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Sunday, June 04, 2006

Posted 5:43 PM by S

Events




Posted 5:42 PM by S

Personal Pursuits

1. Travel Information

(i) Vacation Information - Time Share and Holiday Rentals

(ii) Travel planning and reservations

  • Site59.com - Last minute weekend getaways. Owned by Sabre holdings.
  • GetThere - Internet-based travel solutions for corporations, distributors and travel suppliers. Owned by Sabre holdings.
  • Smarter Living - weekend escapes, how to earn and use miles, articles about travel and destinations
  • www.webflyer.com - The site posts many airline black-out dates. Airlines save black-out dates to sell rather than give as frequent flyer awards because they command higher fares.
  • www.points.com - to buy, sell, or trade frequent flyer miles
  • www.executivetravelservice.com - to buy, sell, or trade frequent flyer miles
  • www.miles4sale.com - you can move miles between these four airline accounts: American, Delta, Continental, and American West
  • www.frequentflier.com - Information about frequent flyer account
(iii) Articles, Stories on Travel Destinations

  • The Lost City of Venice. For centuries, St. Mark's Square has been slowly slipping closer to Atlantis. Here's how a massive system of floodgates could turn the tide. - By Josh McHugh, Aug 2003, Wired Mag
(iv) Travel Blogs




2. Arts, Culture, Events

(i) New York area

  • SITE: Broadway Stars.com

    DESCRIPTION: Digest of theater news, with links to Broadway-related media, chat rooms, databases and awards shows.

    EASE OF USE: Frugally formatted for simple scrolling. Click on links above the news listing to read (or add) star biographies, find ticket discounts, and submit gossip.

    COMMENT: Users should link to performers' home-page where provided, as fan-submitted information is only spottily updated.
  • SITE: Playbill.com

    DESCRIPTION: Leading news resource for Broadway, updated around-the-clock.

    EASE OF USE: Provides news and features, show schedules and statistics (just 600 or so performances to go until "Phantom of the Opera" overtakes "Cats" as Broadway's longest-running show.

    COMMENT: "Playbill on Opening Night" feature, amply illustrated with on-the-spot snapshots, takes you behind the scenes of Broadway premieres with commentary from a veteran theater critic.
  • SITE: Theater Mania.com

    DESCRIPTION: Comprehensive site covering New York and regional theater.

    EASE OF USE: Find detailed reviews at the bottom right of the homepage. On the left, the TheaterMania Restaurant Guide tells which Broadway bistros offer deals.

    COMMENT: "Ticket Discounts" tab atop the page helps users save as much as 50% on some shows, including those on Broadway, off-Broadway, and off-off-Broadway
  • SITE: Talkin Broadway.com

    DESCRIPTION: Chat site for Broadway gossip and information.

    EASE OF USE: Click on "All That Chat" and get ready to dish. Or just lurk. Members comment on daily performances, critiquing the fine points of the show seemingly minutes after the curtain falls.

    COMMENT: "Broadway 101" gives the origins and history of Broadway in text and pictures. The nickname "The Great White Way" came from the illumination of electric signage along Broadway and Times Square.
  • SITE: Broadway Box.com

    DESCRIPTION: A collection of discount codes for Broadway bargain-hunters.

    EASE OF USE: Look for discount information posted by readers and follow the instructions for each show, or sign up for "discount alerts."

    COMMENT: No points for pizzazz but the ticket prices are showstoppers, from 25% to 50% off



3. Pro Audio, Video, Photography

(i) Pro Photography

(ii) Pro Audio

(iii) Pro video

  • DV (Digital Video), www.dv.com
    According to Gene Hall, of Gartner Group - We use digital video regularly in our family. For example, our daughter recently turned in a report on the Tiananmen Square violence in 1989, delivering her account on DVD as a news anchor. This is the definitive resource for the serious amateur or low-end professional who is interested in digital video, with the best detail on the latest and best performing cameras and other video equipment. So if you want to make movies, it covers all the technical bases.
  • Adamwilt.com, www.adamwilt.com
    According to Gene Hall, of Gartner Group - A self-described video geek's Web site. And that's what it is. Anything you want to know about shooting movies, from technique to equipment reviews is here. [Adam] will tell you the difference between one CCD in a camera and three CCDs, and why it matters. How about anamorphic and nonanamorphic encoding schemes? Wide-screen or not wide-screen? This site will give you the answers, plus links to other interesting sources.
  • Worldwide TV Standards - A Web Guide. Page maintained by Electronic Engineering, Surrey University, UK
(iv) Do-it-Yourself Computer Hardware and Software

  • Tom's Guide to Hardware, www.tomshardware.com
    This site has great information for semi-professionals or dedicated enthusiasts who want to build their own systems with the best hardware at very attractive prices. They evaluate products -- everything from computer parts to videogames. It has other great advice like how to take apart your Tivo, or what's the fastest game card for video games.
  • AnandTech.com
  • NewEgg.com, www.newegg.com
    One of things that people are doing more of these days is building their own PCs. It's surprisingly widespread, and NewEgg is one of the leading providers of parts for people who want to do that. The site provides information and sales of all the parts you need.
(v) Do-it-Yourself Car and Auto repair, tinkering

(vi) Do-it-Yourself Home improvement, Interior Design




3. Online businesses and Shopping

(i) Entertainment - Movies, Music, Books

  • Greencine.com - The #1 DVD Rental Site for the Alternative Scene! With the best selection of indie, arthouse, anime, foreign, classics, documentaries and other esoteric fare. Including rare titles available at no other service.



4. Politics, History, Society

(i) Ancient Greek Politics and History

(ii) Ancient Roman Politics and History

(iii) Arab/Islamic Politics and History

(iv) Indian Politics and History

(v) Chinese Politics and History

(vi) European Politics and History

  • Pre-Medieval Europe


  • Medieval Europe


  • Modern Europe
(vii) American Politics and History

(viii) Japanese Politics and History

(ix) Asian Politics and History

(x) South American Politics and History




4. General Fun, Information, Links

(i) Fun Links

(ii) Real Estate, Realtor, Housing




Posted 5:36 PM by S

Newspapers, Media, Commentaries

1. Newspapers and Magazines

(i) US Newspapers

(ii) UK Newspapers

(iii) Indian Newspapers

(iv) US Business Magazines

  • Business Week
    • Innovators : Since 1929, we've been chronicling innovations and the people who make them. Here are some of the best from the past 75 years


  • Forbes


  • Inc





2. Electronic Media - TV, Radio, Cable, Film

(i) TV and Cable




3. Internet Media - Political, Economic, Social Commentary

(i) News and Politics

(ii) Articles on Politics

(iii) Articles on Economics




Posted 5:35 PM by S

Weblogs

1. Social & Human Interest, Politics, Business Weblogs

(i) Human Interest Blogs - Society, Government, Development

(ii) US Politics Blogs

  • InstaPundit - Blog of GLENN REYNOLDS, a law professor at the University of Tennessee
  • Scripting.com - My name is Dave Winer and I run the Scripting News weblog, which was one of the earliest and is currently the longest-running weblog on the Internet
  • Wonkette.com, by political blogger Ana Marie Cox, gossipy, liberal columnist. From the people who brought you Gawker, the daily chronicle of all that's gossip-worthy in New York, and Gizmodo, a diary of gadget lust, i.e. Media Publisher Nick Denton
  • electablog.com - Dave Pell of San Francisco
  • Mark Schmitt, Brooklyn, N.Y.-based blogger. His day job is policy director at The Open Society Institute, the U.S. base of billionaire George Soros' philanthropic efforts. Prior to that, he was a speechwriter and policy director for former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley.
  • Citizen Smash began its blogging life--as its domain name suggests--as Lt. Smash, the pseudonym of a naval reservist who served aboard a U.S. ship that protected a port in Kuwait during the invasion of Iraq. Smash blogged from the ship and was careful not to reveal his identity or any operational details. Smash and a few buddies bought their own satellite communications gear, which gave them Internet access. His work caught the attention of talk show hosts, including Sean Hannity and one of Rush Limbaugh's substitutes. Smash leans conservative on many issues, but says he is a registered Democrat because "I want to participate in the process. If there were a Democratic incumbent and a bunch of Republican challengers, I'd have done the opposite."
(iii) Indian Politics Blogs

(iv) Media, Internet and E-commerce Blogs

  • John Battelle's Searchblog. Thoughts on the intersection of search, media, technology, and more.
  • Ketupa.net - This site features information about major media groups in Australia, New Zealand, Asia, Europe and the Americas. The 490-plus pages currently provide a short history, an annotated bibliography, a description of major holdings and a detailed chronology for around 150 media groups.
(v) Economics Blogs

  • Armed with a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Arnold Kling is on a mission. Economics isn't covered particularly well by the mainstream media, he says, and producing a Web log on the subject presents a chance to do it easily and inexpensively. In 1994, Kling launched one of the Internet's first commercial ventures, Homefair.com. Five years later, he sold it to Homestore.com for $85 million, netting 2% of the sale price for himself.
  • John Irons loves keeping a close eye on the latest economic data and related news. So much so that he designed a software program--a "bot"--to automatically keep track of the latest information for himself and his readers. A professor of economics at Amherst College in Amherst, Mass., he's been writing about economics online since 1997, when he hosted a site for Primedia's About.com. ArgMax (the name is a mathematical term to designate "the argument of the maximum") launched in March of 2002.
  • knowledgeproblem - The energy markets usually provide a pretty good clue to where the overall economy is headed. Lynne Kiesling tracks them for a living, as director of economic policy for the libertarian Reason Foundation in Chicago, and a frequent media pundit on energy issues.
  • Winterspeak.com - Many people start blogging for fun or profit. Zimran Ahmed does it to network. After completing undergraduate work in biochemistry at Harvard University, he spent three years working as a technology consultant. Now Ahmed is a graduate student at the University of Chicago Business School, where he is studying how government regulation affects telecommunications and networking companies.
  • Institutional-economics.com - Academic writing is a slow process. Too slow for Steven Kirchner, a graduate student at Australia's University of New South Wales. "The blog gives me a chance to do the kind of running commentary on topical things that you don't normally get to do in academic writing." Light reading it's not, but the site is refreshing for its look at the U.S. and global economy from a Down Under perspective.
(vi) Business, Marketing and Strategy




2. Science, Technology, Medicine Weblogs

(i) Blogs of Science & Technology Personalities

(ii) Information Technology IT blogs

  • Jonathan Schwartz weblog - Chief Software Architect at Sun Microsystems
  • Slashdot.org - Launched as "chips and dips" in 1997 by Rob Malda and Jeff Bates, Slashdot describes itself as presenting "News for nerds. Stuff that matters." That is, if the latest updates to the Linux Kernel are big news in your book.
  • Microsoft Community Blogs
  • Techdirt.com - With a background in marketing and business development, Mike Masnick left Intel to work for a startup, then left that to work for another startup. The result? A wonderful blog called Techdirt.com. While bouncing around Silicon Valley, he kept updating Techdirt.com as a news and gossip site on the side. Now the blog, which dates back to 1997, attracts customers to his profitable Techdirt Corporate Intelligence consulting firm that employs ten people. Customers include software firm Speechworks. When the programmers are reading Slashdot, their bosses are reading Techdirt.
  • kuro5shin.org - The name is a play on the word "corrosion," which is itself a play on the name of the blog's founder, Rusty Foster of Peaks Island, Maine. Get it? Comparable to Slashdot on first glance, its subject matter is actually much broader. Technology serves as a starting point for discussions on a wider range of topics, including science, politics and culture.
  • Gizmodo.com - When tech journalist Peter Rojas found himself out of work after two years at the recently deceased Red Herring magazine, he and journalist-turned-entrepreneur Nick Denton cooked up the idea for a blog devoted to gadgets. If you're interested in the latest news about PDAs, cell phones, laptops or digital cameras, Gizmodo is the site for you.
  • Alan Reiter, creator of Reiter's Wireless Data Web Log is a Maryland-based wireless communications consultant and analyst since 1978. After years of publishing wireless newsletters, Reiter found he still had an itch to share his opinions with anyone willing to read them. He loves to pontificate on the wireless future, especially Wi-Fi and the business potential of "wireless vices"--porn and gambling via mobile phones.
  • Tomalak's Realm is a daily source of links to Internet and technology news. The site was started on November 2, 1998. Topics include -
    • Broadband
    • Interface
    • Legal
    • Security
    • Spam
    • Technology
    • VOIP
    • Wireless
  • WRJ weblog - mainly on Apple, Tech Bargains, Hardware, Linux, Lotus Notes, Tech News, OpenZaurus, Oracle, programming, SAP, Security, Webmethods. Reality Checkout - Just another brain in search of revision control.
(iii) Communication and Networking blogs

  • David S. Isenberg's home for Stupid Networks and Smart People and his famous essay, Rise of the Stupid Network
  • Jeff Pulver's voice of IP communications
    • The pulver100 includes private companies in the communications sector that have substantial real-world deployments and enjoy significant growth rates. The list seeks to include the companies that represent the future of the communications ecosystem. The value chain characterized by the companies listed below differs substantially from the vertically integrated telecom model of the last century. The companies prospering in the new environment have followed the computer and networking industry model with open interfaces, connectivity decoupled from services, and software decoupled from hardware.
(iv) Semiconductor and Nanotech blogs

(v) Science and Reseach blogs

(vi) Software and Computer Science Blogs

(vii) Gadget Blogs

(viii) Health and Medicine Blogs

  • Family medicine notes - Jacob Reider, 40, is an assistant professor of family medicine and assistant dean of medical informatics at Albany Medical College. Since 1999, he has been updating once every few days with tales about his own private primary-care practice. "I'm trying to be more transparent about what physicians do for a living," he says of his blog. Among his current interests: a vaccine against certain bacteria, the effectiveness of pillow covers in preventing asthma, and whether pharmaceutical firms are preventing generic drugs from reaching the market. "One of the problems that I perceive to be a persistent one about how medicine has been practiced in this country is this theme of paternalism," he says.
  • Pipeline is written by Derek Lowe, a chemist for an undisclosed drug company. Warren Buffett's axiom that the best way to analyze a company is by standing in the parking lot holds true. Lowe holds court on why some drugs work and how they don't, on what he thinks of drug research, intellectual property law and financial strategies at companies like Pfizer and Schering-Plough. His posts buzz with an enthusiasm for the craft of chemistry and the excitement of developing medicines, making his blog a daily must-read.
  • Living Code - For 16 years, Richard Gayle, 47, worked at Immunex, a Seattle-based biotech company that was bought by industry giant Amgen last year. He left two days after the merger, realizing that it would slow down his ideas about using computers to communicate biological ideas. Gayle says he worked on Immunex's first intranet, where he began to write a weekly online newsletter.
  • Medpundit - This blog chronicles the daily life and thoughts of a 40-year-old Ohio doctor who just opened her own practice after years at a hospital-owned one. The design is slightly garish, but her common-sense comments are frequent and thoughtful. "I blog mostly because it's fun," she says. "It gives me a chance to vent some views that I don't get to vent at home or at work." She also hopes that she can give some balance to health news, such as studies that told of dangers of hormone replacement therapy.



3. PodCasts

  • Adam Curry's Daily Source Code. Podcast feed: radio.weblogs.com/0001014/categories/dailySourceCode/rss.xml

    Daily Source Code was one of the first podcasts in existence, and it's still one of the most popular. A former MTV VJ and casual computer programmer, Curry created iPodder -- a software application for managing and subscribing to podcasts -- and recorded the Daily Source Code show to help test it. Nowadays, Curry uses the podcast to discuss tech news, recommend new podcasts, and play independent music.
  • Dave Winer's Morning Coffee Notes. Podcast feed: www.morningcoffeenotes.com/rss.xml

    Another granddaddy of podcasting software, Dave Winer, uses his program to discuss news, technology developments, and personal events. Sometimes Winer even features his own singing. A recent episode included Winer discussing Apple's Macintosh computer and eBay with his parents, while they ate breakfast at a diner near his parents' home in Queens, N.Y. The show is also broadcast on KYOU, an AM station in San Francisco.
  • One America Committee Podcast. Podcast Feed: www.oneamericacommittee.com/podcast.xml

    Faithful Democrats can listen to former Vice-Presidential candidate John Edwards and his wife Elizabeth chatting and reading the answers to questions sent in by visitors to their Web site. The talk ranges from the mundane (Edwards is trying to ease off his habit of 8 to 12 Diet Cokes per day) to the material (both Edwards are looking for new solutions to poverty). But they're clearly trying to emphasize the human touch. Elizabeth Edwards jokes that her four-year-old son says he's going to skip college and go right into the NBA, and the senator chimes in that the boy can't even pronounce basketball yet, calling it basset-ball. "Probably more than you ever wanted to know about the Edwards household," says the former senator.
  • IndieFeed. Podcast feed: 6 different feeds available at indiefeed.com

    Several "Pod-J's" (for Podcasting disk jockeys) showcase songs by new independent artists. The genres covered include blues, rock, punk, electronica, hip-hop, and folk music. Each genre features a new artist at least once a week.
  • Insomnia Radio. Podcast feed: insomniaradio.net/rss

    Host Jason Evangelho calls the songs on Insomnia Radio "Anti-Hits." Actually, they're great hard-rock songs from bands you've never heard of. The show has the spirit of FM radio, circa 1969. Both Insomnia Radio and IndieFeed are a part of the Association for Music Podcasting, an organization of podcasters. Even more music podcasts are available on that site at musicpodcasting.org
  • In Our Time. Podcast feed: www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/mp3/podcast.xml

    Think of this podcast from the BBC as an academic lecture crossed with Meet The Press. In a panel discussion, usually including two or three luminaries from leading British and U.S. universities, moderator Melvyn Bragg manages to keep academic abstractions to a miniumum while maximizing the historical connections to the present, and even creating a little heat between rival analyses. The obscure topics, which range from a military analysis of the Battle of Agincourt (1415) to the history of angels, are a big part of its charm.
  • Voices from the Vault. Podcast Feed: voicesfromthevault.com/wp-rss2.php

    Voices from the Vault is an audio quiz show that combines a spooky-sounding host, haunted-house sound effects, and a techno soundtrack. The show's object? Guess the names of celebrity voices. The format is surprisingly appealing and fun. It's a great example of a show that would never make it to prime time, but it leads a happy life as a podcast.
  • IT Conversations. Podcast feeds: Eight different podcast series are available on www.itconversations.com/rss.html

    Doug Kaye runs IT Conversations, where he and his team offer 450 podcasts of tech-oriented discussion, conference sessions, and other tech topics. One of the best features is the eclectic collection of in-depth interviews -- it includes a discussion with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, post-9/11 security criticism from cryptography and computer security guru Bruce Schneier, and a chat with Ben Saunders, the first person to trek solo across the Arctic Ocean from Siberia to the North Pole.



4. Blogging and Publishing Tools, Software, Technology

(i) Blogging tools

  • blog guide - business 2.0
  • Onfolio - a new PC application for collecting, organizing, and sharing what you find online



Posted 5:34 PM by S

Organizations and Clubs - Social, Non-Profit, Hobbyist

1. Non-Profit Organizations

(i) Global Non-Profit NGOs

  • Oxfam America is a Boston-based international development and relief agency and an affiliate of Oxfam International. Working with local partners, Oxfam delivers development programs and emergency relief services, and campaigns for change in global practices and policies that keep people in poverty.
(ii) Indian Non-Profit NGOs




2. UN organizations




3. Hobbyist Clubs




Posted 5:34 PM by S

Articles on People, Society, History, Lifestyles

1. Articles on Society, History, Lifestyles

(i) US News

  • Time.com - First Stop, Iraq - How did the U.S. end up taking on Saddam? The inside story of how Iraq jumped to the top of Bush's agenda?and why the outcome there may foreshadow a different world order
    By Michael Elliott and James Carney , With reporting by Timothy J. Burger, Massimo Calabresi, John F. Dickerson, Mark Thompson, Eric Roston and Douglas Waller/Washington, Mitch Frank/New York and James Graff/Paris
  • Dissertation Could Be Security Threat Student's Maps Illustrate Concerns About Public Information - Sean Gorman's program can map critical infrastructure in cities. (Andrea Bruce Woodall -- The Washington Post). By Laura Blumenfeld, Washington Post Staff Writer, Tuesday, July 8, 2003; Page A01
(ii) India News


2. Articles on People

(i) People -

(ii) People - Bios, Ideas, Inventions

1. Donald Winkler's suggested readings list on Breakthrough Management.

2. Brief bios - Silicon India - Persons of the week.

3. Dean Kamen
  • Founded in 1982 by Dean Kamen, DEKA consisted of a relatively small group of individuals and lots of innovative ideas. Today, almost 200 engineers, technicians, and machinists work in our electronics and software engineering labs, machine shop, and on CAD stations.
  • The FIRST Robotics Competition is an exciting, multinational competition that teams professionals and young people to solve an engineering design problem in an intense and competitive way.
    Board of Directors includes Dean Kamen, Paul Allaire, John E. Abele, John Doer III - Our mission: FIRST designs accessible, innovative programs to build self-confidence, knowledge and life skills while motivating young people to pursue opportunities in science, technology and engineering.
  • Dean Kamen also heads Segway
4. Reality TV programming - Dutch TV entrepreneur's company Endemol - a pioneer of reality TV programming

5. Jeffrey Sachs - Columbia University Prof, Earth Institute

6. Profiles of scientist-entrepreneurs from American Physical Society (APS) website. Includes -
7. Carver mead
8. The Fresh Prince Of Software - Marc Benioff. A second home in Hawaii, friendships with Colin Powell and Deepak Chopra, holiday parties for 700--life is good when you're Marc Benioff. He sells a boring product yet lives like a rock star. Then again, he learned from the best: his former boss Larry Ellison. By Carlye Adler, Business 2.0, March 2003 Issue
9. John D. (Jay) Rockefellier IV criticisms -


Posted 5:28 PM by S

Books and Book Excerpts

(1) Book Websites, Reviews

(i) Book Reviews

  • The New York Review of Books
  • Commentary - America's premier monthly journal of opinion
  • The aim of The American Prospect is to contribute to a renewal of America's democratic traditions by presenting a practical and convincing vision of liberal philosophy, politics and public life.
  • The Village Voice - founded by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher and Norman Mailer, in the fall of 1955, introduced free-form, high-spirited and passionate journalism into the public discourse. As the nation's first and largest alternative newsweekly, the Voice maintains the same tradition of no-holds barred reporting and criticism it first embraced when it began publishing more than forty years ago.
  • The New Republic, founded in 1914, headquartered in Washington D.C, aims to provide its readers with an intelligent, stimulating and rigorous examination of American politics, foreign policy and culture.
  • National Review offers the best coverage of and commentary on politics anywhere. Our acclaimed staff — Editor Rich Lowry, Managing Editor Jay Nordlinger, Washington Editor Kate O'Beirne, Senior Editor Ramesh Ponnuru, National Political Reporter John Miller, White House Correspondent Byron York, and NRO editor Jonah Goldberg — provide you superior reporting and analysis of what's really happening inside Congress and the White House.
(ii) Computer, Information Technology, Programming Books




(2) Books that I own (i) Adventure - Fiction


(ii) Adventure - Non-Fiction 1. Into Thin Air - Jon Krakauer 2. Jonathan Livingston Seagull - Richard Bach


(iii) Biology


(iv) Biography 1. The New New Thing - Michael Lewis 2. Buffett - Roger Lowenstein 3. Sir Vidia's Shadow - Paul Theroux (Audio cassette)


(v) Business 1. Liar's Poker - Michael Lewis 2. Made in Japan - Akio Morita 3. Inside Intel - Tim Jackson 4. The Innovator's Dilemma - Christiansen 5. The Goal - Eliyahu M. Goldratt 6. Business the Amazon.com way 7. Burn Rate - Michael Wolff 8. Fiasco - 9. Dangerous Company - James 0' Shea, Charles Madigan 10. The Money Culture - Michael Lewis 11. The New Strategic Selling - (Audio cassette) 12. Microsoft Secrets - Michael Cusumano 13. CRM at the Speed of Light, 2nd Edn - Paul Greenberg 14. Monkey Business - John Rolfe, Peter Troob (Hardcover, 2000) 15. Den of Thieves - James B. Stewart (Hardcover, 1991)


(vi) Chemistry


(vii) Comics 1. Calvin and Hobbes - Bill Waterson 2. The Revenge of the baby-sat - Bill Waterson 3. Something under the bed is moving - Bill Waterson 4. Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons - Bill Waterson 5. There's treasure everywhere - Bill Waterson


(viii) Computers & Programming 1. How to Solve it by Computer - 2. Enterprise Javabeans - Richard Monson-Haefel (Paperback, 2000) 3. XML in a Nutshell - Elliotte Rusty Harold, W. Scott Means, W. Scott Means (Paperback, 2001)


(ix) Fiction 1. 1984 - George Orwell 2. Animal Farm - George Orwell 3. ALl about Power - David Balducci 4. A Brush with Death 5. Technobrat - Rukmini Bhaya Nair 6. The Inscrutable Americans - Anurag Mathur 7. English August - Upmanyu Chatterjee 8. Karma Cola - Gita Mehta 9. The God of small things - Arundhati Roy


(x) Finance 1. Investments : Analysis and Management - Francis 2. After the Trade is Made - Weiss 3. Bond Markets : Analysis and Strategies - Fabozzi 4. Principles of Corporate Finance - Brealey and Myers 5. Introduction to Financial Accounting - Horngren, Sundem, Elliot 6. Risk Management and Financial Derivatives - Das 7. Financial Derivatives - Keith Redhead 8. Principles of Microeconomics - Mankiw, N. Gregory 9. The Big Fix - James R. Adams (Hardcover, 1990) 10. Full Faith & Credit: The Great S&L Debacle & Other Washington Sagas - L. William Seidman (Hardcover, 1993) 11. Other People's Money: The Inside Story of the S & L Mess - Paul Z. Pilzer, Robert Deitz (Hardcover, 1989)


(xi) Health, Exercise & Nutrition 1. Ageless Body, Timeless Mind - Deepak Chopra 2. Super Nutrition for Women - 3. Colon Health Key to Vibrant Life - Dr. Norman W. Walker 4. Fresh Vegetables and Fruit Juices - Dr. Norman Walker


(xii) Management 1. Management - Stoner, Freeman, Gilbert Jr. 2. The Dilbert Principle - Scott Adams


(xiii) Marketing 1. Ogilvy on Advertising - David Ogilvy (Hardcover, 1983) 2. Principles of Marketing - Kotler and Armstrong 3. The 22 Immutable laws of Marketing


(xiv) Mathematics 1. Advanced Engineering Mathematics - Kreyszig


(xv) Organizations 1. The Fifth Discipline - Peter Senge


(xvi) Philosophy, Personal Improvement 1. What Color is Your Parachute? 2001 - Richard Nelson Bolles


(xvii) Photography 1. The Here's How Book of Photography (Kodak) - 2. The Book of Movie Photography - David Cheshire, Alfred Knoltz


(xviii) Physics 1. The Tao of Physics - Fritjof Capra 2. Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman - Richard Feynman 3. The Emperor's New Mind - Roger Penrose


(xix) Reference 1. The Louvre Collection 2. Guide to the Musee D'Orssay 3. Rijksmusueum Amsterdam - Highlights of the collection 4. Japanese-English, English-Japanese dictionary - Random House 5. All about Words - Rosenblum 6. How Things Work, the universal encyclopedia of machines - Vol I, II. 7. Dictionary of Theories


(xx) Romance - Fiction


(xxi) Sciences (Physical, Natural, Life) 1. The Origin of Species - Charles Darwin


(xxii) Science - Fiction 1. The Age of Spiritual Machines - Ray Kurzweil 2. The Persistence of Vision - John Varley


(xxiii) Society 1. The Trust - Susan Tifft, Alex Jones The private and powerful family behind the "New York Times". 2. Beyond Belief - V.S. Naipaul 3. The Prince - Niccolo Machiavelli (Paperback, Reissue, 1984) 4. Contrasting Styles of Industrial Reform: China and India in the 1980s - George Rosen


(xxiv) Technology 1. The Wireless Web - Bryan Bergeron 2. Telecommunications for the Manager 3. Laser 4. An Introduction to the Intel family of Microprocessors - 5. 6.


(xxv) Travel 1. Europe by Eurail (1996-97) 2. Lonely Planet - Netherlands


(xxvi) Travel - Fiction 1. On the Road, Jack Kerouac -


(3) Book Excerpts 1. The New New Thing, Michael Lewis - Jim Clark (SGI, Netscape, Healtheon, Hyperion = 189 ft above the deck, MyCFO). Phd student of Ivan Sutherland, U. Utah. Paul Romer & Robert Lucas - New Growth Theory, William H. Whyte - The Organization Man, Glen Mueller & The Mayfield Fund w/ Ed McCracken in SGI, Dick Kramlich & New Enterprise Associates w/ John Doerr & James Barksdale in Netscape, Mike Long, Pavan Nigam, Kittu Kolluri in Healtheon


2. Buffett, Roger Lowenstein - Ben Graham @ Columbia, "Security Analysis" in 1934 - Market is not a weighing m/c, able to precisely determine value, but a voting m/c, which registers individual choices. "The Intelligent investor" & margin of safety. Graham-Neuman Corp - GEICO. Marshall Weinberg - broker, Egypt. Charlie Munger - Adviser, L.A. Lawyer. Buy NE suit-line maker Berkshire Hathaway in 1962. Buy AmEx in 1963, CEO - Howard Clark. Go-go - "Letter stocks", "Perf fund" - Gerald Tsai, Mgr, Manhattan Fund, Fred Carr, Mgr, Enterprise Fund. "Story stocks", conglomerate - Cortes Wesley Randall, 35, Natl Student Mktg. Buy retailers Hochschild, Kohn & Associated Cotton Shops (Ben Rosner). Macroeconomist J.M. Keynes in 1936 speech - crowd's influence on market prices. Allegory - Oil discovered in Hell. Quit Buffett Partnership in 1969. June 1969 - Litton Industries, hallmark of the conglomerate era, fell 70%.


3. Inside Intel - Tim Jackson - Andy Grove came to U.S. by boat in 1956. Brilliantly intelligent and articulate, driven, obsessive, neat and disciplined. Intel has been built in his image. The values taught in the company's private university - directness in confronting problems and extreme rationality in approaching management questions - are an extension of Grove's own personality. - Andy Grove's slogan, some call it Grove's law, is "only the paranoid survive". Daily life inside Intel follows this maxim to the full. By comparison with Microsoft, Intel is almost obsessively secretive. The house joke is that its photocopiers are fed with paper that is already market 'Intel Confidential', at the top of everypage. - Watch out for 10X forces - ten times more powerful than the forces normally encountered in business. - 1st 10X force was the replacement of old-fashioned core memory devices in the computer business with smaller, cheaper, faster ICs. 2nd 10X force was the microprocessor revolution. Although it was Intel that sold the world's first microprocessor, the company was very slow to see the potential of its creation - only taking it seriously when two of its best engineers left to set up in competition. For years it viewed the device as a component to be used primarily in industrial controls rather than in computers, and it turned down an early suggestion by a team of its own scientists to build the world's first "desktop computer", and a gift from inventor Gary Kildall of the OS (CP/M) that could have taken the place of MS-DOS. 3rd 10X force was the issue (late 70s) of Japanese semiconductor makers posing a serious threat to Intel's memory-chip business. The issue was complicated by roller-coaster market conditions that prompted Japanese firms to 'dump' their products on the American market, selling them not only below the prices they charged in their home market but also well below their manufacturing cost. Also, Jap manufacturers paid more attention to quality and spent more effort trying to perfect their manufacturing processes than Intel (Moore and Grove did not face up) did. Only when Moore and Grove asked themselves what they would do if they were a new management brought in to clear up the mess did the solution emerge. Intel pulled out of memory chips, savagely cut back its workforce, and refocused its firepower on microprocessors. Classis b-school case study, and one of the company's finest moments. 4th 10X force - the Internet. Intel has responsed with MMX technology, extensions to the instruction set which allows computers to process sound and video more efficiently. It has made some astute VC investments in a number of the more interesting Internet startups. - Intel's strengths - mgmt team is strong. Corporate cultureallows the company to set objectives, communicate them swiftly to its workforce, and make a good attempt at achieving them. Its compensation scheme reewards hard work and loyalty, but check underperformance with regular reviews and 'corrective actions'. Its lack of hierarchy makes it easier to respond swiftly to change and to make rational decisions. - Intel's weaknesses - company is plagued by arrogance since its earliest years. It has frequently taken a high-handed approach to its customers, and suffers from the 'Not Invented Here' syndrome as badly as many tech companies. Most alarmingly, it has found it increasingly hard to accept outsiders into its senior ranks. -The winner of the 1st IC patent was Jack Kilby, an engineer at TI. But it was Noyce and his colleagues at Fairchild semiconductor who succeeded in turning the ICfrom a lab prototypeinto a commercial success. Noyce did not fit the stereotype of the an inventor. He was gregarious, charming, athletic and handsome. Brought up in Grinnell, a small town in Iowa, where his father was a Congregational minister, he was a boy scout who went to Sunday school every week and graduated valedictorian at the local high school. His entry in the school's year book described him as the Quiz kid.. - Gordon Moore, reporting to Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor as Head of R&D, was a very different personality. While Noyce was 5'8'' and dark-haired, Moore was over 6'' and balding. While Noyce was the life and soul of every party - drinking, singing, playing tricks, and accepting every dare offered to him - Moore would sit with a few close friends, quietly talking around a table. His temper was a model of equanimity, and his two great passions were fishing and messing around in boats. He was born in teh small coastal town of Pescadero, just 30 mi south of SF, where his father was deputy sheriff of the county. -When a local paper asked Moore in 1968 why he and Noyce had decided to set up a new company, his answer was that they wanted to experience once again the thrill of working in a small, fast-growing compaany. In 1956, they had helped William Noyc, the leader of the team at Bell Labs that developed the transistor, to set up his own lab. A year later the pair had been among a group of 8 who walked out on Shockley (irascible, paranoid and ignoring their technical advice), to start their own transistor company under the banner of Fairchild. To raise funding for the new startup, the 'Traitorous Eight' struck a deal with Sherman Fairchild, an inventor on the East Coast whose father had been one of IBM's earliest investors. Fairchild had advanced $1.5m to them in 1957 - if the venture failded, Fairchild would pick up the tab. If it was a success, the company would have the right to buy them out for $300,000 a piece. The bell tolled for Fairchild Semiconductor in 1967, when Charlie Sprock, the company's famed manufacturing genius, set up in competition at National Semiconductor, and hired away busloads of his former colleagues. - It took Noyce just one phone call to raise money for Intel. Arthur Rock, an investment banker from New York, had come out to California to see the Traitorous Eight; he had helped them to draw up a list of potential backers, and he had shopped their idea to 35 different companies before getting a yes from Sherman Fairchild. Since then, Rock's life had become intertwined with the Fairchild founders. He had moved to California, and set up a new investment bank of his own in SF, specializing in financing of new companies (VC). Rock made 15 phone calls that afternoon, and received 15 acceptances. His goal was not simply to raise the money for Noyce and Moore: with their track record and his contacts, that would be a snap. Instead, Rock wanted to find investors who could offer some expertise that would be useful to the new business. - Gordon Moore headed Intel's R&D, and started to develop IC, which would replace "magnetic core" memory in mainframe computers. He had a head start. Shorty before his departure from Fairchild, a gifter young Italian semiconductor scientist in his dept named Federico Faggin, had invented a new variation on the standards IC manufacturing process, known as metal oxide on silicon. By 1968 the new technique, called 'silicon gate', was working stably in the lab, but it was still far from being a commercial product. With $2m in the bank, and a team of good engineers behind them, Moore knew that he and Noyce could develop the IC technology and mass produce memory devices at low cost. But silicon-gate MOS was only one of 3 promising approaches to the problem of building IMCs. Another was to build multichip memory modules; a third was to use a process known as Schottky bipolar. Moore and Noyce decided that they would pursue all 3 simultaneously - and sell whichever they were able to mass-produce first. - One of the 1st decisions that Noyce and Moore had to take was to choose a director of Operations for Intel. 'Director Ops' was the job that carried responsibility for getting products designed on time and built to cost. Only sales and marketing, and the big-picture strategy decisions, were beyond its remit. - They offered the Director Ops job to a guy who had no manufacturing experience at all - who was more a physicist than an engineer, more a teacher than a business executive, more a foreigner than an American. Andy Grove was born in Hungary in 1936 with the name Andras Grof. Being Jewish, he was forced to go into hiding when German tanks rolled into Hungary, and to stay hidden for the duration of World War II. Some weeks after Soviet tank crushed a reforming Hungarian government in 1956, Grove escaped thru the Austrian border, and arrived in America aboard a rusty old ship that had carried US troops during the war. Grove enrolled in a course in chemical engg at the City College of New York, and waited at tables at restaurants in order to help pay for his tuition. He hated New York, but worked hard and graduated top of his class. When the moment came to decide where to go, it was the weather that was the deciding factor. To get away from the bitter winters of the north-east, Grove enrolled at the UC Berkeley, and earned a PhD in 1963. Then, Grove worked at Fairchild for the next 5 years in the R&D dept while continuing to lecture at UC Berkeley. - Grove's attitude to work was like that of Stakhanov, the legendary Russian miner whose long hours of labor and tons of output for the greater glory of the proletariat were celebrated by Soviet propagandists. - By the fall of 1968, Intel's engg effort was clearly organized into 2 teams, each led by a former Fairchild R&D engineer, to follow the memory technology project independently. The MOS team was led by Les Vadasz, a balding, short-tempered engineer who shared Grove's Hungarian background; the bipolar team came under the control of a brilliant but equally short-tempered engineer called Dick Bohn. - The chip designed for Honeywell became Intel's 1st commercial product, part # 3101. H.T. Chua, a Stanford graduate and immigrant from Singapore, designed this 64-bit scratchpad memory, a bipolar memory circuit, for Honeywell. - Faulty wafer for the MOS manufacturing process. Moore told them what he thought the problem was. When a memory chip was being built, he reminded them, it had to be repeatedly heater up and cooled during different stages of the production process. The temp change was not abnormal for the electronics industry, but this circuit was particularly sensitive. Because the design had sharp corners where the metal oxide andthe silicon met, one would expand more quickly than the other, and a crack would appear that broke the circuit and rendered it useless. Moore came up with a solution to the problem that was brilliant in its simplicty. He told the engineers to 'dope' the oxide with impurities so that its melting-point would fall. This would reduce the brittleness of the chip's edges, and allow the oxide to flow evenly around the rough corners like melting ice cream. The process was patented in Moore's name; but once the chip was in production, the exact nature of the reflow process was kept secret from the hourly workers, who had been hired to carry out the chip fabrication and packaging. -


4. The Goal - Eliyahu M. Goldratt "A process of ongoing improvement". I view science as nothing more than an understanding of the way the world is and why it is that way. At any given time our scientific knowledge is simply the current state of the art of our understanding. I do not believe in absolute truths. Attacked "Cost Accounting" as enemy number one of productivity. Today Eli's process of ongoing improvement is synegistic with other methods - MRP, Just in Time, Statistical Process Control. Eli is also author of "The Haystack Syndrome: Sifting Info Out of the Data Ocean" and "The Theory of Constraints". The Goal - net profit, ROI and cash flow. "To make money by increasing net profit, while increasing ROI, and increasing cash flow". Throughput - Rate at which the system generates money through sales. Inventory - All the money that the system has invested in purchasing things which it intends to sell. Operational expense - All the money the system spends in order to turn inventory into throughput. Optimize the above three variables for the whole organization, not for local optimums. There is math proof which shows that when capacity is trimmed exactly to marketing demands, no more and no less, throughput goes down, while inventory goes through the roof - and also, carrying cost (operational expense) of inventory goes up. So, balancing capacity against marketing demand doesn't even reduce operational expese. 2 factors - dependent events, statistical fluctuations. In any process, averaging of fluctuations does not happen; accumulation of fluctuations happen, because dependency (between events) limits the opportunities for higher fluctuations (so only the downside happens). Balance model game of dice, match sticks and Aluminum bowls - There was no reserve at the start. When the kids downstream in the balanced model got behind, they had no extra capacity to make up for the loss. And as the negative deviations accumulated, they got deeper and deeper in the hole. It's due to "covariance" - impact of one variable upon others in the same group. A math principle says that in a linear dependency of 2 or more variables, the fluctuations of the variables down the line will fluctuate around the maximum deviation established by any preceding variables. Don't balance capacity with market demand, but balance the "flow of product" throughout the plant with market demand. Identity bottlenect and non-bottleneck resources. The idea is to make the flow through the bottleneck equal to (actually, slightly less, to account for demand drop) the market demand. Capacity of the plant is equal to the capacity of its bottlenecks. Priority of orders, Inventory routing (red- and green- tags), make bottlenecks productive (increase capacity), QC before bottlenecks, Setting up right incentives among plant workers.


5. CRM at the Speed of Light, 2nd Edn - Paul Greenberg - Definition of CRM, by Craig Conway, CEO of Peoplesoft - Every time a customer approaches a business, they arrive with an expectation. What happens next will form an experience that shapes their behavior. The ability to recongnize this process and to actively manage it forms the basis for CRM. - The Internet blends computing and communications into a platform-independent, globally accessible, and universally usable medium. The most significant benefit for business will be leveraging the Internet to support the very fabric of the enterprise. Delivering pure Internet applications directly to browsers will empower a global workforce to know, to do, to measure, and to improve their jobs in support of a common, customer-oriented strategy. This is the promise of CRM. - 1st significant change to B2C relationship - Technology has empowered consumers with the ability to conduct business with a variety of alternatives to the traditional face-to-face contact. In addition, it has given consumers access to far more information and choice than they have ever enjoyed before. This increased awareness, combined with increasing demands on personal time, creates consumers that are informed and impatient. Meeting their increased expectations is essential, perhaps critical. - 2nd significant change - Waning ability to rely on traditional forms of differentiation for competitive advantage. Customers used to endure poor CRM because a business offered a significantly better product, happened to be geographically convenient, or could offer better pricing. These competitive advantages, in terms of (i) location, (ii) size, (iii) awareness and presence are being eroded by the changes technology is creating in the business landscape. The most startling transformation is the shift away from product-driven differentiation to service-based differentiation. - Definition of CRM, by Brent Fei, CEO of Onyx Software - CRM is a comprehensive set of processes and technologies for managing the relationships with potential and current customers and business partners across marketing, sales, and service regardless of the communication chanenl. A business can be organized by a top-to-bottom pyramid-shape set of processes - at the highest level = business objectives outlining 2-5 year strategic goals; next level = Program initiatives, 1-1.5 years in scope, they are near-term game plans intended to move the company another step toward the long-term objectives; next level = Department plans, which are processes and behavior that form the fabric of everyday work within the organization; Lowest level = Technology, which is used to automate and enable some or all of the business processes and initiatives. Organizations use either many separate best-of-breed solutions or larger, integrated platform solutions to achieve the goals of technology-enabled business. The technology strategy is generally a reflection of the coordination, or lack thereof, of the organization. - Organizations tend to execute their technology strategies in one of 4 stages - (i) Functional = CRM is compartmentalized or granular; typical of Fortune 500 companies that have extremely large operational infrastructures. Intra-team coordination and cooperation is challenging, and inter-departmental coordination and cooperation is nearly impossible. Process and technology to support it are executed in very granular pieces. Examples of this would be sales forecasting, automated email response, and Web self-help as standalone technical solution. ROI in this model is typically only possible in very large companies where economies of scale make it feasible. The technology deployed in this environment ususally provides benefits only into the bottom layer of the operational structure, helping to manage the departmental plans. Since the technology tends to be fragmented and only benefits the specific departmental processes, large data warehouse and large integration and synchronization projects are common. These become the technologies necessary to serve the top two layers of the operational structure. - (ii) Departmental CRM -


6. Title : Crossing the Chasm Author : Geoffrey A. Moore Publisher : Harper Business (Harper COllins Publishers) Chapter 2: High-Tech Marketing Illusion > High-Tech Marketing Segments "Whereas other industries introduce discontinuous innovations only occasionally and with much trepidation, high-tech enterprises do so routinely and as confidently as a born-again Christian holding four aces." [707 words] >A Flaw in The High-Tech Marketing Model "The real news is not the cracks in the bell curve—the real news is the deep and dividing chasms. " [767 words] Chapter 3: High-Tech Marketing Enlightenment >Between Visionaries and Pragmatists "If you are going to risk time and money in high tech, then you really do need to remember how high-tech markets develop." [762 words] Chapter 4: The D-Day Analogy >D-Day: Entering the Mainstream Market "To enter the mainstream market is an act of aggression." [1039 words] Chapter 5: Target the Point of Attack >Handling High-Risk, Low-Data Marketing Decisions "There's a lot riding on this kind of decision, and severe punishment for making it badly." [1176 words] Chapter 6: Assemble the Invasion Force >Whole-Product Marketing "Failure to recognize this principle has been the downfall of many a high-tech enterprise." [700 words] Chapter 7: Define the Battle >Competitive Positioning: Capturing the Mainstream By Creating the Competition "The fundamental rule of engagement is that any force can defeat any other force—if it can define the battle." [567 words] Chapter 8: Launch the Invasion >High-Tech Selling Channels "During the chasm period, the number-one concern of pricing is not to satisfy the customer or to satisfy the investors, but to motivate the channel." [882 words] Chapter 9: Conclusion: Getting Beyond the Chasm >The Post-Chasm Enterprise "All too often one of the first tasks of the postchasm era is to manage our way out of the contradictions imposed by prechasm agreements." [731 words] >Organizational Decisions: from Pioneers to Settlers "In high tech, marketing is too ignorant to drive the bus." [923 words]


Bypassing Phone Trees November 22, 2005; Wall Street Journal The Problem: Getting a person on the line when calling customer support. The Solution: Consumers looking for shortcuts to reach customer-service representatives can check the Interactive Voice Response cheat sheet (named for the technology in automated calling systems) at www.paulenglish.com/ivr/. The site, started this year by Paul English, co-founder of travel search engine Kayak.com, has phone numbers for 110 organizations and tips on bypassing the touch-tone or voice-recognition process (such as saying "representative" when calling FedEx, or hitting "0" many times quickly for Ikea.) The site is constantly updated with numbers suggested by the site's supporters. A handful, including one for Best Buy, are unpublished internal numbers given anonymously by employees. For numbers not on the list, try a search engine. Entering "Amazon customer service," for example, brings up a Web page by ClicheIdeas.com, dedicated to contacting customer representatives at Amazon.com. Mr. English also suggests a common trick: Don't press any keys and wait until a person picks up the call. ---------------------------------------------- Predicting the Future: Part II; Rich Karlgaard on how the right belief system will help predict the future. Rich Karlgaard 996 words 13 February 2006 Forbes 39 Volume 177 Issue 3 English (c) 2006 Forbes Inc. I graduated from college in 1976. That was 30 years ago, the same 30-year gap experienced by Marty McFly in the movie Back To the Future (see Jan. 30, p. 33). Let's fire up Doc Brown's DeLorean time-traveler and return to 1976. But would we really want to go? We'd be reminded that the prevailing view of the world in 1976 was: -- The planet was severely overpopulated and would soon run out of natural resources. -- The age of entrepreneurship was dead and was being replaced by the conglomerated efficiencies of large companies. -- Capitalism was morally repugnant because it wasted resources and oppressed the poor. The zeitgeist of 1976 had taken root in 1968, a year of turmoil and doubt. Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich fueled our doubts with a bestseller called The Population Bomb. Ehrlich predicted catastrophe: Famine would break out, followed by global wars, etc. Implied in Ehrlich's writing was that humans were consumers, not producers, of resources. If Ehrlich was right--and most of us gullible college students thought he was--then the only moral path available for us was to not procreate. Suppose you believed Ehrlich. Suppose your 1976 sense of moral certitude overrode your natural instinct to want children. Suppose it wasn't until the late 1980s that you woke up and realized Ehrlich was a boob, that he had gotten it all wrong. Whoops, better get busy trying to make babies, right? But what if all those years later one's sperm count or egg motility was no longer up to the task? What if your fertility window had opened and shut while you were under the spell of quacks like Ehrlich? Well, too bad for you. Beliefs have consequences, and they're sometimes harsh. One 1976 college grad joins AT&T, having been taught by John Kenneth Galbraith at Harvard that we live in an age of great corporate efficiency. Another joins Oracle, thinking this Larry Ellison guy is awfully smart. The first person trades excitement for prestige and gets neither. The second gets both, helps change the business world for the better and retires rich. Ideas and worldviews do matter greatly in our lives. Mental Operating System This column's chief goal is to supply you with a worldview--a mental operating system--that will be as good 30 years from now as it is today. If this column causes you to see opportunity beyond the defeatist smog, then I'll have done my job. Three eternal truths sit at the core of our mental operating system. The first: Natural resources will never run out. Etch this into your brain--man discovers or creates resources faster than he uses them up. Whale blubber started to run out in the early 1800s. The Paul Ehrlichs of the time were in a panic. Then in 1859 Edwin Drake drilled the world's first oil well in Titusville, Pa. The second eternal truth: Success is not a zero-sum game, though most academic economists, pundits and politicians act as if it were--maybe because they vie for glory in zero-sum professions. (There can be only 1 U.S. President and 50 senators, for example.) The third eternal truth: The Golden Rule is more than a spiritual truth, it is a business truth. You get ahead in business by serving others. Sure, you can try to cheat or cut corners--and you may succeed. But the odds overwhelmingly favor the company that serves its customers with great products and services at a fair price. This is even truer today, in the age of Internet price transparency and activist consumers. Beyond these eternal truths are modern truths. Moore's Law is one. We know that digital technology progression occurs at a predictable rate: Chips double in performance every 18 months; storage every 12 months; bandwidth every 9 months--or close enough, anyway. I know a billionaire venture capitalist who says his secret of success has been simply "to project Moore's Law into the future and to imagine what new products and services it would bring." Moore's Law has been a billion-dollar idea to this investor. Another modern law was best described by banking legend Walter Wriston, a great thinker who died a year ago. Let's call it Wriston's Law of Capital. In the age of electronic money transfers, said Wriston, "Capital will always go where it's welcome and stay where it's well treated." Capital is mobile, capital is in play, and if you want some of it, you'd better treat it well. Evidently the state of Maryland hasn't heard of Wriston's Law. It recently passed laws raising the minimum wage and requiring large employers such as Wal-Mart to pay higher employee health care insurance costs. Wriston's Law predicts that these decisions will be good for the economy … neighboring Virginia's economy. Wriston once told me that capital is not just money, "It's also talent and ideas. They, too, will go where they're welcome and stay where they're well treated." Google understands Wriston's Law perfectly. The company attracts the first cut of talent in Silicon Valley because it offers stock options, the value of which has risen. But more than that, Google gives creative freedom to its scientists and engineers. One day a week the brainiacs work on whatever projects they like. Google is a giant playpen. This is Wriston's Law at work. Moore's Law, Wriston's Law and a few other older truths help us see the world in which we live. And where that world is going. With the right belief system we can predict the future. Read Rich Karlgaard's daily blog at http://blogs.forbes.com/digitalrules or visit his home page at www.karlgaard.com ------------------------------------------------------- [Business Life /Careers] CATCH THE NEW MBA CRAZE: RAOISM Anne Fisher 20 February 2006 Fortune U.S. Edition THE TERMS "SELF-HELP" AND "MBA" don't often go hand in hand. So it's surprising that a Columbia Business School class called Creativity and Personal Mastery (CPM) is fast becoming one of the most popular B-school classes in the U.S. Weirder still, it's arguably the toughest to get into, requires thinking about the "meaning of life," and not infrequently convinces MBA students that- -surprise!--money isn't everything. CPM is the brainchild of Srikumar Rao, an ex-marketing executive from Wall Street and Hollywood. (The Exorcist was one of his early successes.) He went into teaching when, he says, "I needed to integrate my spiritual life with my work life." Now Rao is spreading his message with a new book called Are You Ready to Succeed?: Unconventional Strategies for Achieving Personal Mastery in Business and in Life. Unconventional is right. "Raoism," as his devotees call it, uses a system of intense introspection to revive energy and creativity. In a series of eight mental exercises, Rao explains how to shush the inner chatter and clear the way for career growth. Granted, it sounds like New Age hokum. "I was sticking my neck out a bit to recommend that we take on this course," says Paddy Barwise, head of the marketing department at the London Business School, where Rao taught last fall. "Most of the people who come to my class are downright unbelievers," admits Rao. "But is the mental model you're using now working better for you than the one I'm proposing?" There must be something to it. The class is so oversubscribed that he has had to devise a rigorous application process. (Each candidate must submit a resume, agree to be interviewed, and write seven essays.) And Rao's is the only course at the Columbia B- school that has its own alumni association. If you read Rao's book, brace yourself: Some Raoists have had dramatic epiphanies. Magnus Asbjornsson, a newly minted MBA, was hell-bent on a high-powered consulting job--until he took Rao's course. "I realized I was chasing brand names, and it was all driven by pure ego," he says. Now he works for Marakon Associates, a small strategy firm whose culture emphasizes work-life balance and public service. -------------------------

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