This is pretty old stuff but still makes a lot of sense to me. Here is the HP Way {Rules from the Garage}

1. Believe you can change the world.
2. Work quickly, keep the tools unlocked, work whenever.
3. Know when to work alone and when to work together.
4. Share - tools, ideas. Trust your colleagues.
5. No politics. No bureaucracy. (These are ridiculous in a garage.)
6. The customer defines a job well done.
7. Radical ideas are not bad ideas.
8. Invent different ways of working.
9. Make a contribution every day. If it doesn't contribute, it doesn't leave the garage.
10. Believe that together we can do anything.
11. Invent.

Tricks of telemarketing.

I get a call from lady saying that she is from Standard Charted (SC) bank and this call is involving my pending balance on SC credit card. Now I was taken by surprise as I do not own a SC credit card or a card from any other bank. I express my concerns to her to which she replies if you do not have credit card from SC then why not opt for an other credit card from .....

I kindly say to her that I am not at all interested in credit card and politely disconnect the phone. I wonder why people lie to their potential customers at all in the first place as lot of reputation is at stake.

The emperor's new clothes.
Looking forward to your candid opinion on the new banner design.

Just when people were hell bent on getting the artificial intelligence into our day to day life, there is Pattie Maes who insists that machine consciousness may not be a matter of replicating total human thought capacity. It may come in several small, specialized parts. She terms this as Intelligence Augmentation instead of Artificial Intelligence.

The core idea is pretty simple and it is plain common sense. In a group every person may have unique intelligence gained by his or her experiences. If people augment each others intelligence then the group's intelligence is much more than the sum of the individual. I believe this is the corner stone of any team building exercise. One for all and all for one should be the motto.

The idea Pattie Maes pursues is to built a IA software that learns by inputs given by the user and collates the information. The idea is there are no new problems and it is already solved by others. (Think of cut and pasting the code from internet!). So if I want to buy a car I will use this IA system and give my preferences and priorities then IA sees the how others have solved this problem. (This may include the price comparison, dealers etc.) Over a period of time the system becomes self regulating and will be able to solve some of the simple problems in life!

The other example is the Backrub algorithm designed by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page. As an example take Absolut Blog. It’s worth to know who all link to this blog (for this blog it doesn’t matter to whom it links till becomes really famous). If there is link to this blog say from BBC then it carries more weight the one coming from my alternate Flickr page link, and this simple plain common sense! Backrub is baptized as Google now. No marks for guessing how much Brin and Page made just by following common sense route. I may be over simplifying things here, but that's ok. If its complex then it is not matured enough.

Having said about Google, I should point Cyc here. (You can find the open source version here) It's going to be available for public this year. It's promised that search engine based on Cyc will give Knowledge-enhanced search results.

If you are interested in making the next big thing then looks no further. Take some common sense behavior and give generic shape and you may be raking in a billion dollars!

(Note: This is first time I have typed some thing this big for a blog, this it self is an achievement for me. Kudos!)

I remember reading somewhere that there are three unique identity for tamilian, they are Tamil, Murgan and Pongal. I can't agree more to it.

May this Thai Pongal bring you lot of happiness and prosperity for you and your family.

S.Karthikeyan

Happen to see this feel good ad for Bihar. The ad is termed Bihar Calling . The ad telle all the points that are frozen in time. (Bihar is India's first republic, place of Buddha, Asoka, Chandragupta etc ..) The ad is primarily targetted at the investors (why not tourists !) with the assurance given by Nitesh Kumar, the new kid on the block.

But will explain the unfortunate incident of buring five human beings of a family becausee the head of the family complained againts the upper caste people for stealing his buffalo. The persons burnt alive are his wife and five children. This happens on the start of new year 2006.

Nitesh need not do the same mistake as BJP did with India Shining propaganda, instead of cheap media tricks he should make good governance first which other's can see and feel. I think there is a lot of time before Bihar truly calls!

Feel the Dangerous Ideas at Edge!

I think rampt use of genetic modification will be the dangerous idea for the man kind. GM immaterial were it is used may prove to be very dangerous with un anticipated outcomes.
Already there are cases were GM foods proving to more uncontrollable than previously thought.

Unquestionably, people don't need more reddish and bigger tomato, they will be satisfied with what ever mother nature offers. Also I am frightened at the idea of "Designer babies". Parents can give wish list that may include say the color of eye, color of skin and go on make genetic makeup for the yet to born baby!

Another new year, an another opportunity to improve!