Outsourcing

courtesy Vikas Tiwari @ Infosys

Engineering Village

Enginnering Village is a potpourri of contemporary Compendex, EI and other databases. It has documents that go as far back as 1884 (that's what the site claims). But the search feature is great. The site comes up with different vocabulary terms that match your query, different hierarchies under which they fall, authors, citations, and full-text (yaaaaaaaaaaa....). And if it doesn't find your document, it comes up with a close match (which is pretty close unlike the crappy IEEE Xplore search). It also has an expert search that looks like a PL editor and it has search by author, affiliation, publisher, year, d/b.

The Bangash Brothers

Sons of the legendary sarod maestro Ustad Amjad Ali Khan paid a visit to State College today. Amaan and Ayaan Ali Bangash performed a symphony par excellence for the Indian Graduate Students Association's, Omkar 2005, here at Penn State. For the uninitiated, the sarod is a 25-stringed instrument, whose body is hand carved from a single block of Indian Mahogany with a steel fretless finger board and a diaphragm made of goat skin.

Witnessing the two brothers in action is beyond what words can describe. Their fingers moved effortlessly over the strings picking out sharp, soft and melodious tones. Paired with Sandeep Das on the tabla, the group escalated into a seemingly impromptu jugalbandi where Das replicated on his tabla, each tone that the brothers challenged him with, on their sarods.

The recital was topped off with a Raga Alaap. As the music flowed from the sarods and crescendoed in the air, the hall reverberated with a thundering applause. The crowds gave the masters a standing ovation.

technorati tags: sarod Bangash

World is Flat

Just finished reading "The World is Flat" by Thomas Friedman.

Published in April 2005, this book is one of the few that deals with the global upheavals we have seen in the last few years. As is his style, Friedman dissects the issue to the very core and gives a bird's eye view of its causes and consequences. Presented against the backdrop of the new world economy where the balance of power seems to be shifting towards Asia, this book is a whole new look at globalization as we see it today. Some salient features are

1. Globalization 1.0 in the 1800s was driven by countries, muscle and brute force. The force behind Globalization 2.0, in the 1900 - 2000 era, were corporate entities, industries and companies (like the East India Company in 1850s or more recently WorldCom etc.). But Globalization 3.0 is driven by individuals, all across the globe, who are equally empowered. This empowerment is thanks to the high bandwidth blanket that wraps the globe, open source applications, and a warehouse of information (aka Google) available at the fingertips of the President of USA as well as a villager in Chile.
2. Friedman also deals broadly with outsourcing, the different forms and shapes it has assumed, its why, what and how. He also tries to analyze what its consequences will be, desirable as well as undesirable, and how we, the citizens of the new globe, will deal with it.
3. He describes the ten flatteners of the world and how they came about. From supply chaining (Wal Mart as we know it) to informing (Google) and insourcing (UPS). Just like the Interstate system shrunk the USA in the post war era, so did these factors play an important role in the shrinking of the globe in this century.
4. He discusses how complacency, under-ambition has affected the super-power-for-past-half-century, the United States. He details the challenges faced in terms of incoming competition from countries like India and China, as well as those from terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda.

A great postscript to this book will be an article on Crouching Tigers, Hidden Dragons in the latest BusinessWeek issue. This deals with the matters that are closer to my heart. This article outlines the business models and growth patterns that these countries have adopted to help them sprint faster in this marathon towards being a superpower.

technorati tags: Tom Friedman World is Flat outsourcing

the Chariot has arrived

This is my new ride. Blue Nissan Maxima, 2000, 3L with V6 engines. Nice power, great styling and expensive enough to burn a hole in my bank account. Say goodbye to greyhound buses, rented cars and grudging favors. I am the king and I ride my chariot.

Probably not a great time to buy a car when the gas prices have spiralled to a 50% increase... but what the hell.