Boeing Vs Airbus

There is always debate on which is a better company. The commonality between these two companies ends with the fact that they make aircrafts. Airbus based in Europe has a socialistic upbringing with trade unions and such and Boeing on the other hand is almost 100% capitalistic. One is a complex multi country alliance and the other is a single corporate hegemony. Given the cut-throat market for aircrafts it is always welcome news when arch-rivals applaud the other’s efforts. Here is what the Airbus CEO has to say about the launch of the 787 dreamliner from Boeing

“Even if tomorrow Airbus will get back to the business of competing vigorously, today is Boeing’s day — a day to celebrate the 787. Today is a great day in aviation history. Whenever such a milestone is reached in our industry it is always a reflection of hard work by dedicated people inspired by the wonder of flight.”

True leaders are those who take a moment to recognize the rival and applaud their strengths. I beleive recognizing your opponent is a sign of strength and not weakness.

Here is more the launch of the Dreamliner.

Power and Responsibility

This is a continuation of my previous post regarding the Google Health blog posted by Google Employee Lauren Turner. What she did was express “her” opinion in a “company” blog. Everyone is colored by his or her leanings to a given situation. Unfortunately she just happened to pick the wrong forum to express her opinion. I think a lot of us figured this one out rather easily and are willing to forgive Lauren and move on with our lives. Certain things become very clear from this gaffe. People are watching the blogosphere like hawks and if your mission has something on the lines of “do no evil” you’ll have hawks by day and owls by night watching your every move

Microsoft and Brilliant Tutorials

What do the two have in common apart from a number of the Brilliant Alumni being part of the MS workforce? And No! Microsoft is not moving from Redmond to Masilamani Street! apparently the fruit and flower sellers gave Bill Gates a hard bargain

Microsoft is enterting the cut throat PC biz starting with India. This PC is being targetted towards the student population and will be pre loaded with software from a number of vendors including Brilliant.

Google buying Apple???

I was surprised to see this headline suggesting Apple could be bought out. Off late Silicon valley has been abuzz with a lot of rumour speculations (YHOO+MYSPACE, YHOO+FACEBOOK, YHOO+MSFT). After all it does not take much to start a rumor. With blogs rumours spread like wild fire. Top bloggers are eager to put up the hot ticket news items however illegitimate they are. After all traffic generation has no moral. Maybe the rumor biz being so hot was why Guy Kawasaki tried to start a digg like rumor site but failed. Now why did he fail? That’s stuff for a separate post.

Most frequented web sites in India

Ever wondered what the hottest sites in India are? I took a few guesses before doing the research and was frankly surprised by some of the rankings. So here are the top 10 Indian sites by traffic.

1. Yahoo!

2. Orkut (Frankly a surprise given that other than Brazil orkut has not been able to make a dent)

3. Google India

4. Google

5. Rediff.com

6. MSN (Did’nt expect them to figure in the top 10)

7. Youtube

8. Naukri.com (Now I know why there is a high turnover in talent!!)

9. Windows Live

10. Blogger.com

Some of the other interesting ones in the top 20 (debonairblog.com, Megaupload.com, Times Job & Careers(ok more job hunting folks))

Mickey Mouse and Cricket

So what does mickey mouse and cricket’s holiest site cricinfo have in common.  As of today they are now owned by the same parent company Disney.  ESPN bought cricinfo as reported by techcrunch. This seems like a very good ploy for ESPN to become a huge online destination for sports.

Call it premonition or whatever I visited the site earlier today and thought, gee! this site would be a good acquisition given the growing internet population in India and China’s fascination for cricket. I feel good my premonition has been validated by the likes of Disney

Simplicity

I remember a television clip about Mahatma Gandhi which went on the lines of “The hallmark of this man was his simplicity”.

When I read about Dr.Yunus of Bangladesh winning the Nobel Peace Prize what struck me was the simplicity of his idea and the the huge difference it made to millions. Here’s a clip from the NY Times on what he did.

Traditional banks considered such people too risky to lend to, and the amounts they needed too small to bother with. Dr. Yunus’s simple but revolutionary idea was that the poor could be as creditworthy as the rich, if the rules of lending were tailored to their circumstances and were founded on principles of trust rather than financial capacity. He found that they could achieve lasting improvements to their living standards with a little bit of capital.

Suffice to say that path breaking ideas can be so damn simple.

Google+Youtube

Google is reportedly in talks to buy Youtube. This comes right after Mark Cuban said this

We need to see who’s right on this one.

youtuberclosis

I thought youtube would be the next internet darling after myspace.  The site is so infectious that it makes sense to name it after the infectious disease. In any case Mark Cuban begs to differ citing the huge copyright issues that these folks are playing with. It’s going to be hard for them to do an itunes on this.

Special Economic Zones.

I used to get excited every time a new SEZ was opened in India thinking that it was going to attract more Foreign Direct Investment. This was until today when I read an article by the IMF Chief Economist Raghuram Rajan on how much of tax revenue was being lost on account of SEZ’s. In fact Rajan goes to the extent of saying that SEZ’s would result in unequal distribution of the Indian economy. So clearly, there is more than what meets the eye when Governments tout about opening of new SEZ’s.