kage's posterous

MBA school rankings of the US and quick facts.

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 00:27:17 -0800

On a quick look these seem to be the general trend.

Highest GMAT Average: Stanford, Harvard then Berkeley.
Highest Tuition fees: Pennsylvania, Harvard then Stanford.
Highest Base salary: Stanford, Harvard, Pennsylvania, Chicago.

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Guys Rules, Women please read.

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 22:19:28 -0800

Got this in the email today. Great read.

The Guys' Rules

We always hear "the rules". From the female side.
Now here are the rules from the male side.
These are our rules! Please note these are all numbered "1"

ON PURPOSE!

1. Men ARE not mind readers.

1. Learn to work the toilet seat.

You're a big girl. If it's up, put it down.
We need it up, you need it down.
You don't hear us complaining about you leaving it down.

1. Sunday sports. It's like the full moon or the changing of the tides. Let it be.

1. Shopping is NOT a sport. And no, we are never going to think of it that way.

1. Crying is blackmail.

1. Ask for what you want.
Let us be clear on this one:
Subtle hints do not work!
Strong hints do not work!
Obvious hints do not work!
Just say it!

1. Yes and No are perfectly acceptable answers to almost every question.

1.. Come to us with a problem only if you want help solving it. That's what we do. Sympathy is what your girlfriends are for.

1. A headache that lasts for 17 months IS a problem. See a doctor.

1. Anything we said 6 months ago is inadmissible in an argument. In fact, all comments become null and void after 7 Days.

1. If you won't dress like the Victoria's Secret girls, don't expect us to act like soap opera guys.

1. If you think you're fat, you probably are. Don't ask us.

1. If something we said can be interpreted two ways and one of the ways makes you sad or angry, we meant the other one.

1. You can either ask us to do something Or tell us how you want it done. Not both. If you already know best how to do it, just do it yourself.

1. Whenever possible, Please say whatever you have to say during commercials.

1. Christopher Columbus did NOT need directions and neither do we.

1. ALL men see in only 16 colors, like Windows default settings. Peach, for example, is a fruit, not a color. Pumpkin is also a fruit. We have no idea what mauve is.

1. If it itches, it will Be scratched. We do that.

1. If we ask what is wrong and you say "nothing," We will act like nothing's wrong. We know you are lying, but it is just not worth the hassle.

1. If you ask a question you don't want an answer to, Expect an answer you don't want to hear.

1. When we have to go somewhere, absolutely anything you wear Is fine... Really.

1. Don't ask us what we're thinking about unless you are prepared to discuss such topics as baseball, the shotgun formation,
Or golf.

1. You have enough clothes.

1. You have too many shoes.

1. I am in shape. Round IS a shape!

The End.

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World of Warcraft's back end - 11.5 million people, 20,000+ PCs

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 22:03:29 -0800

I learnt what a petabyte is today (100 Terabytes, which is 100 times 1000 Gigabytes which is 1000 times MB). World of Warcraft servers to be up and running need over 10 data centers, 20,000 PC's and 75,000 CPU cores. To put that into perspective, you use 1 pc, dual core to play warcraft. I'm starting to like statistics now. They work with AT & T who are crap with the iPhone service, but great for the 11.5 million customers on WoW (all this managed by 68 people). All the information here.

Blizzard Online Network Services run in 10 data centers around the world, including facilities in Washington, California, Texas, Massachusetts, France, Germany, Sweden, South Korea, China, and Taiwan.
Blizzard uses 20,000 systems and 1.3 petabytes of storage to power its gaming operations.
WoW’s infrastructure includes 3,250 server blades, 75,000 CPU cores, and 112.5 terabytes of blade RAM.
The Blizzard network is managed by a staff of 68 people.
The company’s gaming infrastructure is monitored from a global network operating center (GNOC), which like many NOCs, features televisions tuned to the weather stations to track potential uptime threats across its data center footprint.

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Target 1 year. Motivation High.

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 11:12:18 -0800

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How do you save up on petrol and maximise fuel efficiency?

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 10:58:10 -0800

DRIVING STYLE

• Drive smoothly:

Aggressive acceleration and braking significantly increase the fuel consumption of your car. Develop a smoother driving style whereby you accelerate and decelerate in a linear and smooth manner. How you drive is very important to FE.

• Avoid clutch riding: Driving with your foot on the clutch results in “wastage” of engine power, which in turn increases your fuel consumption and wears out your clutch rapidly. Do not keep your foot on the clutch, except for when changing gears.

• Minimise Idling: If your car is going to be stationary for an extended period of time, switch the engine off.

• Choosing the right gear: Being in a higher gear at too low a speed, or in a lower gear at a very high speed increase your fuel consumption. It is important to shift up as “early” as possible without straining the engine. For most cars, the ideal shift point would be anywhere between 1500 – 2000 rpm.

• Maintain a constant speed: Varying speeds do not make the car as efficient as a constant speed will. Especially when out on the open road, try to maintain a consistent rate of travel.

• The Optimum speed: Aerodynamic resistance increases exponentially with speed. For e.g. at speeds over a 100 km/h, your car will consume a lot more fuel than at 80 – 90 km/h. Keep within this limit to maximize the FE of your car.

• A safe distance: Maintaining a healthy distance between your car and the one ahead is not only safer, but also leads to higher FE. This gives you a higher reaction time, better visibility and a smoother drive. Aggressive braking has a detrimental effect on your cars fuel efficiency.

• Around the corner: Short trips invariably make your car consume a lot more fuel. The primary reason is that every engine has an optimum running temperature, and very short distances will almost certainly result in your car running at a cold temperature for a majority of the distance.

• Windows drag: At high speeds, open windows can affect the cars aerodynamic efficiency. It is better to keep the windows rolled up and the air-conditioner on at speeds over a 100 km/h.

CAR - RELATED MEASURES

• The honest petrol pump: Considering the high amount of fuel adulteration and other fuel-industry malpractices, we highly recommend you to choose the right petrol pump. Tampered meters that result in under-filling, misappropriating bills and selling adulterated fuel are some of the most common malpractices. Company-owned filling stations are the best option, though there are some honest privately-owned petrol pumps also. Look around and opt for an honest reputable petrol pump. This alone can account for upto a 10% difference in your fuel efficiency.

• Appropriate tyre pressures: It is very important to maintain manufacturer-recommended tyre pressures to optimize the level of rolling resistance. Tire pressures can also be increased by1 - 2 psi if you live in a city with smooth roads. Please do not exceed this limit since it can cause uneven wear.

• Keep the car well maintained: Your car will gulp fuel voraciously if it is not in the right state of tune. Make it a point to keep your air-filters clean, engine oil changed and your engine healthy by sticking to the manufacturer recommended maintenance intervals.

• Upsized tyres: Wider tyres increase rolling resistance and rotating mass, thus hindering FE. Do not oversize your tyres.

• Light weight: Weight has to be carried around, and will result in additional work for the engine. Unload any unnecessary cargo / baggage etc. to keep your car as light as possible.

• The right fuel for premium cars: High-compression engines do not operate properly on the regular octane fuel available in India. To improve efficiency, it is important to use manufacturer-recommended grades of petrol.

• Recommended fuel additives: Some makes of cars (e.g. Opel Astra) are not able to run optimally on the Indian fuel quality, and their manufacturers recommend fuel additives to keep the fuel system clean. If your car came with this instruction, make use of the recommended fuel additives.

All taken from here.

--
Website: http://www.karthickgopal.com

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kgopal
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/karthickgopal

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/karthickgopal

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The best way to sleep is to keep a pillow between the knees.

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 10:45:55 -0800

Sleeping: Our sleep posture is one of the most overlooked aspects of our life. You spend 8 hours (hopefully) a night in either one or various positions that could have a large impact on your posture during the day. Do you pile the pillows high? This leads to excess stretching of the extensors in the neck, possibly contributing to a forward head posture. Do you pull the bed sheets tight over your feet, pulling your toes into a pointed position? This can lead to limited ankle mobility, which then affects your entire body mechanics, from walking to sitting. Do you sleep on your side with one leg bent and across your body? This can lead to an imbalance between your left and right spinal erectors, which then could be contributing to your back pain. This is can be even worse if you’re a woman with generous hips. Paranoid yet? I didn’t even mention how sleeping on your stomach can contribute to an excessive lordodic curve ,which then may lead to extra compressive forces for your lumbar spine to handle. So which is the best position to sleep in? On your side, knees bent, pillow between the knees and your head resting on a single pillow. Or if you prefer, on your back with a pillow under your knees, sheets loose, and again, a single pillow for the head.

More from this link.

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What is a netbook and where to get one in India?

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:10:00 -0800

We (Me and the famous Gautam Ghosh) went through over 15 different notebooks based on specfications and ended up with a final list. Since Im more of a techie, I initially concentrated on higher computing power, but thats not really feasible in a notebook. I did a large research piece on what a Netbook really is and what should one look for in a netbook and Who can use it too? So here's the lowdown on that.

The basic configurations in a netbook

Processor: You have the intel atom processor which ranges between 1.60 ghz to 1.66 ghz. That's decent enough to do most of the computing work.

RAM: A must is 1 GB ram, but there are some netbooks that have an additional slot where 1 more GB can be added. That's a great thing to have for additional speed. You can alternatively add the extra 1 GB ram to the netbook but that would void the warranty for the netbook. And warranty can be a pain if the netbook faces a problem, because most vendors aren't direct service partners, they send it to the main netbook company and then get it repaired. This is not usually a problem with sony and lenovo as they are flooded in Nehru Place. A lot of notebooks come with Windows XP home, the ones that come with Windows 7 pre loaded cost more (for the OS). You can alternatively choose a netbook which comes with the basic DOS operating system and then have the guys load windows xp for you.

To run the Windows 7 operating system a minimum requirement would be 2 gb and more than 120 gb hard disk. A last word. You have to see how much you travel. There are 3 types of battery packs that come with netbooks 3 cell - 3-4 hours 6 cell - 5- 7 hours 8 cell - 8 - 10 hours. That means when it's fully charged you can expect it to hit the second number in terms of hours of usage. (8 cell minimum after a year when battery declines youll get between 7.5 hours to 8 hours and it's in first year you'll get up to 10 hours). It's also highly dependant on the particular hardware piece you get and sometimes you can get a raw deal. But that's generally the average you can expect when you get a netbook. Netbooks don't have an optical drive (CD/DVD Reader or writer), you can purchase an external usb enabled one to remedy this.

So what are the choices?

1. Asus EEPC 1005 HA - the one I have (Rs 21,000) 1.66 GHz, 1 GB ram, Windows XP home, 160 gb hard disk. You get a free online storage sync so if there's a power short you don't suffer with the netbook. Battery life is fantastic Lightest in the series of netbooks Cannot run too many things at the same time, system slows a bit. Resolution is only 1024x768 Smudges are common Sometimes shitty software is bundled in so you have to find alternatives.

2. Sony W series (Rs 27,000) 1.66 ghz, 2 gb ram, 250 gb hard disk. High resolution Comes with Windows 7 Has higher storage Vaios are very sturdy and have good service. Small keys to use Changing parts or upgrades are very costly.

3. Samsung ND120 (Rs 23,000) 1.66 ghz, 160 gb hard disk, 8 cell battery pack. Great bang for the buck, comes in with a USB optical drive. Keypad was not good for my big fingers. DOS Loaded though, that means you have to load some operating system on your own. Lower resolution Screen clarity was missing some what.

4. Lenovo S12 (about Rs 24,000) Same config as above, additional is an extra Ram slot that you can add directly without voiding the warranty. The keypads not the best. But the sturdiness of this machine is awesome if you have the budget.

5. MSI u100 netbooks (Rs 19,500) Comes with the Windows XP home edition, 1.6 GHz, 1 GB ram, 160 gb hard disk. Something i wanted to get, but they were out of stock and it would have taken 2 more weeks to get it from the time i got my netbook. These are sexy machines, but the warranty is limited to one shop in Noida and not available outside. They are also untested in the indian market, so youll have people say "oh go with samsung or lenovo or asus because they are proven etc". Thats a load of horse shit. I got my viewsonic monitor when it was unproven and it's currently the best piece of hardware I have, so read a lot of reviews and I highly recommend using them as well.

Some other additional notes

Keypads are a big requirement for me since i have big fingers, but someone with dainty small fingers should be ok with using any of them.

Thanksgiving coming up in the states, so if you get someone to ship it to you then you get a much much better deal.
Dell sucks when it comes to netbooks, stay away from them.
Warrantys can be extended, it's better to get an original piece,makes all upgrades really easy (online updates) Hope this is helpful.
If you need any more info you can call me. I know a couple of dealers I have dealt with a lot so I get some discount from them from the standard market price.

--
Website: http://www.karthickgopal.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kgopal
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/karthickgopal
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/karthickgopal

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Entreprenuers I admire: Jeff Bezos

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 06:11:02 -0800

Entreprenuers I admire: Jeff Bezos
Here's a man who made the quote popular, "I knew that if I failed i wouldn't regret that but I knew
one thing that I would regret is not trying." He was rencently inducted into the Academy of Achievement hall of fame. This is a fantastic series of interviews and I have put down the highlights of the interview.

A quick word about Jeff Bezos.
He has taken the World's largest online bookstore through many breakthrough innovations and recently bought the worlds most customer friendly website in the world, Zappos.com. But what really makes this man amazing is he's honest about hardwork. He accepts luck as a factor and most important drives culture to newer heights.

In a recent interview he shares some insights into the famous question, "Who is Jeff Bezos?".
On choosing a path.
Jeff Bezos: There's a little bit of that in me, I think. I remember the very first occupation I wanted to be -- when, I think, I was about six years old -- was an archeologist. I would like to point out this was before Indiana Jones. It's a point of pride. Then I wanted to be an astronaut. By the time I was in my high school years, I wanted to be a physicist and then by the time I got to college I wanted to be a computer programmer. That's actually what I studied in school and that's what has led me along the path I'm on.

On who his heros were.
Two people I always would read about were Thomas Edison and Walt Disney. Those were sort of my two biographical heroes.
I've always been interested in inventors and invention. Edison, of course, for a little kid and probably for adults, too, is not only the symbol of that but the actual fact of that -- the incredible inventor. I've always felt that there's a certain kind of important pioneering that goes on from an inventor like Thomas Edison. Disney was a different sort of thing. He was also a real pioneer and an inventor, doing new things. It seemed to me that he had this incredible capability to create a vision that he could get a large number of people to share. Things that Disney invented, like Disneyland, the theme parks, they were such big visions that no single individual could ever pull them off, unlike a lot of the things that Edison worked on. Walt Disney really was able to get a big team of people working in a concerted direction.

On princeton shaping up his needs.
Yeah. So, I went to Princeton primarily because I wanted to study physics, and it's such a fantastic place to study physics. Things went fairly well until I got to quantum mechanics and there were about 30 people in the class by that point and it was so hard for me. I just remember there was a point in this where I realized I'm never going to be a great physicist. There were three or four people in the class whose brains were so clearly wired differently to process these highly abstract concepts, so much more. I was doing well in terms of the grades I was getting, but for me it was laborious, hard work. And, for some of these truly gifted folks -- it was awe-inspiring for me to watch them because in a very easy, almost casual way, they could absorb concepts and solve problems that I would work 12 hours on, and it was a wonderful thing to behold. At the same time, I had been studying computer science, and was really finding that that was something I was drawn toward. I was drawn to that more and more and that turned out to be a great thing. So I found -- one of the great things Princeton taught me is that I'm not smart enough to be a physicist.

(That's kinda funny, once I become a millionaire, this is the exact sort of thing I would say about my education in IITK. How what it taught me was not about Mechanical engineering, but rather being a survivor and opportunity seeker).

On starting a company immediately after school.
I toyed with the idea of starting a company and even talked to a couple of friends about starting a company, and ultimately decided that it would be smarter to wait and learn a little bit more about business and the way the world works. You know, one of the things that it's very hard to believe when you're 22 or 23 years old is that you don't already know everything. It turns out -- people learn more and more as they get older -- that you seem to learn, you seem to realize that you know less and less every year that goes by. I can only imagine that by the time I'm 70 I will realize I know nothing.

The moment of Flash
The wake up call was finding this startling statistic that web usage in the spring of 1994 was growing at 2,300 percent a year. You know, things just don't grow that fast. It's highly unusual, and that started me about thinking, "What kind of business plan might make sense in the context of that growth?"

On what makes startups successful.
I think there are a couple of things. One of the things everybody should realize is that any time a start-up company turns into a substantial company over the years, there was a lot of luck involved. There are a lot of entrepreneurs. There are a lot of people who are very smart, very hardworking, very few ever have the planetary alignment that leads to a tiny little company growing into something substantial. So that requires not only a lot of planning, a lot of hard work, a big team of people who are all dedicated, but it also requires that not only the planets align, but that you get a few galaxies in there aligning, too. That's certainly what happened to us.

Our timing was good, our choice of product categories -- books -- was a very good choice. And we did a lot of analysis on that to pick that category as the first best category for E-commerce online, but there were no guarantees that that was a good category. At the time we launched this business it wasn't even crystal clear that the technology would improve fast enough that ordinary people -- non-computer people -- would even want to bother with this technology. So, that was good luck.

The Regret Minimization framework.
So, it really was a decision that I had to make for myself, and the framework I found which made the decision incredibly easy was what I called -- which only a nerd would call -- a "regret minimization framework." So, I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and say, "Okay, now I'm looking back on my life. I want to have minimized the number of regrets I have." I knew that when I was 80 I was not going to regret having tried this. I was not going to regret trying to participate in this thing called the Internet that I thought was going to be a really big deal. I knew that if I failed I wouldn't regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried. I knew that that would haunt me every day, and so, when I thought about it that way it was an incredibly easy decision. And, I think that's very good. If you can project yourself out to age 80 and sort of think, "What will I think at that time?" it gets you away from some of the daily pieces of confusion. You know, I left this Wall Street firm in the middle of the year. When you do that, you walk away from your annual bonus. That's the kind of thing that in the short-term can confuse you, but if you think about the long-term then you can really make good life decisions that you won't regret later.

His thoughts on a business plan
So, you want to start a company. Well, the first thing you do is you should write a business plan, and so I did that. I wrote about a 30-page business plan. I wrote a first draft. In fact, I wrote the first draft on the car trip from the East Coast to the West Coast. And, that is very helpful. You know the business plan won't survive its first encounters with reality. It will always be different. The reality will never be the plan, but the discipline of writing the plan forces you to think through some of the issues and to get sort of mentally comfortable in the space. Then you start to understand, if you push on this knob this will move over here and so on. So, that's the first step.

On Taking Risk with his parents and their money.

The first initial start-up capital for Amazon.com came primarily from my parents, and they invested a large fraction of their life savings in what became Amazon.com. And you know, that was a very bold and trusting thing for them to do because they didn't know. My dad's first question was, "What's the Internet?" Okay. So he wasn't making a bet on this company or this concept. He was making a bet on his son, as was my mother. So, I told them that I thought there was a 70 percent chance that they would lose their whole investment, which was a few hundred thousand dollars, and they did it anyway. And, you know, I thought I was giving myself triple the normal odds, because really, if you look at the odds of a start-up company succeeding at all, it's only about ten percent. Here I was, giving myself a 30 percent chance.

On customer feedback.
I think, in any business. It certainly matters online, where word of mouth is so very, very powerful. You know, if you make a customer unhappy they won't tell five friends, they'll tell 5,000 friends. So, we are at a point now where we have all of the things we need to build an important and lasting company, and if we don't, it will be shame on us.

On Dealing with Stress
Stress primarily comes from not taking action over something that you can have some control over. So, if I find that some particular thing is causing me to have stress, that's a warning flag for me. What it means is there's something that I haven't completely identified perhaps in my conscious mind that is bothering me, and I haven't yet taken any action on it. I find as soon as I identify it, and make the first phone call, or send off the first e-mail message, or whatever it is that we're going to do to start to address that situation -- even if it's not solved -- the mere fact that we're addressing it dramatically reduces any stress that might come from it. So, stress comes from ignoring things that you shouldn't be ignoring, I think, in large part. So, stress doesn't come -- people get stress wrong all the time in my opinion. Stress doesn't come from hard work, for example. You know, you can be working incredibly hard and loving it, and, likewise, you can be out of work and incredibly stressed over that.

Final words of advice.
Do something you're very passionate about, and don't try to chase what is kind of the 'hot passion' of the day. if you go back and study the history of the 1949 Gold Rush you find that, at that time, everybody who was within shouting distance of California was -- you know, they might have been a doctor, but they quit being a doctor and they started panning for gold, and that almost never works. And, even if it does work, according to some metric, financial success, or whatever it might be, I suspect it leaves you ultimately unsatisfied. So, you really need to be very clear with yourself. And I think one of the best ways to do that is this notion of projecting yourself forward to age 80, looking back on your life, and trying to make sure you've minimized the number of regrets you have. That works for career decisions. It works for family decisions. I have a 14-month old son, and it's very easy for me to -- if I think about myself when I'm 80, I know I want to watch that little guy grow up, and so it's -- I don't want to be 80 and think, "Shoot! You know, I missed that whole thing, and I don't have the kind of relationship with my son that I wished I had," and so on and so on.

Image Courtesy: http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/photocredit/achievers/bez0-003

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Grabbing Google Reader by the neck and taking control (Faceted Classification)

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 23:03:49 -0800

You know what is worse than bowel syndrome disorder (Completely made up btw)? Struggling with your RSS Feeds Overflow syndrome (again completely made up). I had recently posted on how to get some Sanity into your google feed reading and I tried to follow this system for a week and found myself still being unable to efficiently manage all my Google reader feeds. The tons of links that friends posted, that I came across and that I saw great bloggers follow kept snowballing into a huge mountain of content.

I spent 5 days away from reader and had about 4500 unread links in just the technology section alone. #fail.
Complete Fail System?

Was my system a complete fail? No I don't think so, but it was very basic at best. It was scratching at the surface and ok for someone with 40-50 feeds at the most to worry about. But here I have close to 300 blogs I have subscribed to and the system that I had detailed was splitting up the folders into content that mainly spanned around

a) News/Important
b) Thought Leaders/Interesting People
c) Current Interests
d) Fun Stuff.
The immediate problem with that is how to break it down into each category? Guy Kawasaki, is he a thought leader or does he fit into news/important? Where does Techcrunch go? Breaking news? Techonology? Startups?

You see the problem there? There was no clear segmentation and I had followed the wrong principle of thinking every feed of mine should go ONLY into one category or tagging.

Faceted Classification
I realised that I needed a better system to handle this. So I did some brainstorming and since some of my interests lie under UI and UX Design, I found out that there is a term for Organising Information this way called "Faceted Classification". There is a subsection under this called "Colon Classification" and brought to the world by , lo and behold, an Indian Dr.S.Ranganathan (that's my Grand dads name, not the same person though).

Unlike a simple hierarchical scheme, faceted classification gives the users the ability to find items based on more than one dimension. For example, some users shopping for jewelry may be most interested in browsing by particular type of jewelry (earrings, necklaces), while others are more interested in browsing by a particular material (gold, silver). “Material” and “type” are examples of facets; earrings, necklaces, gold, silver are examples of facet values.

That got me thinking, how can I classify this information better and has anyone already put together a system? Little did I realise what the GTD Google Reader ninjas had in mind for the young padawan. Introducing Sensei's Daniel Miessler and the ever favourite Steve Rubel. Here is the system they follow and something I plan to test out for the next couple of weeks to see if I can get together a good system.

The GTD method of segregating your RSS feeds.

They use a segregation technique based on three main things. Importance, Location and Subject.
Listed below.
a) Importance (how important are these feeds to you?) - Split up into Primary, Secondary and Tertiary.

b) Location (World events, important news etc)- World news, latest technology development, gadget developments, News and Media.
c) Subject (classical organisation)- Currently exploring, but largely UI/UX/Design/Social Media/Writing/Cartooning

This breakdown gives us three choices for how to attack feeds. You can go by a general ranking of importance of the feed (priority), by the specific type of content that you want to read at a given moment (subject), or based on where you are (location). So if you’re at work during regular hours you can read your “work” feeds, which include important information pertaining to your profession, key world events, and perhaps some other tidbits that may be useful during work-related conversation. And during lunch you can read your “lunch” feeds, which include your feeds that are still work appropriate during lunch but perhaps aren’t completely work related, e.g. Dilbert, XKCD, Reddit, etc.

Steve Rubel focuses on Tagging your posts. This is especially important in an industry like PR where news by the minute has to be read. Luckily, I don't have to face that torrential overflow of information. But here's what he has to say.

Tagging is an incredibly powerful tool for becoming a knowledge management ninja - especially in PR. As you're reading feeds you can tag them for sharing with a select group or for easy retrieval in the future.

For example, let's say your job is to compile a report to your boss at the end of the week. As you scan, simply tag all of the potential items you want to include with "report." Now you can easily retrieve these posts. However, there's more. You can search them too! This is powerful because you are adding a layer of structure to what is basically a giant pile of information that someone else decided to organize for you when the feed was established.

My Basic Folders and Breakdown of Labels.

This section is to tell you how I have started organising my feeds and perhaps show you a tip or two. Feel free to ignore and move on to the next section.
What do my folders contain at the moment?

Primary.
-- World news.
-- Social Media monitor.
-- Techmeme and news from there.
-- Techcrunch
-- Selected Thought leaders who break news (PR/Social Media) (think scoble/brogan etc).

-- Digg Technology and News (And reddit and etc)
Secondary.
-- UI/UX design
-- Engadget
-- Thought leaders that are important to read (Kawasaki, Seth etc)

-- Digg Gadgets
-- Hacker News
Tertiary.
-- Cartooning (XKCD etc)
-- All Humour
-- Friends Blogs
-- Various Posterous reads and other interesting people.

-- Digg Humour
Design
-- Smashing magazine
-- Top Designers and bloggers
-- Top Design Blogs
Blogs-India
-- All bloggers from India duh.

-- Friends families and must read people.
-- Also people I keep track of like Labnol.

Interesting People.
-- contains everyone who has a nice style of writing, this would overlap with someone already put in primary.

Leisure
-- Currently everything else.
I personally don't bring my Humour and other fun links into my news feed. I do however subscribe to Digg/Reddit's front pages so that I'm not left behind on some of the most interesting conversations.

Putting it all together

All of the above was for you to get the idea of where I come (no pun intended) from. To put it quickly.

Organise your feeds into areas of importance. This is easier said than done, but try and it will get easier later on. What is most important to your job and your personal interest should be read within the primary and secondary folders. What you read at work should strictly be only the news. Worldwide and in your industry.

For everything else put a label: Design, entrepreneur, leadership, productivity. Have tons of them doesn't matter make sure you have one feed in multiple categories if you so desire.
Tag everything that you have with smart tags : GReader has a great search and tagging system that you can liberally use. At the same time you can also use fun stuff like Sort by Magic that lets you play around with your feeds.

Observe Trends : This is really important, if you see feeds that you are reading and don't see them in the active section, eliminate them. My good friend Dash puts in this helpful tip, "I just have 2 categories – daily and weekly … each starts with all posts read at the end of the day or the week. Plus I don’t do any reading in the reader. everything opens up in a new tab. just that one additional click will force you to ask the question, “is it worth it?” And any feed that I haven’t read for 4 weeks goes out of the OPML".

Share everything on KarthickGopal.com: Really important tip. Self explanatory.
What are your tips? Share them in the comments.

See the full gallery on posterous

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Steve Jobs the nice guy? The design guy? Or the asshole?

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 02:44:30 -0800

There has been so much flake with regard to Steve Jobs. There's the holy guru of Design (note, he does not have a degree in marketing or design, he's a dropout with a good design "sense")Steve Jobs who made the iPhone possible and thus bring about a revolution. There's the asshole Steve Jobs who just doesn't listen to anyone or anything and tells you what is good. There is the Steve Jobs that survived Liver damage and rescued Macworld from the throes of super boring presentations. There is also Steve Jobs apparently that people don't seem to know about.
On a comment on Gary's posterous blog, I came across this.
Michael Murdock said...

actually it's humorous to read when people say that Steve Jobs is not humble. You're obviously one who's never worked with or for the guy and never seen that side of him.
But for those of us that have and have seen him grow over the years, he shows that side more than you think and it's something that helps Apple move forward and not be stuck as it was when Spindler & Sculley.

The thing about Steve is he looks at things from angles you'll never see. He's not the designer but he does have a knack for putting himself into that space of "how would this work best or feel best for me if I were to use it". So many people in business fail to do this simple exercise and then wonder why their company fails, or their website fails. And when he does this exercise it's not from a place of cockiness or arrogance, but rather one of being humble and seeing things from all sides.

Then the fun begins when he challenges you to step into your excellence and make things happen, make changes, improve things and strive for perfection without expecting a pat on the back. That's the part that people find difficult. Steve knows you can do what he asks, he only wants you to realize it and achieve it, without needing that back pat. And when you do get one from him, it's an amazing feeling. But for those that never experience all that I just described, well...sorry you were not around the man. He's a pretty great guy no matter what's written about him.

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Jim Lee Sketching

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:24:31 -0800

I doodle during my free time and I spend some time learning tips on how to go about cartooning really well and here's a really cool video
by Jim Lee (one of my favourite artists), originally from Korea, on a Happy Birthday Joker Potrait. Awesome.

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Google art work by Jim Lee

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 23:30:00 -0800

Jim Lee's one of the best artists around for his depiction of the DC and marvel characters. If anyone wants to see his brilliance, all they have to do is grab a copy of Hush. Highly recommended series showing Batman being systematically toyed with an unknown enemy.
What drew me to Jim's art is not just him imitating an artist, but also adding many innovations in terms of outfit outlook and the way camera angles are used in the movie. Anyway, I'll hopefully update my blog soon which you can read at www.karthickgopal.com with works of art of his.

Here's a picture of the google logo that he made - via Deviant art

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Extra love for House MD

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:08:45 -0700

Lisa sanders is the doctor behind the brilliant house stories. Here's what she describes about House. Don't you just love the bugger?
“They described House to me as a brilliant diagnostician who was irritable and didn’t like people very much. I thought: how’s that going to work? I’d better get on this Hollywood gravy train early because it’s not going to be around long,” she laughs. “Fortunately, I was wrong. I think because the writing is so good — and Hugh Laurie, obviously.”

She adores Laurie — “he’s so lovely!” — and he’s clearly fond of her, partly as they have something in common (off screen, at least). “His father was a general practitioner who became a doctor as a second career. I think he’s incredibly smart and kind. When I was in California, when my book was first in galleys, I saw Hugh on the set and he said, ‘I’m so enjoying your book.’ I thought: you’re actually reading it! I thought it was pretty unlikely he’d have taken the time.”

Read the full gold interview with her at the times online website.

--
Website: http://www.karthickgopal.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kgopal
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/karthickgopal

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Wise words from Mark Cuban for Entrepreneurs

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:22:36 -0700

I am a big sucker for anti bullshit theories and writing. I hate the fact people cannot talk straight off and bring up MBA jargon into everything. I'm glad Mark Cuban
sees it the same way.

If you are an entrepreneur who is looking for capital and is sending letters or emails of introduction, leave out the Bullshit. Say who you are. What you have. What makes it different than the competition. What you want to accomplish. How you plan on getting there and how I can help. Everything else will usually hurt more than it will help.

-- Success and Motivation for an Entrepreneur. Click on the link to read the gold post.

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Guess which street fighter character was born on my bday?

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:25:06 -0700

Strangely, the height, bdate are just about right. Prolly the weight too..

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Unlocking characters in Street Fighter 4 (PC)

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 12:22:00 -0700

Sometimes it pays to read comments on obscure posts. You never know when you discover a gem.
Here it is.

There are a total of nine unlockable characters, and there are a few requirements necessary to unlock them.
The easiest and fastest way to unlock them is to set the difficulty level to Easiest and set the number of rounds to 1. Then meet the requirements for each character.

Sakura: To unlock Sakura, you have to beat Arcade Mode on any difficulty and with any settings, using Ryu.

Dan: You must have Sakura unlocked.
To unlock Dan, you have to beat Arcade Mode on any difficulty and with any settings, using Sakura.

Gen: To unlock Gen, you have to beat Arcade Mode on any difficulty and with any settings, using Chun Li.

Cammy: To unlock Cammy, you have to beat Arcade Mode on any difficulty and with any settings, using Crimson Viper.

Rose: To unlock Rose, you have to beat Arcade Mode on any difficulty and with any settings, using M. Bison.

Fei-Long: To unlock Fei-Long, you have to beat Arcade Mode on any difficulty and with any settings, using Abel.

Akuma: You must have Sakura, Dan, Gen, Cammy, Rose, and Fei-Long unlocked.
Beat Arcade Mode on any difficulty and with any settings, using any character.
Must have at least 2 Pefect Rounds before defeating Seth.
Cannot lose any matches and use a continue.
Defeat Akuma.
I used Bison had one Perfect round and yet Akuma appeared.(I have defeated him)

Gouken: Here is a quote from Capcom:
1. Complete Arcade Mode playing as Akuma and watch (not necessary to watch everything) an ending.
2. Then, unlock Gouken as an opponent, and defeat him.

Necessary conditions to unlock Gouken as an opponent:
- Play with any characters with which you watched the ending once (so play using a character you have already beaten the game with)
- Do not continue at all.
- Do not lose at all. Not even one round (easier if you only play 1-round matches)
- Achieve certain number (or more) of ?Perfect? rounds. The number of Perfect Win you need to achieve are:

If you play on
- 1 round match: 1 time or more
- 3 round match: 2 times or more
- 5 round match: 3 times or more
- 7 round match: 4 times or more

- Achieve certain number (or more) of Super Combo -OR- Ultra Combo Finishes. Super and Ultra finishes both count toward this number. The number of Combo Finishes you need to achieve are:

If you play on
- 1 round match: 3 times or more
- 3 round match: 5 times or more
- 5 round match: 7 times or more
- 7 round match: 9 times or more
- Achieve certain number (or more) of First Attack (this means you must score the first strike in a match?the screen gives you the ?First Attack? message, and you can mostly do this without even noticing):

The number of First Attack you need to achieve are:

If you play on
- 1 round match: 5 time or more
- 3 round match: 10 times or more
- 5 round match: 15 times or more
- 7 round match: 20 times or more
- Then Gouken will appear. Kick his butt to unlock him!

Seth: You must have Gouken unlocked.
Beat Arcade Mode on any difficulty and with any settings, with all other characters.

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Social Media

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 05:22:56 -0700

I love the rules put forward by Rohit Bhargava (whose book I'm planning on getting soon) on Social Media Optimisation.
There are 17 rules, but weren't put together in one place, but some of them are repeated, so I chose the ones that I see
as a best strategy

1. Increase your linkability
2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy
3. Reward inbound links
4. Help your content travel
5. Encourage the mashup - let users use your content everywhere.
6. Be a User Resource, even if it doesn't help you
7. Reward helpful and valuable users
8. Participate
9. Know how to target your audience
10. Create content
11. Be real
12. Don't forget your roots, be humble
13. Don't be afraid to try new things, stay fresh
14. Develop a SMO strategy
15. Choose your SMO tactics wisely
16. Make SMO part of your process and best practices

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What CEO's really want.

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 11:54:38 -0700

They relied on detailed personality assessments of 316 C.E.O.’s and measured their companies’ performances. They found that strong people skills correlate loosely or not at all with being a good C.E.O. Traits like being a good listener, a good team builder, an enthusiastic colleague, a great communicator do not seem to be very important when it comes to leading successful companies.

What mattered, it turned out, were execution and organizational skills. The traits that correlated most powerfully with success were attention to detail, persistence, efficiency, analytic thoroughness and the ability to work long hours.

In other words, warm, flexible, team-oriented and empathetic people are less likely to thrive as C.E.O.’s. Organized, dogged, anal-retentive and slightly boring people are more likely to thrive.

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Life lessons from Ryan Reynolds.

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:47:19 -0700

I think Ryan Reynolds is a great actor. He's not only very smart, he's got his head right.
And he is married to the hottest actress in the world - Scarlett Johannson. If that's not saying
enough he's got a body to die for. Here's his advice on life.

Whether he's talking about inhabiting characters or running races, there's a theme that arises frequently in Reynolds's conversations: goals versus expectations. He has plenty of goals, both professional and personal, but as much as he can, he tries to avoid having expectations -- simply assuming that something is going to happen without doing the work. "When you have expectations, you are setting yourself up for disappointment," Reynolds says. "I didn't expect to finish the marathon; I trained to finish it."

By Reynolds's description, real freedom comes from preparation -- advice that applies to any line of work.

More than anything, what drives Reynolds as an actor is remembering what happened on those occasions when he showed up unready. He doesn't mention specifics, but he's been in films, he says, where he just wasn't able to put in the time to prepare. "I was in over my head and I wasn't ready to do the work properly. I couldn't own the moments. They felt false."

Btw, what he ate for being so fit.

What He Eats
Breakfast 2 eggs, some "good" fat like a spoon of almond butter or slice of avocado, and 1 cup of oatmeal with applesauce.

Midmorning snack protein bar

Lunch albacore tuna wrap or chicken and salad

Midafternoon snack protein shake (whey and water), protein bar, or apple and almonds

Dinner broiled fish or chicken, brown rice, vegetables, and salad

Evening Snack protein shake

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Links for today to read

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:55:54 -0700

They had become legends in their own minds, and legends don't have to get down and dirty.
- Do you announce your intentions or keep it shut?

I have this philosophical stance where I tend to avoid accumulating new gadgets and software because usually they create more work than they are meant to prevent.
- Tim Ferris and the usage of Evernote

. The real “secret” of the fit, the fast and the “talented” is no secret at all; it’s a much harder pill (than genetics) to swallow. And no one will accept it because of what it demands: real commitment in the form of regular, consistent, indefinite practice. And real practice demands devotion.
- Gym Jones on Talent.

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