Platter of Half Baked Ideas

Many of the great businesses that exist today were formed because their founders were passionate about the subject, and felt that available facilities or businesses did not satisfy all requirements of a demanding customer. Yahoo.com came into being when Jerry Yang and David Filo felt the need for a directory of websites so that it becomes relatively simpler for users to locate some specific site. Google was founded when Larry Page and Sergey Brin felt the need for a search engine that  analyzed the relationships between websites would produce better ranking of results than existing techniques, which ranked results according to the number of times the search term appeared on a page. Dell Inc was formed when, while in his college, Michael Dell felt that by selling personal computer-systems directly to customers, PC producers could better understand customers' needs and provide the most effective computing solutions to meet those needs. Besides being founded by users to addres...

I came across this on one of the blogs I regularly follow. Sharing this because I think this is relevant, and we all talk about corruption et al all the time. Once again.. your opinion on the matter will be appreciated :) The original post can be found here . Let me tell you a story. It’s a vignette of what I consider to be important although it may appear to be rather trivial. Perhaps its apparent triviality is what should astonish us. But allow me to first recount a conversation I had the last week. A close friend of mine was visiting me one evening. Let me preserve his identity by just identifying him as RL. I have known RL since the first grade. Born to a Marwari business family, RL has done reasonably well in business. I asked how things were with his business of arranging trucking services all over India. “Same old, same old,” says RL. “Tell me more,” says I. “You were talking to someone on the phone just now and you said ‘890′. What was that about?” I asked. “That’s the ...

Given an option, I always chose window seat on the flight. reason being, I take childish delight in looking over the scenery, the snow white clouds, the ground where everything is minuscule, and far off objects. Thus it was no wonder that I found myself occupying a window seat on my return flight from Calcutta to Delhi last Tuesday, after having celebrated Diwali at home. Flight from Calcutta to Delhi is especially pleasurable as for a large part of the flight, you can look snow capped peaks of Himalaya jutting out of clouds at a distance. The view, for me, is breathtaking and spellbinding. I also like to look at the ground, whenever there is a break in clouds, and try to figure out farms, towns etc. I have noticed the landscape change over the years, from being pre dominantly green, to predominantly brown - the shade of soil. I am always disappointed at the pace with which green seems to be disappearing. This flight, however, had another surprise in store for me. My flight had to ...

It’s been long since Gagan hauled me in to co-author his blog. After months of lying back finally I sat down to write actually. I guess the first time you attempt writing what comes out is what is on your mind the most! What came out of my ‘search’ was a ‘ Design blah’. I’m an Architect. That should explain the torrent that will follow. I run in circles inside my head (which I like to think, is where thoughts are processed). I tear myself apart with the thinking and analysing that I do. I figure that if I write about ‘it’, the gush of thoughts could have an outlet and peace might re-enter. I'm very tempted to write about the design process that I'm involved in at present, for it is affirming some of my suspicions, contradicting some of my presumptions I had as a student, and taking me through a hurricane drive that I must admit I'm cherishing. I got my first large independent project. It's nothing like what I had expected. Why do we expect what we expect, I’m not sur...