17 Aug 2007
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“There’s a chance to invest right now in China, India, Russia and Brazil, which will pay off big over the next five years… These economies are going to boom, and ads there are going to go directly to mobile and directly to the Internet.” Says David W. Kenny, the chairman and chief executive of Digitas.
He also believes that “It is only a matter of time until nearly all advertisements around the world are digital.”
Continue reading →17 Aug 2007
· media
Interesting times these! While the New York Times is poised to stop charging online users, Google is going to start charging.
New York Times started charging for access in 2005 and has in 2007 decided to abandon the approach. Google started offering free email, albeit restricted to 1 gigabyte (GB) storage, in 2004 and has in 2007 decided to start charging for storage over 2.8 gigabytes (GB) .
New York Post Story:
Continue reading →03 Aug 2007
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In trying to use a new word processing program, such as Google Docs, it is typical to resist a new order of icons. Fingers follow muscle memory, and the mind, focused on the task of composing that perfect sentence, is loath to break off from the task at hand to figure out new ways to tinker with a new program.
But, with Google, there is always the allure of the new kid on the block – the one with all the lollipops, the one with all the surprises. So, I open Docs and, oh wow, it looks a lot like word. Nice, nice….and I move onto the task of writing. While I am at it, Docs jumps in and automatically saves a copy, using the first eight words as a kind of file name. I try the revisions function, and see that it works a lot like my gmail account, with versions stacked up on top of one another, allowing me to pick the one I want. (A godsend for the careless editor who hacks off a line and then goes scrambling to get it back!)
Continue reading →20 Feb 2007
· media
Business week article on the market place for ideas: “…Colgate-Palmolive… needed a more efficient method for getting its toothpaste into the tube—a seemingly straightforward problem. When its internal R&D team came up empty-handed, the company posted the specs on InnoCentive, one of many new marketplaces that link problems with problem-solvers. A Canadian engineer named Ed Melcarek proposed putting a positive charge on fluoride powder, then grounding the tube. It was an effective application of elementary physics, but not one that Colgate-Palmolive’s team of chemists had ever contemplated. Melcarek was duly rewarded with $25,000 for a few hours work.
Continue reading →18 Feb 2007
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Reuters informs us that Malaysia is considering a ban on fast food ads… With Malaysia’s growing affluence, almost 40 per cent of its 26 million citizens are obese, up from 20 per cent a decade ago. No wonder.
In Britain Ofcom proposal to ban junk food adverts targeted at under-16s – expected to be enforced from the end of January 2007, and be phased in over 24 months – has obviously come under attack. Television channels stand to loose enormous amount of money…
Incidentally, fast food chain Burger King said it would voluntarily stop making and showing television adverts in the UK aimed at children…
Continue reading →08 Feb 2007
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If you want to buy a kidney or any other organ just contact your local broker. A wired story reports “…a group of poverty-stricken women living in a tsunami refugee camp 7.5 miles north of Chennai confessed at a public meeting that they sold their kidneys through brokers.”
An unnamed member of the state-appointed ethics committee which must approve all transplants says that “…patients have no hope because in India, organ donation after death is extremely rare. Without incentive, donors are practically nonexistent.”
Continue reading →18 Jan 2007
· media
There’s a raging debate out west about giving parents access to community sites frequently visited by kids, sites like myspace.com which has been described by some US attorneys as “a towering danger to kids.” As expected, commnunity sites are giving in, albeit reluctantly, allowing parents to have a limited view of who their kids are talking to online. Ars Technica has the story: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070117-8647.html
Continue reading →18 Jan 2007
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It’s six in the morning, we’re jet lagged, and sleepy in the sleepy little airport of Perth, on our way to Sydney from Delhi, via Singapore. The kids trundle to the cafeteria looking for fries, we’re after the coffee, and my brain is looking for a bed to tumble into. I feel like I’ve tumbled upside down to another time zone (which I have) and landed on my bum (which I haven’t). Except that there’s something strange going on in Kangaroo-land.
Continue reading →07 Nov 2006
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Just one month after having successfully completed the Raid De Himalaya in is Honda CRV, that he so lovingly calls ‘Mogli’, Mukul had to summon the courage to drive himself to medical help while he was bleeding profusely – he lost eight bottles of blood, I believe. Why? Because two thugs attacked him at a crossing just as the light turned green. Not one to give in easily, Mukul fought back and sustained a knife injury – eight cm wound the attending doctor said.
Continue reading →08 Oct 2006
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“Farm suicides have also been on for several years in Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh and elsewhere in India… Farm suicides have been on for a while in the cotton-growing West African nations too. As they have in many other parts of the world with farmers into other crops as well. (They occurred in the United States, too, during the Great Depression. And again, as corporate farming snuffed out small holder agriculture in the last quarter of the 20th century.)” - P. Sainath in The Hindu
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