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Thursday, October 25, 2007

India Comes Crawling Back to OLPC.. and we are not alone

Olpc: India Comes Crawling Back to OLPC

This article caught my attention. Desis are well known for lot of chest thumping but when it comes to deliver less said is better. We had our dear simputer (meant for "Simple" + "Computer") which transformed into a $400 handheld that nobody wanted. But, we are not the only one - first, we had Intel eat its words and join the program and today I came across another one, Microsoft

There are a number of valid arguments against Olpc and XO - it is not what the kids in developing nations really need, how did a $100 laptop cost $200, it is not powerful enough, Negroponte talks more than he delivers etc...But, it is an incredibly bold idea and the little green-and-white machines have got me. Now, if only I can convince my wife that buy one, gift one is a great idea...

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Oh.. what a bore... its Gore, yet again

For a guy who was cheated of election victory in 2000 and was incognito for a while (remember the beard) Al Gore is certainly making up. First it was the movie, then the oscars, then the Emmys and now the Nobel Peace prize... Oh, Please. The world need not feel sorry for him. He is the lucky one.

Imagine if he had been declared the winner in the 2000 elections. There would be a good number of people in the world who will hate him for no reason but for the fact that he is the President of United States. I don't think that he being the President would have stopped 9/11. His reaction to 9/11 might have been slightly different but I bet he would have bombed a few places, too. And, that would have pissed a few more people. He now has the eternal "what if..." that makes him look a lot better than he would have been (like JFK).

I think "An Inconvenient truth" is a good movie (not a great one) that should have done well without Al Gore (to me he was a distraction). I don't need Al Gore to tell me that earth is worth saving. And, while he might have elevated the interest and concern about global warming did it really merit the Nobel Peace prize? If yes, here is a list of a few other potential Nobel peace prize winners in the coming years
- George Cooney for Darfur
- Angela Jolie for numerous causes
- Madonna

Monday, October 08, 2007

This is the new India!!!

Leveraging India As India Stands Up

Incredible stuff - BOP business models and grassroots innovation. And, the speaker makes no excuses.

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

The new india?

BBC NEWS | South Asia | Sreesanth: The perils of aggression

From "Lucky and modest" in 1983 to "Lucky and immodest" in 2007. I guess that would sum up Indian cricket (and, India to a great extent) between 1983 and 2007.

Let us talk about Indian cricket, first. There was a time when these guys would go out in whites, play for 5 days and a lot of us wished they had some fighting spirit like... the Aussies or even the Pakistanis. But, we were all glad that they never indulged in dirty tricks like sledging which the Aussies did. "So, what if we lacked some fighting spirit we were not mean," went the general thinking. Now, to give Aussies the upper hand in on field behavior, now that is something unheard of.

Let us now talk of India in general. Let us see how we got to be one of the talked about stories, one of the BRIC nations. Narasimha Rao and Dr. Manmohan Singh probably would not have opened the economy if their hands had not been forced due to the foreign exchange reserves crunch. And, Narasimha Rao may not have been the Prime Minister hadn't Rajiv Gandhi been assasinated (And, had Rajiv Gandhi survived the campaign he would have lost the election).

The storied software services industry was chugging along for a good fifteen odd years (how many working in today's software services industry in India have heard of F. C. Kohli) until internet and VoIP (neither of which was developed in India or by Indians) came and reduced distances. Now, we have twenty somethings walking with a swagger and talking with an attitude. But, fundamentally nothing has changed - the cooking of resumes still happens. As a fellow indian remarked, "it used to be that we were unsure and unprofessional. now, we are sure and unprofessional."

Recently, a friend of mine wrote a book and sent press coverage of the launch. It was quite amusing to listen to the interviewer. She is doing an interview of the authors and makes no bones of the fact that she has not read the book beyond the back cover and nor does she care ("if you are into something intellectual, this is for you."). Clueless but confident... we are there America.