also went south. Monetizing assets at yahoo via Google were estimated at a 100s of millions. Yang said that as they were meeting with the Dept of Justice to convince them that this deal was good for the market. It would benefit users and advertisers said Yang. Google walked away from the deal.

He goes on to say that Yahoo search engine was still good. He point out that the government did not, in this case, look into Yahoo's History.

Batelle asks Yang about Yang's comeback as CEO after making money and whether he was the right guy? Yang stepped back in 2007. He was a joint CEO with David Filo.

Yang says that he does not take his position lightly. There has been a lot of change and he is proud of what Yahoo has become, a great platform company. He has no regrets, he says.

The vision for Yahoo: Yang says that Yahoo is a consumer brand that allows people to get what they want in the Internet in the way only Yahoo can. He says that people are returning to Yahoo, despite all the criticism. Yahoo is the consumer starting point.

Yahoo OS now allows 3rd parties build apps. It also allows social network applications. He speaks of the ad revenue model wherein an advertiser can monitor their sales on many websites through the Yahoo platform.

Is Yahoo going to buy again? Yes says Yang. It is an important part of growing talent and working with the start up community. He makes no comment on buying AOL.

When asked about the search competition with Google and the fact that Google is spending a lot more on research than Yahoo, Yang says its a question of how well capitalized they are in the search market. He goes on to say that Yahoo is well capitalized. He believes that Search is innovation based rather than capital based. Yahoo is not in maps like google and Microsoft is, which is capital based.

Yahoo is also in the cloud computing arena. It takes a certain amount of capital to compete in both search and display. They may be the only company to build data centers in this economy.

For Entrepreneurs:
Yahoo came out of a similar economic environment. He says that he would not have done things differently. Think Long term in this environment where share holders want things short term.

Yahoo is still changing the game, says Yang.

Cheesecake Factory, South Shore Plaza, Braintree

The Cheesecake factory, located in the south shore plaza in Braintree is a great place for a business lunch or a romantic evening or just to enjoy the big game.
It is spacious and has an extremely elegant decor and a fine seating area. It's trademark cheesecakes are a fitting desert after a meal, if you are still hungry.

I say this because, in each of my visits, I had no other option but to bring home the leftovers for a delicious lunch 0r dinner the following day.
I was surprised that the menu was eclectic, featuring dishes from pasta, steak, fish, along with Mexican and South Asian cuisines.

I have tried the Orange Chicken, the Spicy Cashew Chicken or the Bang Bang Thai Chicken and Shrimp dish and are all well recommended. Also great in size and taste is the mammoth factory burger. You just have to make sure you have the appetite for it.

The Tex Mex rolls with the chutney and salsa makes for excellent appetizers.Finally, as it is located in the mall, there is ample spacing except for the holidays. I dare say, there will be ample parking during this holiday season :)

James Boyle at Zeitgeist 2008

James Boyle at Zeitgeist 2008
In this talk on intellectual property, Duke University professor, Boyle talks about two themes. He says that we are bad at looking at distributed creativity but very good about the dangers of openness. We have biasses not just about IP but about our business plans, our methods of social organization, our culture and our politics.

He also says than in the last couple of decades, people have become the subjects of copyright law as never before. We never had to be in the position of risking with copyright law. The combination of these two themes has powerful implications.

Behavioral economists discovered that people do not act rationally. They said, however, that there are patterns to our thinking. We are risk averse. Most people buy warranties on consumer items. We are aware that the odds of using it are low, but we want to eliminate uncertainty.

He challenges the audience that if we have the choice of two networks, given they do not know what we do now. One totally open and another totally secure. He argues that all of us would have been tempted not to pick the first network.

The other example is of Wikipedia. No one could have predicted this as a viable business as well. We systematically pick closed propitiatory systems. the IP on networks is not intuitive. We have a bias in our thinking.

People of the past were not subjects of copyright law. It could not be easily viloated by individuals. Today we cannot live without copying or distributing information. We 'press' copy law triggers.

The fact is many people do make illicit copies. We have not focussed on the flip side. We have handed the tools of creation of 1.3 billion authors, filmakers and creators. These are subjects of copyright law. They may not have the same motivations as big movie makers or organizations but they too wish to create.

Boyle is the chairman of the Creative Commons. Many who create copyrighted works wish to share them. What can we do with such content- copy, modify or share it?

Creative commons offers simple choices and makes it human readable. We can use google or yahoo to find content based on what is allowed. They come together as we:
1. Are very good at figuring out the dangers.
2. Run the risk of loosing out the benefits.

We may regress to the old world where we are limited from accesseing creativity. Indeed we have democratized creativity.

Michael Jordan's 23 Sports Cafe, Mohegan Sun

Michael Jordan's 23 Sports Cafe is located on the 2nd floor with many other eateries at the Mohegan Sun, one of the two famous gambling Meccas in New England.The cafe is one of your choices when you decide to take a break from the tables or the slot machines.

Ok, first the good news. The ambiance in this Sports bar is excellent. It is well lit, spacious and has many monitors that make it an ideal place to watch the big game.

Well, the compliments end there. Michael Jordan's Sports Cafe was meant to be the poor man's alternative to the elegant and elite Michael Jordan's Steak House next door.

The food is definitely not something to write home about. The Chili was solid. They might have tried to push the 'atypical' card too far. The burger I ordered was tasteless and too raw(I had ordered the burger medium rare). Then, to make matters worse, the fries were cold The waiter for his part was good, quick and courteous, but the food simply left a sour taste in my mouth. Needless to say, the meal was a disappointment.

One gets the feeling Jordan is putting all his attention on the Steak House and ignored the sports cafe.

Web 2.0 Summit 08: Lawrence Lessig (Creative Commons)

Web 2.0 Summit 08: Lawrence Lessig (Creative Commons)

• The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection act of 2005 has no consumer protection.
• The effect of this act is that Credit Card obligations cannot be escaped.
• President Clinton was for it.
  
• Hillary first called it the 'Awful Bill', opposed it. When she became a senator, she voted for it twice.(She got paid $140K by the credit card companies.)
  
• Lessig believes her and we should too, he says.
• Going back to 1785, when America was believed to be a failure. Independence had become a dependence. America sought non-dependent individuals.
  
• They failed. In the 19th century, Congress was a cesspool of corruption.
• Daniel Webster openly asked for 'the usual retainers'.
• Bribery was not even a crime till 1853.
  
• People went to congress to make money.
• In the 20th century, Mr. Stevens was found guilty of accepting bribes.
• The real problem is not people going to Washington to make money.
• The real problem is using money to secure tenure at Washington.
• This is a constant attention to money for reeelection.
• They get a 100% return rate to come back to congress.
• The 2nd job of raising money becomes the 1st job.
• The return for a lobbyist is investing in Washington folks greater than investing in technology.
• The cost is that money destroys trust. 88% of voters believe that money buys trust.
  
• 9% believe that Congress is doing a good job.
• Even those who did not support Obama are hopeful.
  
• We must allow ourselves to revel in this ideal but the Presidency is not at the core of this cancer.
• We need a more fundamental change.
• We need a change in congress.
• Go to www.change-congress.com
  

Web 2.0 Summit 08: Saul Griffith (Makani Power/Squid Labs) , High Order Bit

Web 2.0 Summit 08: Saul Griffith (Makani Power/Squid Labs) , High Order Bit

• We talks these days about energy independence, the need to get off foreign oil and are familiar with the term Carbon footprint.
• We needto know our role in this and make energy choices that are in tune with these grandiose visions.
• Wattzon.com is a site which has internet tools like wikis using social networking to help people make the right energy choice.
• Griffith was curious about how much energy he used in daily life.
  
• We aggregate all our activities to get this number.
• One of the biggest uses in Griffith's life was a return trip to Sydney. His cars, cooking and taking showers the A/C he uses at work.
• Some of it is energy the government uses on our behalf like creating roads,etc.
• Others are laptops, bicycles,etc.
• America uses a tenth of the total energy, Canada a little more. The US average is 11.4 Kilo watts The global average is 2200 watts.
• The world uses 18 terra watts of power. When it comes to CO2 production, US is #1, Russia is #2 and China is #3.
• We can only burn 3 terra watts of fossil fuels in 25 years time.
• We need 11.5 terra watts of new energy. This is a scary concept.
• We have 85000 terra watts Solar power, huge amount of wind and some in geothermal.
• We must measure in watts and not in carbon.
  
• To conserve the power we use we could use tools for this.
• The wattson website is in public alpha.
  
• We can choose the number of flights we take and the flight company we use.
• We can choose our foods and personalize our diets. Being vegan reduces the power we use.
• Other choices are commuting.
• .The US government uses more energy than all individuals in the world combined.
• We could ask:What is my life power in terms of light bulbs, wind turbines, pints of oil, etc.
• So we could use this website to lessen the energy we use.
  

Beringer White Zinfandel

From the oldest vineyard in the NAPA valley comes this pocket offering of white Zinfandel. This is one of the sweetest wines I have tasted, almost as sweet as a wine cooler.

However, it is not on the fruity side. The interesting thing about it is that it is served in single serve plastic unbreakable bottles. undoubtedly an offering for the tyro wine drinkers like yours truly. (Talk about a Blue Ocean Strategy!)

Motrin ads do it again

Motrin has done it again. This time, a lot more people, other than me are upset. The ad featured here created an uproar from moms around the social media world, forcing Motrin to take it off their site and then causing the  Motrin site itself to come down due to outraged or curious traffic.

Motrin may have to clean up their department and get rid of the 'We feel your pain' theme. Here is my rant on one of their previous ads.

Short Web 2.0 Clips

Web 2.0 Definition Revisited

While others have defined Web 2.0 as the 'Wisdom of Crowds','The long tail', social networks, peer collaboration, You Tube and Flickr,etc, here is yet another short clip where it is defined by the newer technologies it incorporates: Ajax, flash, mashups, SOA and web services. Andy Gutmans also describes it as bringing apps from the dektop to the browser.

Mashup Camp Silicon Valley 2008 - WSO2

WSO2 has created the first Mashup server with open source. Jonanthan Marsh, WSO2's director of technologies talks to InformationWeek's Fritz Nelson on this server.This server can incorporate web services, mash up several types of data and display them on a web page or as data to programs or as email. It is freely downloadable, installable and usable by both individuals and by teams of an enterprise. It can easily host web services. WSO2 can provide paid support. The advantage is speed of development.

It is usable without Java programming. One can use javascript to create applications.
You can copy, redistribute and even resell the server. The SOA architecture platform allows access to apache and rolls up web service, messaging, configuration and integration of webservices.
The webservice bus enables transform, route and audit messages as web services. The mashup server augments this offering by allowing easy scripting to bring these services online and allow user interaction with these services like emailing, download and display of services, etc. and display on a browser.

Here is the project home page.

Gary Vee is the Web 2.0 Antony Robbins

The more I watch Gary Vaynerchuk, founder  of the Wine Library TV, and one of the leading evangelists of Web 2.0, the more impressed I get. This guy is barely in his 30s and is living the American dream. He has been criticized by many for being obnoxiously loud, crass and unconventional.

If I were to give this guy advice(like he needs it) I would tell him not to change a thing, except his line of work. Thats right, Gary wine a'int for you. You should be a motivational speaker. Yes, I mean it. 

I've seen all his talks and he has all the goods.

1. He is caring about people. Gary is known to personally talk to all those who come to him with questions. Despite all his swearing, his messsage is very simple. Care for others and reach out.

2. He preaches tolerance in his own way. I loved this presentation where he is honest about his own shortcomings and says that he is respectful of all, including his critics.

3. He is unbelievably insightful. In this presentation I loved the way he breaks down Howard Stern's prepostous views of My Space and Facebook, never at any point discrediting Stern's success, but clearly explaining where the shock jock was wrong.

4. His public speaking skills are outstanding. Despite all that is said about his style, his public speaking abilities are outstanding.  He is a natural at introducing pauses between sentences,  adding voice variation and stressing on the important points to add additional impact.

5. He is passionate and his sincerity comes through in every one of his presentations, both on Wine library and on his blog. This is a perfect example of someone  epitomizing the Antony Robbins 'Live with Passion Mantra'.

6. He embodies the American dream and thus has built credibility. In the movie 'War of the Roses', Danny DeVito made the memorable quote: 'When someone who earns $500 an hour gives you advice, you better listen'. This is great advice to all his critics. Gary took his parent's wine business with his gift in savoring wine, turned it into a multi million dollar business.

7. His How-to Messages in achieving an objective are crystal clear. Never before have I seen any speaker deliver a detailed message in explaining how to present an idea as well as Gary can.

Check out this presentation where he explains how to build a show on baseball cards.

8. He has convictions and a strong opinion on the world. Whether one agrees with him or not, one has to admit that it is only those with strong convictions that ultimately succeed. Watch this outdoor presentation where Gary delivers a speech on the current state of the economy and how one may capitalize from it, by what he calls the 'Hussle'. (Warning: He swears a lot in this presentation.)

9. The man is a genius on branding. There is no question about this one as is obvious in all his presentations.

Move over Tony Robbins, here comes Gary Vee.

Web 2.0 Summit 08: Kevin Kelly (Wired)

Web 2.0 Summit 08: Kevin Kelly (Wired)

• It was 6257 days from the time Tim Bernes Lee made to the first web page.
• There was not enough days then to do all we have achieved today.
• It was supposed to be like TV but ended up unlike TV in every way.
• The first version was about connected computers and linking data.
• There was sharing and concern about sharing.
• We shared documents and concern for copyrighting docs.
• We got over that.
• We had document and page sharing. Then we had links.
• We now have the next phase of linking data. 
• The information within the page(database) to other data. This is more finer grained linking.
• The semantic web will be aware of data. Like 'knowing' that a word in a document is a 'City' etc.
• We will unstructure the data units to basic units and then restructure them.
• We will unstructure the elements from language, and put it in a format machines can understand and then restructuring.
• We now can share data with less apprehension.
• Objects we manufacture will have a sliver of intelligence in it and becomes part of the web.
• Probes in our bodies, manufacture items,etc will then become a 'database of things', shared and restructured.
• This is what we can expect in the next 6500 days of the web. 
• It is not going to be the web, only better. It will be different from the web as we know it today.
• We have many screens now looking at the same one machine, with transistors, CPUs.
• The web is an OS and we will move it onto the OS.
• The web will own all that is produced. Everything else will not count. The web will be a black hole.
• Data will be processed and structured.
• Like the network of network of networks, we have the media of media, all observing the same laws. One screen  shows us TV, data, video, audio.
• There is a global sense to this machine, like the global Financial market.
• We are continuing toward the database and sharing.
• All work is moving into the cloud.
• The information is moving into a database, the 'heart' of the engine.
• How far can we go with sharing, hive mind, social media,etc. We are pushing these boundaries.
• Life in this cloud is always 'On' and extreme dependence. We will feel amputated when we are Off. It will make us smarter. The consequences of being off will be more apparent.
• The web will be an extension of ourselves. Where do we start and end? 
• The social web gives us a new meaning and a new understanding of the value of the collective.
• The legal conflicts will not stop either.
• We have to get better at believing the impossible as the impossible has happened now.

Movie Review: House of Sand and Fog(2003)

After watching a good action movie, which was not altogether mindless, watching great drama was a great transition this weekend. The House of Sand and Fog, combines the acting talents of two Oscar winners, Jennifer Connelley(A Beautiful Mind) and Sir Ben Kingsley(Gandhi, Sexy Beast) with the directing talents of Vadim Perelman.

It begs the question of who is right in their path of pursuing the American dream, a young woman who has a house handed to her through an inheritance, or a hardworking immigrant, who is hellbent on creating a good life for his son. 

The latter, Behrani(Kingsley) is willing to make what others may consider moral compromises, like living a life of pretence, or making a profit of a house, someone else had been forced to evict, on unreasonable conditions. That someone else, is Kathy(Connelley), a woman whose house was foreclosed on as the county she lives in, wrongly concluded she owed back taxes, that she did not pay off. 

As Behrani buys the house, through legal means, he believes that he has a right to the house. Thus begin a cyclone of emotions and happenings almost all disastrous in the lives of both protagonists.  Only fate can make a decision for both of them, as each clutches to her own strong beliefs and refuses to let go. 

Fate is not always just, and punishments it renders, are not always justified. With scintillating performances from all in the movie, House of Sound and Fog, is an unforgettable and intense viewing experience. 

My mentor, the late Chitra Parayath wrote of Ben Kingsley's performance in this film, "If Kingsley does not get a Oscar for this role, I will loose faith in the Oscars." 

Kingsley did not win that year and I can relate to Chitra's sentiment. I do believe that Kingsley will have his next Oscar soon enough. Even fate has to step aside for such a talent. 

The back of the DVD box says that the unexpected end would leave you  breathless. It sure will.

Movie Review: Bourne Ultimatum

With the classic direction of Paul Greengrass and with Matt Damon as the lead character, Bourne Ultimatum is one of the best action movies I've seen in a long time. Jason Bourne is a CIA operative, double crossed by the very agency he has chosen to work for.

His memory is lost and comes back to him periodically in flashes. He is back, taking on the CIA to find out the truth about his past and to find out who he really is. Bourne Ultimatum is a classic cat and mouse game spread across Russia, New York City, London, Madrid and Tangiers as the hunted agent soon becomes the hunter taking on the establishment.

There is a rooftop chase in Tagiers that is riveting and a triumph of technology. The movie features some of the best chases and fights I've seen in a long time. Though I would not call the camera work perfection(It was a little too shaky at times.), the filmography is excellent.

Though it is based on the novel by Robert Ludlum by the same name, it departs from the story in plot and location. There is no mention of Carlos the Jackal, the person Bourne must kill in the Ludlum version.

Rumor has it that the new Bond movie steals heavily from this movie. I'll know and share more on that subject when I see the Born film. In the meantime, I'd recommend Bourne Ultimatum to all action movie lovers.

Web 2.0 Summit 08: Mary Meeker (Morgan Stanley)

Web 2.0 Summit 08: Mary Meeker (Morgan Stanley)

• The recession has been a long time coming. The root of the problem was that 10-15 years ago there was a mandate to increase home ownerships.
  
• In 2005 savings went negative.
• It was easy to get credit and homes were going up in value.
• Foreign ownership of US treasuries is up twofold at 60%.
• The national debt is 3 times the GDP.
• Consumer spending was down 3% sequentially. October was worse than Sept and Sept was worse than August. GDP growth had a downward bias.
• The stock market is a leading indicator of things to come. The Chinese market is down 71%, The Russian market is down 61% and Asian market is down about 50%.
• The ones hurt most are financials, consumer discretionary and telecom services.
• Tech spending and ad spending are tied to GDP growth.
• If GDP stays the same, we still cannot predict with available data how the internet will do.
• Online ad spending was down 27 % from 2000 to 2002. We do not see that decline now.
• We had flat tech spending in 2002.
• We see a faster deceleration in the 3rd and 4th quarters.
• When things were bad in 2002, eyeballs grew, innovation grew and revenue followed.
• On the digital consumer growth there is rapid growth in social networks and VoIP but this means much lower CPMs.
• Youtube, Facebook, Skype, Paypal have all grown.
• Youtube has become the #2 search engine.
• If Skype were a carrier, it would be the biggest.
• Ad supply is greater than demand leading to lower CPMs
• Mobile innovation has been huge and this means wealth will be created and destroyed.
• 64% of Austrian broadband subscribers use cellular modems.
• People want wireless access everywhere.
• When Google launched G1, Motorola announced that it was creating an Android. Apple announced that you do not need an NDA for its SDK.
• With innovation in Google and Apple, the US will be a mobile marketplace leader in 10 years.
• 3G will be at 22% subscribers. This will make mobile internet more interesting.
• Emerging markets see a lot of growth.
  
• Top 10 emerging markets(China, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Russia) will surpass top 10 developed markets in 2008.
• Companies with cogent business models will survive and thrive.
• People will look for more value on the internet. Some companies will survive.
• Amazon recommendation engine has done very well and will gain more.
• Search will be even more important.
• CPMs are under a little more pressure because of targetability
• We have 1.3 Billion users on the internet and thus there are lots of opportunities to monetize.
  

Web 2.0 Summit 08: Isaac Mao (Social Brain Foundation), High

Web 2.0 Summit 08: Isaac Mao (Social Brain Foundation), High

• There are two paradigms: One is censorship and 'sharism':
• Both are different models and are applicable to financial, technical and governance worlds.
• We have had a 10 fold increase in information.
• Different kinds of information arose from different kinds of devices.
• This increase rate will not stop.
• There is a reason why people choose to share.
  
• Social setting prevent us from sharing.
• Web content is becoming smaller in granularity.
• With a time stamp and URL you can reference and find the time of the information creation.
• People work to generate smaller scale information and can connect to each other.
• The original gap between public and private space can be eliminated with a new spectrum.
• This is the Yin Yang balance.
  
• China has the great firewall censorship system.
• There has to be some disruption to this. As a result we see more Web 2.0 applications in China.
• Media is changing too. The traditional propaganda model is hierarchical: Reporters, editors, broadcasters.
• We now have a many-to-many model. People no longer rely on a single information channel.
• We now include the professional and the grassroots media.
• Truth can be revealed by the collaboration of two worlds.
• We can create our own social pathways now.
  

Web 2.0 Summit 08: Tony Hsieh (Zappos.com)

Web 2.0 Summit 08: Tony Hsieh (Zappos.com)

• Hsieh ran a Pizza business in college.
• He started Link exchange after college with the same partner, and grew it to a 100 employees.
• They sold it to Microsoft for $260 Million
• The money was put into web companies
• Zappos was one of the most promising of these.
• They are known as an online retailer.
• They sell footwear, clothing and handbags.
• They focus on customer service and the customer experience
• They look to Virgin for inspiration.
• They have 9 million customers (3% of Us population has bought from them)and focus on repeat customers.
• In the last 10 years, they have grown to 1 billion in gross sales.
  
• Customers who order regular are often upgraded to surprise overnight upgrades, etc.
• This creates the WOW experience.
• The 1-800 number is on every page of the website as they want to talk to customers.
• The telephone is one of the best branding devices available.
• They do not have scripts, or try to cut down on calls.
• The #1 priority of the company is culture. Everything else, they believe will fall into place.
• With the web making companies transparent, they believe that culture and brand are two sides of the same coin.
• They do all they can to make the culture scale.
  
• They have two rounds of interviews, one technical and the other a culture fit.
• All employees are put through the same training.
  
• They given $2000 to leave the company and the time they spent in the company.
• Only 2-3% leave.
• They have a culture book organized by categories.
• People are fired if they are not a culture fit.
• Culture is defined as 'commitable' 10 core values.
• Zappos also offers field trips with the company for other companies like Lego and South West.
  

Hseieh ends with a Pizza anecdote.

Web 2.0 Summit 08: John Battelle,Tim O'Reilly

Web 2.0 Summit 08: John Battelle (Federated Media Publishing), Tim O'Reilly (O'Reilly Media, Inc.)
Tim O'Reilly and Batelle use Obama's theme of 'Yes we can' in using technology to solve complex problems. Many people dismiss Web 2.0 as advertising driven startups.

If you paid attention, it was about the network as a platform. This platform gave new potential to look at problems in new ways, harness data and the potential of users.

• Cloud computing, mobile apps are becoming part of the ecosystem, new opportunities, reinventing Government and the power grid.
• If there is no silver-lining in the down turn, we will remove the clutter.
• When Google can on the scene, most people had dismissed search.
• We are at those inflection points again.

The rest of the presentation is about the speakers in the summit.

Web 2.0 Summit 08: Jesse Robbins (O'Reilly Radar), High Order Bit

Web 2.0 Summit 08: Jesse Robbins (O'Reilly Radar), High Order Bit

• Jesse Robbins is a firefighter and EMT and a CEO of a tech startup.
• Web 2.0 tools are transforming humanitarian aid.
• We can now make a difference and improve our product.
• Problems are hard. When we are faced with them we are faced with inexperience and being excited or knowledgeable and scared.
• The geek community says that it can save everyone with technology.
• The emergency management community responds that it will never work and that the geeks will kill everyone.
• Sometimes, it is the exact reverse.
• This makes innovation a challenge.
• There is a way: Adhoc innovation.
• When a disaster happens, a champion must push her cause in the community.

Jesse explain how he acted as this champion during Katrina. The I90 bridge which was destroyed was still shown to exist in Googlemaps as it is not real time. Red cross did not get this.
Mikel Maron a Google Maps expert worked with Yahoo and Google to update the maps and have better maps for everyone.

• The anti pattern is that when a disaster occurs and an adhoc adaptation is needed, if there is no champion then there is no iterative improvement.
• The search for missing people is not a repeatable process. Many false positives during such searches are misleading.
• The Internet SAR is championing this cause and hopes to learn from these mistakes
• There are many disasters and many non-profits are desperately seeking solutions.
• These are the same issues as the enterprise and need Web 2.0 technologies.
• Find such non-profits where you can use your skills.
  
• Try to assess their needs.
• Serve those who serve others.
  

Web 2.0 Summit 08: Bob Sutor (IBM), High Order Bit

Web 2.0 Summit 08: Bob Sutor (IBM), High Order Bit

• The world is smaller and flatter, but is it smarter?
• The news reveals that we are now at an 'inflection point'. Are we going to decline or are we going to keep growing?
• We need big changes now, particularly around the IT industry around the world.
  
• It will take partnerships.
• The system itself has to be smart and intelligent.
• We have powerful technologies, instrumentation and 'nerves' in our system and processing power.
• The good news is that with RFIDs we are moving towards 30 Billion tags in 3 years. In 2011 we will have 1 billion connected devices. In 2010 we will have 1 Billion transistors for each human.
  
• The IBM Roadrunner broke the Peta Flop barrier (1 thousand trillion calculations per second.
• The question is what do we do with all this?
• The amount of connectivity and processing power far exceeds the good things we are doing with them.
• Are we putting them to good use?
• There is risk in home mortgages, insurance, investments etc. We try to spread the risk around but we should be understanding, tracking and managing the risk.
• Are we using power optimally? We are loosing some power while sending it to every device
  
• Traffic: In the US traffic congestion costs 78 Billion annually including both gasoline and productivity.
• Supply Chains: 40 Billion is lost on inefficient supply chains.
• We have a convergence between the concrete infrastructure and the IT infrastructure.
• This means from full potential to being intelligent.
• Some progress was made in Stockholm in making transportation better.
• Similar projects are in the works in England and Singapore.
• In Germany, RFID is used to keep track of meat in supermarkets and prevent the spread of mad cow disease.
• We have complicated systems to be more efficient.
• Rivers like the Hudson are monitored with sensors to check pollution.
• Solar power has to be attacked from 3 directions:

1. Try to maginfy solar power without melting equipment
2. Solar cells: 100 times thinner and can be almost painted on laptops

• The world needs big bets: Public/private partnerships
• Good time politically for these changes
• New types of collaborative, cooperative leaders
• We must deal with privacy and security at the same time.
• Use open source and standards.
  

IBM is operating in startup stealth mode. It will continue to make the planet smarter, says Sutor.

Web 2.0 Summit 08: Rebecca MacKinnon (Global Voices), High O

Web 2.0 Summit 08: Rebecca MacKinnon (Global Voices), High O
Rebecca lived in Hong Kong and visited the Bay area only recently. She says that the view of the world from Sillicon Valley is different. One perspective is that we have democracies and a bunch on autocracies and dictatorships.

• The view from other parts of the world is not so clear cut. The question is if we are moving somewhere to the middle.
  
• China in particular is moving from the Mao model to the Murdock model. Does this equal democratization?
• The Chinese government is advocating large media conglomerates.
• With Ethan Zuckerman, Rebbecca help co found the website Global Voices a non profit website that help curate blogs from everywhere except North America and Western Europe.
• The World wide web was supposed to bring more awareness but in reality American Bloggers were talking about other countries less than the mainstream media.
• This was their way of finding out what other bloggers around the world were saying.
• Besides the lack of attention, the other problem that these bloggers had were censorship. Blogspot was banned in Pakistan .
• It was not enough just to encourage bloggers but to advocate their free speech.
• China has the great firewall.
  
• Many bloggers are thrown in jail. Some arrests are happening with the help of companies.
• In one instance Yahoo helped arrest a blogger by providing the blogger account to the Chinese authorities. This has provoked an outcry from International human rights groups.
• Google too helped China by not providing gmail in localized Chinese servers. However, they also have a censured version of their search engine.
• However, Google said that it was less censoring than the local Chinese search engine.
• A Chinese blog hosting service, partly funded by Google about Tianmen mothers displays a message asking to wait for approval when controversial words are used and never get approval.
• The censorship in China happens mostly from companies that are afraid that they will loose their business license.
• Companies are caught in the middle between governments and users.
• This also happens in the US.
• The Global network initiative.org where big players like Microsoft, Google and Yahoo have signed on is based on standards that companies must set on freedom of expression and privacy.
• It seeks to strike a balance for companies to keep markets but allow self expression.
• Companies must seek creative solutions for such problems.
• They must assess human rights before rolling out new products and advocate decision making before launches.
• It also seeks for governance accountability and transparency to benchmark companies to live upto principals.
• This will help investors and users make decisions on companies.
• This brings up questions like:

1. Are we over-relying on Web 2.0 giants?
2. Do we need alternatives to gmail, Skype,etc?
3. Can companies be benevolent dictators?
4. Do we need more open-source, peer to peer alternatives?

Web 2.0 Summit 08: Kevin Rose (Digg), High Order Bit

Web 2.0 Summit 08: Kevin Rose (Digg), High Order Bit

• Digg was launched with Facebook, Delicious and Wikipedia and had one thing in common with all of them: It was launched before Web 2.0.
• They had the first mover advantage for 6-8 months, with little competition and a lot of press coverage.
• However, they had a lot of early adopters. It is hard to launch these companies when there is a lot of activities.When you invite friends, over and over again, they are not going to be interested.
• As there is a downturn now, a lot of companies will disappear. Investing will decline.
• This is a great time to start sometime new.
• Digg was launched with next to nothing.
• Kevin had his day job four months into Digg with a few thousand developers and a few developers.
• He hired one from Nova Scotia at a 1/3 of the US cost of a developer.
• He did not have a PR organization. He acted as PR in the early days.Most projects are hidden in the about me page.
• He recommends Gary V's videos on PR.
• Using Podcasts is a cheap marketing strategy. Make yourself known.
• Many blogs are focussed on themselves. Talk about the whole industry and that has a chance of getting on Digg.
• Pounce is 5-6 servers, inexpensively rented. Some of them are S3 and can deal with terrabytes.
• Email communication is dead now.
  
• Using Twitter is more efficient.
• This is the Web 2.5 time when funding for consumer internet companies is going away and this can be an opportunity for many of us.

Gladwell on TED

Malcolm Gladwell: What we can learn from spaghetti sauce
The author of Blink and the Tipping Point speaks of a psychophisicist named Howard. What is the right amount of sweetness for Diet Pepsi? This was a question posed to Howard by Pepsi. The data was random.

After years of speculation, Howard realized that there was no single 'Sweet Spot' for a whole population. There were many sweet spots. Then when Cambell's came to him for a suggestion to beat Raghu spaghetti sauce, he created 45 varieties of Tomato sauce based on many factors.

After an experimental tour of the country to test out his 45 sauces, he now had data for the best spaghetti sauces. He did not look for a single silver bullet. He grouped them into three clusters: Plain, spicy and extra chunky.

The last is what he went with and Prego(Cambell) created a chunky sauce and created $600M worth of spagetti sauces. This resulted in many varieties of spagetti sauce on the market.

This an enormously important development in the food market. It meant that the method of asking customers what they wanted was wrong. No one knew that they wanted chunky spaghetti sauce. 'The mind does not know what the tongue wants.'

Howard also made us realize that the importance of 'Horizontal Segmentation'. There were two mustards in the market not long ago selling at $8. Grey Poupon came along and sold it at $4 and reaped big profits. Howard said that this was not the way to go. There was no single great mustard.

Howard also proved that there was no single best way to make a dish. (Also called the platonic way to make dishes.) Italian Tomato sauce was thin with no visible solids. Howard proved that giving everyone the culturally authentic sauce was the best way to please others was not necessarily the best strategy.

Science too now looks for understanding variability than searching for universals. Howard said that the search for universals was a disservice to ourselves. When we embrace the diversity of human beings, we find happiness.

A conversation on Customer Service

Customer Service is the new marketing

This is a very insightful conversation on customer service.

• Customers have a greater voice than ever before , thanks to the Internet.
  
• This is frightening and a great opportunity for companies. 
  
• Customers could either act as evangelists or destroy your reputation online.
  
• The companies that dedicate more resources to customer service are better off. (Apple, Nordstorm)
• The old rule was customer avoidance: Closing customer tickets, shorter the call the better, etc.
• The biggest challenge is for companies to be open and transparent.
• Today transactions are a give and take, a back and forth.
• Apologise for your mistakes and reach out to fix the problem.

Chris Anderson on YouTube

Chris Anderson Explains the Long Tail

We are fortunate to live in these times and to be able to look at our culture from our databases., says Anderson. He goes on to explain his long tail theory with the 80/20. There are infrequent events that have high impact. These are low frequency, high amplitude events like earthquakes.

Another example is of most of the population being concentrated in cities. This 80/20 rule is true in human economies,  human affairs and nature itself.

If plotted on the linear curve  it would show a large concentration on the left. If we plot if log-log we would get a sloping line.

In the box office, the #1 film made a lot of money. then there are many over time that did not fare successfully. The vast majority do not make it to megaplexes as there are not enough screens for them. This means that our belief about Hollywood taste is shaped by the distribution channel. These bottlenecks distort the market and our perception.

In our era, we have Internet distribution channels that do not have much of the bottlenecks like storage area or shelf space. We now have access to the latent market, which we could not reach with traditional distribution.

Rhapsody carries niches from this domain in music. These are tracks that Walmart does not carry. Rhapsody carries far more inventory than Walmart. The same difference is seen between Netflix and Blockbuster and between Amazon on Borders.

The low sellers were not significant in earlier markets and are beginning to count toward sales online. We are moving toward a trend where half the market is sold via the old model and the other half through the new distribution models.

Talks on Creativity

Continuing on the theme of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's creativity and Zen, here are a couple more online talks on creativity.

Tim Brown:The powerful link between creativity and play

In this talk on TED, Tim Brown, the CEO of Ideo the design consulting firm shares his ideas on creativity. One of the descriptions of the Zen state is to become a child again. This is what Brown challenges us to do. This humorous and insightful speech, shows us how we can tap into our talents:
1. By making our workspace more nurturing of our creative talents. Among some of the examples, Brown shares are the Swiss office of Google that has a slide.

2. Children are creative, as they are not afraid to restrict their talents. As we grow up, we forget this innate doorway to creativity. We tend to edit and restrict our 'flow'.

3. Playing and seriousness go hand in hand.

4. There is a time to play and a time to stop playing as there is with kids.

Watch the rest of this presentation for some fun exercises that Brown gives his audience.


Lewis Pinault, LEGO Senior Director and General Manager, LEGO Serious Play for Business and Mark Hansen, Senior Director, LEGO Digital Play Studio

This speech by Pinault and Hansen combines ideas on creativity with the wisdom of crowds. Lego blocks have a vibrant history and have been used as playtools for kids, and as modelling and simulation tools by engineers. Engineers have constructed lifesize models of Dinosaurs, retinal scanners,etc. It is the user community that has used Lego blocks to build things unanticipated by the company.

Lego managed to tap into this user base and help them cobuild some of their kits. They then followed up by bringing users and have them build user kits by themselves. Further Lego then decided to give users the tools to create, license and publish their creations.

Now Lego supports new businesses and partners to create emergences and simply let it happen. Audiences spread across the globe can now collaborate digitally on models and share ideas on 3D models.

The executives feel that the younger generations could use lego to simulate new models and solve future problems. I loved this talk.

James Surowiecki on TED

James Surowiecki: The moment when social media became the news
Surowiecki, the author of the Wisdom of crowds uses blog entries and amateur video coverage from the South Asian Tsunami of 2005 to illustrate his point. Blogs, he says could be classified as 'Before' and 'After' the Tsunami. Never before have we had this sort of 'current' and up to date information on an event as we did in the aftermath of the Tsunami.

He then poses the following questions:
What do blogs tell us about the motivation for people to do things?
What do they tell us about accessing a collective, previously untapped collective intelligence?
What are the disadvantages to blogs?

• Most people blog and put together images, audio,links for free. There is no financial payoffs.
• People have found a way to work with each other for free.
• We need to expand out idea of what it means to be rational.
• We need to change our idea on Payoffs.
• The notion of voluntary coordination is powerful
• Under the right circumstances, groups can be intelligent.
• They can be sometimes smarter than the smartest person in the group.
• Google uses this information to sort out the sites with the necessary information.
• The Blogosphere offers collected distributed information.
• The 'dark' side is that when we follow others we can fall in love with the decentralized model to the point of loosing our own independent ideas.
• Groups are smart only as long as its members are individual thinkers.
• Networks make it hard to maintain your individuality.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on Ted

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Creativity, fulfillment and flow

It was years ago when I first read 'Finding Flow'. It is one of those smaller books that deliver a giant message. If I were to epitomize its content, it is a scientist's explanation of happiness. Many great writers have written books on approaching happiness. Most of these are 'How to' guides.

Mihaly approaches this elusive topic differently.

He provides a glimpse of people who have happiness. Many do not have great career success and many are not wealthy. Lack of material goods makes one unhappy but having material abundance does not, by itself guarantee happiness.

Much has been written also about the Zen state, a state when an artist forgets himself, a scientist is drawn into a solution mindset. There is a sense of contribution to others but gives a person joy. It is about loving what you do and find meaning in it. It is a time when time itself stops for the individual. Few can describe this state as Mihali can.

This speech on TED epitomizes Csikszentmihalyi's research on 'work done for its own sake.' This state need not just come from work. It can be when one is with friends or sometimes (very seldom) when one watches something that moves her on TV.

Movie Review: A History Of Violence

It is not often that one encounters a movie that is better than the book from which it was adapted. This is one of those notable cases. Viggo Mortensen and David Cronenberg the actor-director duo who would go on to make the classic, Eastern promises join hands to create this great film.

It was a couple of years ago, that I reviewed the graphic novel that bears the same name,and was  written by John Wagner and drawn by Vince Locke. I was not a big fan of it then. The movie however, diverges from the book (luckily) thus making itself more gripping and a little more plausible. Ed Harris and William Hurt in supporting roles, further enhance the quality of the flick.

Tom Stall is a small town restaurant owner, unassuming and publicity shy. He is a family man, not the person one would assume, to be violent. One day, two cons arrive in his restaurant, threatening his life and those of his staff. Reasoning with them, obviously is no answer.

Tom kills the pair, and this act would place him exactly where he did not want to be- in the public spotlight. It draws attention from the wrong quarters. Criminals high up in the mob food -chain first show up at his restaurant and then begin  to harass his family. They claim Tom is not who he says he is, and that he had a violent past. How else could a mere small-towner subdue two hardened thugs?

Tom is faced with no other option, but to take to violence to make things right. I liked the way the plot unfolds in the movie, far better than in the book. If not for the direction of Cronenberg and for its stellar cast, this movie would have been yet another medicore action flick. Instead, it is riveting and worthy of a weekend watch.