New year and change...

It has been a while since I wrote a post of which I have been long thinking. In general, 2011 year has been an ok considering the pluses and minuses each year has.

Year 2012 was welcomed with the usual frenzy. Some newspapers said that many people preferred to stay home and indoors instead of partying hard on 31st night. That is strange considering the lovely cold that Mumbai is experiencing. But it is perfectly understandable considering that the same cold is quite harsh in the north.

So how was your celebration at the turn of the year? Party or ghar pe TV ke saamne? Not that the TV had much to offer. I apologize in advance but I cannot resist pasting this excerpt from one of my earlier posts :

      "Well, these days the TV does not stop, the viewer has to muster the courage to go to the power off   button. These days there is no need of news wrap because you have been fed the same news 24x7 till you have learnt it to the last headline and you no longer wait for that 5 minute magic from Jaaved Jaffrey because there are like a million copies doing rounds on 50 channels."

Nevertheless, the year had its share of headlines - the anti-corruption headlines from our nation, the Arab spring headlines, the Japanese earthquake and the tragedy thereafter, the British royal wedding, the famous Indian World Cup victory and the Euro zone fiasco.

For me, in 2011, I read one of the most enjoyable books I have ever read on general science - Bill Bryson's Short History of Nearly Everything. I have since been recommending it to anyone who has been showing a slightest interest in science.

So here we come to the close of this post. It was just a general chit-chat on the year that went by.

What am I looking forward to: Seeing Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. One of the finest spy novels I have read as well as one of the finest mini-series I have seen ever. It would be interesting to see how Gary Oldman compares to Sir Alec Guinness. Having missed the movie in the cinemas, I now await its DVD release...

Economics, Globalization and News Focus

Economics deals with distribution of scarce resources amongst their seekers. Globalization has brought about a subtle competition between nations in pursuing smart economic policies. Sometimes they group together or raise barriers. Countries often attempt to replicate another country's successful policies. Sometimes desperate times invites pressure from other nations that force a country to follow certain policies.

In the past few years the term BRICS - Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa has been used more and more often. The reasons being that these are the growth markets that attract investors. Also, they attract sellers of various products & services from across the world because of their size and potential.

Now, some very interesting commentary on what long term and short term of economics in human history is and how effects of changes being done today will manifest in future is discussed in this NYTimes article. What I find particularly interesting is the author's comment that a nation should consider the option of being dislodged from being the top one in the long run as acceptable.

The article is also relevant to nations which are aspiring to be leaders in the new world order. It certainly takes courage to make decisions that sometimes feel incorrect in short term but help the nation and the world in the longer run. I guess, when a nation transforms at core, it also is able to muster the courage needed to make such decisions.

The article correctly points out on how news is generally focussed around major events. Now, we in India, exactly know how news on items like Economy and BRICS is played. Hype on everything is the norm, a small M&A activity by an Indian company and media may conclude that India has dislodged every other country in everything including baking croissants. The second problem is the excessive focus by business media on the stock market. Stock market is one of the indicators on how the economy is doing, but it is not the only indicator. Stock market is also correlated to international markets and foreign fund flows. So using only stock movements to understand the state of economy is obviously not correct.

How 2009 Went By? Part 1

As is the ritual, year endings are mandated with the lists of 10 somethings...top news, best, worst....

So here are the 2 telecom updates:
1) MBB on top 10 telecom news. 
2) Telecom M&A details from Unstrung - Check the AdMobile story in there. Interesting.

As I gather more such lists, I will either update this post or post next part.

Also posting these / some of these individually on twitter under #How2009Went. If you got any interesting ones, post in comments here or tweet them.

Indian newspaper and news websites

The Hindu, one of India's oldest and better newspapers, has a new beta website (Hat tip - tipblog.in). This blog is not to review it but I need to use it as one of the examples for this post.

Now what is most important in newspapers? For my generation, probably the last generation in India to have read newspapers that fed news and intelligent analysis/investigation, the frontpage is the most important part. Next, for the serious readers, the editorial and columnists sections.

If that is agreed upon, then the homepage and edits should be the most important on a website. Check any of the major Indian news or newspaper websites - You need to scroll to find the opinion page. There may be an exception....but just that exception.

Next, the most irritating part of these websites is the barrage of advertisements that hits you when you open the homepages. The advertisements actually interfere between you and the news. I am all for the ads but when they are placed at one side. Let the reader click if he/she is interested...just like you have the ad in newspapers where a reader chooses to read it. It is like those advertisements that make you lose interest in a cricket match because the ads gobble up the first and last balls being bowled in an over.

Also, many news sites have completely irrelevant pictures / videos like those of some fashion show etc. Who cares? Keep them restricted to the entertainment section.

Here is where news aggregation like Google News works wonderfully well. It extracts headlines for the reader and allows the reader the freedom to choose.

Coming back to the new Hindu website....it is elegant. Simplicity of a website is important for news readers and this website gives that. Hopefully this new site will not succumb to the temptation of allowing advertisements to hijack reading experience. In fact I liked their old site too...it has the old internet charm and is effective news providing site.

If we consider worldwide sites, of the sites I have visited, my favourites are NewYork Times and BBC News. NY Times is fast and shows columns on the top right side. BBC News has a very nice front page.

As a reader, my request to the newspapers and news sites is to create sites that create stickiness amongst readers. They should swear by your site's content. Most people are found searching for that close button or trying to find the news they want to. The longer a person takes to find content of his/her choice, the lesser is the chance that you will be his/her choice the next time he/she wants to find something.

Economics Conundrum - Case of Information Over-supply?

I read this amazing article in BusinessWeek - "Why No One Knows Where the Economy Really Stands".

Check this excerpt about the Jobs Data during the boom, "BLS overstated the strength of the economy during good times, and now that fiction will come crashing down on our heads in the first quarter of next year."

The next excerpt of note is on the Stock Markets, "But using what the stock market is doing now as factual data is potentially treating another asset bubble as financial reality."

Just makes me think if the if we are living in a world of Information oversupply where every little bit boosts one section of investor or another? It is Irrational Exuberance, but is it just unavailability of well organized data? Reminds me of our MicroEconomics Professor - Prof. Gupta's favorite phrase, "Garbage In, Garbage Out". :)

Sometimes one feels so much information just leads to more confusion. But then, without it we have the information asymmetry problem. Not sure what we can do of this paradox.

I guess, the author concludes well when he says that real issues can be tackled once accurate data is obtained and analyzed.

Dinosaurs in India

Something very different from what I usually follow. ToI reported that a Huge nests of Dino Eggs has recently been discovered in Tamil Nadu

My knowledge about dinosaurs is about the same level as theirs about me. The main sources of my knowledge include the thick GK books read during childhood, 3 movies from a certain Mr. Steven Spielberg and one visit to an area where Dino footprints are preserved in Texas.

Despite my virtually zero knowledge about these giant lizards that lived millions of years ago on our planet, I still am fascinated about the topic.

Some of the basic questions that come to my mind are
1. What made these lizards so huge in the first place?
2. Did these lizards have evolutionary intelligence? That is did they show characteristics similar to animals of this age?
3. Do we really know about their DNA / other physiology as shown in the movie 'Jurassic Park'?
    3a. Did mosquitoes really exist at the time of Dinos? If yes, were their proboscis long enough to suck Dino blood? :-)
4. The usual question of what led to their extinction?

If you know about this just post it in comments or if you know where this info is on the net then do please post the links in response to the post. Thanks in advance.

A related article from National Geographic
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/08/0812_030812_indiadinosaur.html

Miscellanous and Interesting

1)
An interesting discussion in NYTimes on Wireless On-board.
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/28/the-in-flight-menace-wireless-chatter/

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2)
Mumbai municipal corporation has just earned Rs. 26 Crore for scientific handling of garbage dumpyard. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/india/Mumbai-dump-gets-Rs-26cr-in-carbon/articleshow/5048215.cms

I am witness to this change because I lived in that suburb. We used to hate going near the creek because of the smelly garbage pile that could be seen and smelt from a kilometer away. This summer I went to Gorai Island and actually did not smell the stink. When I checked ( that is turned my head in the direction of dumpyard), the pile was transformed into a smooth surfaced hillock. It was obvious something was done about the thing but I did not know at the time that this was the work that was going on. Something to be proud about.

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3)
Swapan Dasgupta's article "Bust the myth of Good over Evil" in this Sunday's Times of India left me baffled.
What exactly is the point of this article? That we stop believing in the values we built? Or stop believing that, ideally, there should be law and order...and that if it breaks down there is a judicial process?

Mr. Dasgupta, who is generally articulate and logical, is all over the place with this article. Speaks about 80's movie endings, then about Ravan's virtue, then Kumbhakarna's moral dilemma. But what is the whole thing about?

After a certain age we all understand the reality and flaws of a system that prevent the world from becoming perfect. But does that mean that we abandon praying for the victory of good?

More than anything else, the social value of occasions such as Ramleela / Durga Puja is reason enough to keep the tradition going.

Nortel - History of a Giant - Part 2

So Avaya has picked up Nortel's enterprise business at $900M all cash deal. That is quite high than the earlier said $400+M.

A string of interesting articles on this business consolidation, especially in North America on All About Nortel.

Actually, I was surprised that only 2 bids were made for this huge section of Nortel.
Now lets see how LTE Patents are put on sale.

Miscellaneous and interesting

Interesting news clips I found today -

1) First news from USA where AT&T gets rid of a part of its message when routing call to the Voicemail. Now this is interesting because it reduces close to 5 seconds of call time for every call forwarded to voicemail. Towards customer delight...

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/att-relents-drops-paging-instructions-from-voicemail/


2) Next refer to Strategist section of this week's Business Standard on State Bank of India. The article tells a lot about how the current SBI chief, Mr. O P Bhatt, is strategizing the turnaround of SBI and within SBI.

I had written my experience some days ago. After reading the article, I wonder if SBI employees aligned to its goals? It does not seem so.

I agree the load in branches is massive but there has to be some operations strategy. For example, one thing to adopt is give the customer everything that is needed to keep him/her out of the branch like passbook, ATM card, online access, IVRS number etc. I can tell every customer has to visit at least 3-4 times to just get all this.

The article also has an interesting discussion on SBI Home Loan rates and possibility of a smaller version of subprime crisis.

Check out the article, very interesting read (a little long though).
http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/are-you-being-served/369333/


3) Next - Nortel's fire sale - Nortel's Enterprise business goes under the hammer tomorrow.

http://www.allaboutnortel.com/2009/09/08/details-about-fridays-enterprise-auction/

4) Sports - Hurray to Vijender for ensuring that medal for India. And another hurray to Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi who have both reached finals of US Open. Whoever wins, we will be proud of both of them. Hurray to Pankaj Advani as well. It is heartening to see India perform well in such competitions.