Google Base

Google Base... Google's latest foray. It is all set to take over from eBay, Craigslist, (i hope cars.com too). Google Base is Google's database into which you can add all types of content. Contest hosting, free classifieds,

and a lot more I don't even know.

Examples of items you can find in Google Base:

	•	Description of your party planning service
	•	Articles on current events from your website
	•	Listing of your used car for sale
	•	Database of protein structures

And this will be integrated with main Google search, Froogle and Google Local. So you don't need a website for your name to popup on Google's Search... just upload into Google base and voila...

We are ... Penn State

Saturday, Penn State's football team catapulted to rank 8 after they beat Ohio State in a 17-10 rout. It was huge. After four straight losing seasons since 2001, Penn State had been ranked #91. But this season, they have been playing like champions. After knocking the ball out of T Smith's (OSU quarterback) hands in the last 2 minutes, the defense just savoured the moment. Not soon after, the record crowd of 109,000 hit the streets and chants like "faaaaaccckkkk ooooohhhhhaaaayyyyyyooooo" rent the air. The t-shirts said it all... We're Back.

Video iPod?

Video iPod? Can this be true? Can that small thingie tied to you arm play a high-res video? Well if Stevie has his way, Apple is all set for world domination... one sucker at a time. I mean selling an mp3 player for 300 bucks is something. Cramming it into a matchbox and selling it for 250 beats that. And now video?...

Pretty soon you will be telling me it can check email, surf the net, answer phone calls and do your homework. But never mind... if you haven't tried the iTunes5 yet, get off your lazy butt before Stevie gets pissed. There is an iTunes for Windows too ... take that up-ur-ass Bill.

Btw, my birthday is coming up... if you are wondering what to get for me, here is a hint (an iPod nano you dumb fuck!.. just look at the image for chrissakes). Start saving up...

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