Yantrakaal

I know that I am not the first one to say so but the fact remains that the future of the world wide web is -- literally -- in your hands. In your mobile handset that is ! And the faster you get  your hands wrapped around this new technology the better for you. But why this sudden realisation on my part ? Let me backtrack a little bit. Many years ago, I had the opportunity to design a computer network for a client and we were agonising about the amount of bandwidth that we should provision for. Since bandwidth was an expensive commodity in those days -- a 64Kbps internet access was available from VSNL for about Rs 12+ lakhs / year -- we were being very conservative with our requirements but a senior colleague gave me a warning that I have never forgotten : Never estimate the size of a bridge by counting the number of people swimming across the river ! His message was that once you start using a technology you will realise how much more you can with it and your requirements  a...

image courtesy   Metin Bereketli 1. If my side of the road has a traffic jam, then I can start driving on the wrong side of the road, and all incoming cars will be rerouted via Meerut . 2. The Queue Nahin Rule: If there is a queue of many people, no one will notice me sneaking into the front as long as I am looking the other way. 3. The Mind Over Matter Law: If a traffic light is not working, four cars from different directions can easily pass through one another. 4. The Auto Axiom: If I indicate which way I am going to turn my vehicle, it is an information security leak. 5. The In Spit Of Thing: The more I lean out of my car or bus, and the harder I spit, the stronger the roads become. 6. The Cinema Hall Fact: If I get a call on my mobile phone, the film automatically goes into pause mode. 7. The Brotherhood Law: If I want to win an argument, I need only to repeatedly suggest that the other person has illicit relations with his sister. 8. The Baraat ...

The Basic Philosophy The solution to any real life problem consists of two components -- a hard technology component and a soft human component. While speeds of trains can of course be increased with more powerful engines, lighter materials, better aerodynamics and intelligent signalling, what we also need is a way to ensure that everyone in the railway system has a vested interest in ensuring that speeds and schedules are maintained,  is motivated enough to go the extra mile to make that happen and has the information at his or her finger tips to act on the motivation. This is the goal of TERM -- the Technology Enabled Real-time Motivation initiative. The Core  Idea Who is responsible for delays ? At the highest level, the Railway Board ! But we need to establish a more granular level of responsibility. Is it the signal operator ? the station master ? the staff of a particular station ? the staff of a particular group of stations ? of a specific division ? of a zone ? O...

Traditional MIS courses in Business Schools very often tend to focus on programming and systems analysis but the needs of the corporate world seem to be moving away from such "hard" technology. Today, it is all about the rich interactivity of Web 2.0 and the ability to "mashup" a whole slew of occassionally half baked ( or still baking ) technological ideas and deliver value to the business. In an earlier post, I had highlighted some of the "hard" technology of Cloud Computing that our students have learnt to package together to deliver a useful product. But there is more to the usage of technology than crafting smart applications. Today's managers are very often faced with the task of communicating complex ideas to an impatient audience and the only arrow in the quiver could be technology. Hence students were given the opportunity to explore the use of movie making as a technical tool to further their business goals. Students were asked to choose...

  When will people realise that there is a world beyond the corrupt antics that goes by the name of Cricket Image scanned from EyE / Indian Express

As a concept, Cloud Computing is neither new nor anything unique -- in fact the business proposition  around this model of system architecture is so compelling, that one wonders -- as I have explained in the Economic Times --  why people do not see it as an inevitability ! Of late the idea seems to have exploded into the public psyche with the unstoppable force of an idea whose time has come and we in the Vinod Gupta School of Management at IIT Kharagpur have included this into our curriculum. I have been exploring Cloud Computing on the Zoho platform for the past couple of years and this year our students have built some very smart applications -- in fact a nano ERP if I may say so -- that were evaluated by two executives from Zoho itself. I am grateful to Mr Aravind Natarajan for helping me with this evaluation. You can see the three top applications here on this page, or you can follow the links to the actual application <p><br /...

The Sandy Bay Hotel : Excellent place to stay when you are here. We booked our rooms here through Unicorn Travels in Calcutta . Morning 5th November 2010