Privy

Viswanathan Anand

Viswanathan Anand successfully defended his world title after defeating Russian Vladimir Kramnik in World Championship final in Germany. Vishy has won the championship in three formats: Knock-out, Round-robin and Match-play.

Viswanathan Anand said the he was more relieved than happy with this achievement, which is amazing. He was of the opinion that he was the undisputed champion even before the match. However, the title just helped assert the fact.

There has always been a fierce rivalry between Vishy and Vlady and the Indian has won the most recent battle. Hope he keeps winning all the time and let Vlady only hope for miracles.

Lets all take this opportunity to congratulate Vishy!

Gautam Gambhir

The one player that is the most reliable today for India is not Virendra Sehwag, but his Delhi Daredevils mate Gautam Gambhir. Gautam Gambir has long proven his worth in the one-dayers as well as the twenty-20. He was not give a chance for long in the tests, with Wasim Jaffer being the favorite of the selectors despite repeated failures.

But, once he got the opportunity earlier this year in Sri Lanka, he has not looked back. Today, he proved again with this successive century why he is today the most consistent batsman for India in any form of the game of cricket.

I would really like him to continue his batting tomorrow and go on to make a double hundred. His double hundred would ensure a big first innings total for India, putting a lot more pressure on the already pressurized Austrailian outfit.

India has the best chance to wrap it up in this match itself. It should not let go of this golden opportunity to humiliate the best team in the world.

Jose Mourinho - Courtesy paulbence on Flickr

You can’t keep him out of the news, can you? Mourinho is back in the news again, now with the rumoured linkage with former foe club – Manchester United, the richest and the biggest club in the world. Now, Mourinho has never denied his interests of returning to England some day, just like his dream of coaching Portugal.

One man with whom he had been in constant touch in England, just after his sacking from Chelsea was Sir Alex himself. Even though they were close rivals, both admire each other and Mourinho is capable of taking it forward from where Sir Alex will eventually leave. Before Mourinho joined Chelsea, he had expressed his desire to join clubs with a history like Liverpool and Man United. He had said Chelsea, “NO!”. He eventually joined it and was very successful with the club.

Now as an Inter coach, even though his side is not performing well, he has managed to keep them joint leaders in Serie A as well as in their group in Champions league. They say some people just are plain lucky, or more appropriately, some people are born winners. That’s Mourinho!

Image courtesy Zadeus on Flickr.com

The Indian stock exchanges today got a sound breather. Both BSE and NSE are up today. Thanks to the festive season of Diwali and also the Gujarati New Year. The BSE will be open for muhurat trading tomorrow between 6:15 pm and 7:15 pm IST.

It might be that a lot of people are considering these days as auspicious for investment and hence they are grabbing all the shares that are coming fairly cheap. But, a lot depends these days on the US market and the other world markets. Indian markets simply follow the trend of other markets around the world.

A lot of this is due to panic created among the investors and also the FIIs pulling out the money to balance their investments in other parts of the world. But, there are a lot of individual investors who put a lot of risk behind their investment, in anticipation, by borrowing money to put into the stock market. There are lot of cases of suicides every time there is a major crash in the markets.

Caution is adviced.

multigle search

Heard of blackle? The Black Google! Now we have one more multigle.

Blackle was brought out will the intension of saving power by providing a black background to Google search. The idea is that a black pixel on the monitor screen consumes less power compared to a white pixel. However, this was true only on CRT monitors and not on say the LCD monitors. Infact, it consumed more power. So Blackle is not of much use on laptops.

Now, multigle seems to have a solution for laptops. The idea is simple. Reduce the brightness of your computer screen and you will save a lot of power. The site itself does not do anything, but claims to have been designed to be viewed, without strain on the eyes, on a dull screen. The site will only encourage the user to lower the screen brightness.

However, the effect of this is not restricted to the site alone. Once the user uses multigle to search (results provided by Google) and realizes to decrease the monitor intensity, she will eventually browser out from the site, but the effect of saving power is still present or rather multiplied (xplied as they say)  across web sites and even outside the browser.

Now, whether people actually decrease the intensity, I find the site to be quite beautiful and simple like the plain old Google. You could browse the site at http://www.multigle.com.

Update: More information can be found at http://xply.multigle.com/why and http://xply.multigle.com/how.

Recently, there was a debate held in my company about when to choose best design and when to go for an optimal design. The debate, according to me was a success, as people brought out great points for either option. One person supporting optimal design gave the classic example of the American pressure sensing pen vs Russian Pencil.

Now, I am a very opinionated person and unfortunately, I was only a part of the audience. I tried desparately to get the microphone during the audience round, to no avail. But, my blog is the best place for me to speak out my mind infront of anybody who cares to listen (read actually). Let me take one more example and then I will throw my opinion in this regard.

Somebody said iPhone has the best design and iPhone is a success. Now, this made me wonder, it is really true? Or, are people confusing the external appearance of the phone to its design? Now, one very important feature missing in iPhone is the very simple “cut”, “copy” and “paste” feature. It was missing so you would think, maybe they forgot. The original iPhone did not have it, neither does iPhone 3G.

If iPhone really were a great design, it would have been very easy to extend it, to add features like the above. However, it turns out that the current design would require a major change to implement the above feature. So, iPhone is not a best design, but today it is definitely the best product.

So, my valuable opinion goes… There is no such thing as Optimal design, but only an optimal solution. It is either a Good design, Better design, Best design or bad design for that matter. One may never choose a bad design, but it might turn out to be one. We generally aim for an optimal solution and depending upon its comparative degree, we choose either a good design, better design or best design.

It might turn out that Google’s Android has a better design than an iPhone. But under the current circumstances iPhone has a more than an optimal solution. This might change, however, in the future. Both Google and Apple are great companies.

Bombay Stock Exchange - Image courtesy Zadeus on Flickr

Rumor mills are the only successfull business enterprise these days. Yet another rumor of Unitech going bankrupt has caused all the realty stock going bust on the BSE and the NSE. Unitech lost more than 50% of its value in a day. DLF and others were not far behind. Rupee value is at an all time low.

These are the tough times and rumors make them even tougher. We have not yet recovered from the news of ICICI bank going bankrupt, that we have one more. A lot has to be blamed to the big builders who have build a lot of big apartments, in high anticipation, only to find there is no demand or rather the demand is declining. Apartments with capacities in thousands have been springing in cities like Bangalore and we wondered when will this ever stop.

Now, is the answer. Latest news is that even posh apartments are being given out on rent. The builders are definitely facing a cash crunch and the falling price of realty coupled by excess availability has compounded their problem. Also, the global financial crisis have not helped them.

Who could have imagined a situation like this even three months before? Only if my portfolio were not red …

T-mobile G1

The highly anticipated Googe phone G1 has been finally released to much anticipation. The phone had an advantage or disadvantage of being pitted against the iphone. It’s success or failure is bound to be measured in terms of how well it can compete against the holy grail of phones.

This comparision is however a little unfair to G1. One thing is for sure, Google wanted to play it safe and wanted to test for itself the potential of the platform in the most usable way. So beautification was never their primary motive. But the capability realisation was indeed so.

The inclusion of a physical keyboard with exclusion of a soft keyboard summarizes it very well. The primary aim for google is to increase the penetration of its services in the mobile segment. When you use Google search, you need to “type”. Unless Google brings out some kind of a visual search, this is not going to change in the near future. Or the kind of gesture typing is perfected. Hence, the importance of keyboard.

The phone has been thus far well received for a variety of reasons, though not a run away success like the iphone. But, it has definitely changed the battlefield. iPhone made people realize the potential of smart phones. GPhone made people realize the potential of open source. Both are game changers in their own right.

T-mobile G1

The Google Phone is about to be released in a week. This is a combined effort from Google (and OHA), T-mobile and HTC for software, network and hardware respectively. There are manly implications of too many cooks as against Apple’s lone cook cooked iPhone.

Android has gone through a rough phase with speculations that it is getting delayed and might as well be forgotten. However, it is being released on schedule. Many questions arise now that will it be a half baked effort to meet the dead lines or it was just a communication issue.

Whatever, Android is back to grab the headlines. Android Market, an apps store similar to the one on iPhone is touted to bring either success or failure to Android.

People however forget that Android is not only restricted to the phone. It will go in netbooks, embedded devices, televisions, refrigerators and may be future real android’s. Don’t take it lightly, though.

If you purchased $1,000 of Delta Airlines stock 1 year ago, you would have $49 today.

If you purchased $1,000 of AIG stock 1 year ago, you would have $33 today.

If you purchased $1,000 of Lehman Brothers stock 1 year ago, you would have $0.0 today.

But, if you purchased $1,000 worth of beer 1 year ago, drank all the beer, returned the aluminum cans for a recycling refund, you would have $214.

Disclaimer: Investments are subject to market (and now, health) risks. Please consider/ignore this as a pure email forward.