Interesting tag !

So, I have been tagged by the ‘SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS’ doctor. I have to mention seven interesting (?) facts about me. Let me see if I can come up with interesting facts.

1. I like reading Hollywood gossips, yeah, it is true. I read them mostly from TMZ.

2. This morning I checked my personal mail and the last mail that I had sent out was on 29th June!!!

3. I love cooking!

4. For some reason I feel that everyone is younger than me. One day, I thought that my mother is younger than me!

5. I can take leave from work to read books. Have done that for Grisham books

6. My desktop keeps getting crowded, so I copy them and keep them in a folder. My current desktop folder has 5 desktop folders inside it.

7. I totally don’t like playing computer games.

Now I have to tag people but these days not many come to my blog. So I tag the following few people

Mowgli
EU
Scipio
Expressions !
Freeze
Dr.TGFI (she has done this I guess)
Neihal

I will put in more names!

Congrats Statcounter !

(Aodhan Cullen, picture from BusinessWeek)


Statcounter, which is very famous in the blogging world has won the top position in Europe’s Young Entrepreneurs, an annual contest by Business Week. This Dublin, Ireland based company was started by Aodhan Cullen in 1999, at the age of 16 years.

Statcounter is mostly free, ad based, internet site that lets people view the statistics of the hits on their webpages. It also gives added features to track search words, browser information and geographical location of its visitors. This tracking website is most popular among others with bloggers and also with small and mid sized companies, who don’t have big budget.

What started as request for Cullen’s client for web-designing is now attracting attention of giants such as Google, which launched a similar service after buying the web analytics company, Urchin Software. Presently Statcounter gets more hits in US than names such as Adobe, Dell , Wal-Mart, etc. Though he is getting attention from Venture Capitalist, Cullen has decided to go alone for the time being.

Coming just behind Statcounter were companies as Sofia, Bulgaria based JT International, Amsterdam based social networking site Wakoopa, London based Kwiqq and on the 5th position is Amsterdam based Dot Kite Lab.

Congrats Statcounter!

Anonymous fun in corporate world

The advent of Web 2.0 with platforms such as online discussion forums, blogs, networking sites has started to make even corporate world quite interesting.

I think the first among this(or so I know) is the blog by Fake Steve Jobs (FSJ). This hugely popular blog is being penned by someone who writes as if he is real Steve Jobs. No one knows who Fake Steve Jobs is? Few have guessed him as Leander Kahney (MD of Wired.com) and few thought he might be Steve Jobs himself. Whoever it is, but the blog is a place to read interesting spoofs about Apple, jab on its rivals and news about technology world. Fake Steve Jobs has even been ranked as 41st most influential person in Business by Business 2.0 magazine. The blog is a must read for anyone who wants to be see the interesting side of technology world.

The most recent example is that of the CEO of Whole Food Market, John Mackey. For seven years he has been posting on Yahoo Finance’s bulletin board. Most of 11,000 entries by him were in support of his company and occasionally critical of his competitor ‘Wild Oats Markets’. This fact was disclosed only when Whole Food Market filed court document in the process of buying Wild Oats Markets. Without it, this disclosure might never be known.

Though this incident of John Mackey might have some ethical or may be legal implications, the Fake Steve Jobs seems to be innocent fun. Or not, if he is real Steve Jobs. One might keep arguing about the ramifications of these pseudo posters or bloggers, but the fact that these incidents highlight is “there is always more than what meets the eye in online world”

The personal conflict..

Sometimes it surprises me no end to see huge principles being super relevant in smaller situations, may be that’s why they are called ‘principles’

Take for example this line from Sun Tzu-

“Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected”

This is as true in battles as in situations in personal life. I have seen it getting repeated with many, but not everyone tackles in it the same way. This situation arises when one is in some sort of conflict with someone , may be at work place or in social circles or some similar setup. The moment the person gets in conflict with one, very soon there will others jumping in to cash in their own ‘backlog’ grudges. When people see someone already in conflict with someone else, they think the person is weak and launch their own attack.

It does take the person in center of all this by surprise, especially if the person is new to conflicts. The most obvious and natural reaction is to fight with every one, and it makes one's position weaker and more susceptible. I feel that’s wrong strategy.

Sun Tzu again opines on this situation

“For should the enemy strengthen his van, he will weaken his rear; should he strengthen his rear, he will weaken his van; should he strengthen his left, he will weaken his right; should he strengthen his right, he will weaken his left. If he sends reinforcements everywhere, he will everywhere be weak.”

When one starts to fight with whoever takes a attacking stance, the person loses focus on the biggest situation and dilutes the firepower. Moreover, the person might dissociate with everyone, stand totally alienated and would get reverse popular perception. It is not so easy to turn a blind eye to those lesser enemies who don’t have wherewithal to go it alone, but one needs to.

I think we all can identify this in any of our personal situation. Very recently I had seen the case of one Indian politician who created a huge mess and caused himself ir-repairable damage. Only if he had focused on the real fight.

Ten years of East - Asian Financial Crisis

East Asia is having two contrasting ten year anniversaries. They both occurred on successive days and their effect panned out across continents. One was handing crown colony of Hong Kong to China and other was the East Asian Financial crisis, which surfaced a day later. The infamous East Asian Financial crisis, which started from Thailand very quickly, spread to the so called tiger economies of Asia.

It is ten years since the crisis took the wind out of economic development in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Hong Kong along with Singapore and South Korea. Much has changed since then, almost all the countries have recovered from the crisis.

This crisis had some very important lessons for the developing or emerging economies and also brought out the inadequacy of financial institutions like IMF in catering to the need of developing economies.

It is highly unlikely, though nothing can be said for sure, that such crisis would strike again. All those countries are more sound and safeguarded to manage such situation. The most striking part of the crisis was the unscathed economy of India and China. India in particular should not take refuge in this fact and let its control down. The most important reason why India was not affected then was it does not have Capital Account Convertibility and has short term investment control. There has been lot of pressure from several quarters to ease off control in both the cases. I had once argued about India not being ready for Capital Account Convertibility in this post here. This does not mean that there should be no capital account convertibility; it does have its own benefits. After all the developed economies have full convertibility. India has huge foreign exchange reserves, inflation figure is low and the banks have small percentage of non-performing assets but there is more to be done.

As the ten year anniversary of the crisis passes by all the affected countries are more confident but by no means should they be complacent.