BlogSat

From a Scrubs re-run: Kelso: "Are you an idiot?" JD: "No, I'm a dreamer."

Ooo! Interesting topic with which to revive the "Busy with Buzzwords" posts....and indeed my blogging as a whole. :) Something strange has been happening at work lately. Instead of just getting or inferring management/workplace advice, I'm increasingly giving some. This is both unexpected, and unexpectedly unsurprising. So, a young 'un a few days ago couldn't understand the seemingly puzzling behavior of a normally super-solid senior person at Google, and there are a lot of those! Apparently this person (lets call him/her X) seemed unnecessarily protective of some sub-optimal performance of someone else (Y) which has making the young un's life much harder than it needed to be. The young un didn't get it. The reason was pretty obvious when I asked "Doesn't Y report to X now?" and the answer was in the affirmative. For many people, there's something about having people report to you that changes, for both good and bad, how you relate to an...

Linked here .

I tried to get some reading done this weekend. Made it about half-way through Made to Stick and just started on GUI Bloopers . Have great things to say about both, but there was a memory technique in Made to Stick that I really liked. Seth Godin had this theory about how to read business books , which I think is overkill. What's true though is that each book really has a few main points that can be summarized succinctly, and most of the text is used to explain, re-inforce and teach applications of a basic idea. So I loved a method that "Made to Stick" used, using keywords under the chapter title to trigger a memory of the central ideas that the chapter went through. It allowed me to quickly scan through these words after I finished each chapter, and review all the ideas together and hopefully refresh and bolster them. I know what you're thinking...isn't that just a good Table of Contents? Its not quite the same, but you need to see it to understand it. The inte...

I have my favorite movie of the summer !:) Also I can't get this tune out of my head!! Completely unnecessary, but kinda cool YouTube playlist below.:)

There are moments when Stephen Colbert is absolutely matchless on TV. Yesterday was one of em. Clip below: Bunch of movies and new TV shows consumed in the last few weeks. Once sentence or less reviews below Blood Diamond : Wow Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: Second best Indiana Jones movie ever; Speilberg has aliens on his mind too often. Bhoothnath: more fun than I expected and just the feel-good movie I needed at the time! Scoop: Woody Allen's awkwardness is now just supremely annoying instead of supremely amusing. Avatar (cartoon): surprisingly addictive Sex and the City: not ashamed to admit I saw it :), but eh... I prefered the TV show.

I was surfing TV the other day and stumbled on to a Warren Buffett interview, where he was answering questions that had been submitted by viewers. Q: In a country where inflation is at 110%, what could I invest in? A: Yourself. Assuming you can't invest outside a country, the best investment in terms of ROI, you can make in such a situation is in your own development: take a class, buy books, go back to school...whatever  I thought this was a great reminder about the importance of trying to constantly get smarter and learn more, whie at work.

Rediff reports this thingy .:) Its been a while since I've laid my hands on an Indian comic. The kitsch factor on this particular one seems really high, but in a culture that loves its movies and only to a slightly lesser extent its books and comics, this could actually work really well. Hey, I'd pick one up! I actually remember reading an issue or two of the old Amitabh comic , which was surprisingly sophisticated. It'd be really interesting to see if they can make the comic work online as well. I don't see one channel cannibalizing the other and there's definitely a large expat market as well. Indian computer animation ability keeps getting better and better, at this point probably being world-class at a fraction of the price. Also, we're seeing new media houses snap up rights for old Indian comic classics . The Indian penchant for story-telling combined with a creative use of technology could end up producing something that could work really well. I'd ...

Yet another story  about how the Indian courts and laws just don't seem to be ready to deal with user-submitted/generated content.  The most famous example is the Bazee (eBay) case from a few years ago, but clearly both the laws and the courts' interpretation of them really need to catch up if the incredible amount of activity around online media is going to continue to flourish. I'm fairly certain that the laws will mature and catch-up with reality. I just hope it happens fast enough so that not too much innovation is stifled.

Its was a fun day at Google I/O on Wednesday; allowed me to wear my technical-ish hat a little bit longer than my business-y hat for a day. The best part: the concert by the Flight of the Conchords at the end of the day.