Origin of the “Red Carpet” treatment

Filed in General Interest, July 24, 2005, 8:39 pm by

Wonder how this  practice originated?  An interesting discussion in Google Answers  points  to Aeschylus describing the practice in 500 B.C. But the discussion on Phrase Finder points to a more recent Moghul origin. Apparently, the brother-in-law of Emperor Jehangir  decked out the  path with  velvets and  gold brocade  so that the Emperor’s feet did not have to touch the  road.   (Via  Priya Raju)

Friday Night Lights Shines Bright

Filed in Uncategorized, July 17, 2005, 9:00 pm by

H.G. Bissinger takes you along for an emotions-soaked ride with the Permian Panthers (a high school football team from Odessa, Texas) during the 1988 season. Although the tempo suffers a tad in some parts as is inevitable in such books, Friday Night Lights is an eclectic mix of football zealotry, small town politics, race relations, suspense, drama etc. H.G. Bissinger makes you feel as if you are in Odessa cheering the Permian Panthers on their state championship ride, many times through the book. Also included are –  some shocking revelations like the fact that segregation ended in Texas in 1982 (28 years after the landmark Brown V. Board of Education case ended segregation in 1954), The Texas legal machinery trying to figure out if the Carter Cowboys’s Gary Edwards passed Algebra II or not is a fascinating and troubling as well.

Google chasing Paypal’s Longtail?

Filed in Uncategorized, July 10, 2005, 8:52 pm by ,

Speculation is running rife about Google’s supposed paypal-like payment service not withstanding Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s denial. Forrester’s Charlene Li  has some real interesting ideas (Via Om Malik – read for some more interesting links). Given Eric Schmidt’s already professed love for Longtail Business Models, I am surprised Chris Anderson of Longtail fame has not commented on this yet. Interestingly,  Jason Kottke had written about the Longtail of Paypal a while ago. But he was expecting Paypal to solve the problem, but maybe Google will. As I was looking for some clues on the Internet, I remembered that Seth Godin had done an interesting project a while ago called “What should Google do”. I reviewed that project again and found that it has been uncannily prescient given the number of things from that project that Google has already done (Yahoo has done some as well). Here is a list of ideas given in the PDF that have been tried (or in progress):
page 11 micropayment using google toolbar
page 14 yahoo’s myweb 2.0 idea
page 23 yahoo’s subscription search
page 27 google mobile idea
page 31 google desktop search idea
page 49 google print idea
page 50 google micropayments again Typepad recently introduced a text advertising service that helps bloggers pay for their typepad subscription using the advertising revenue. This and Google’s Video service that can help publishers collect small payments for their videos has prompted people to suggest that Google will do something similar to enable such payments. I think micropayments is an area waiting for a break and maybe Google’s vaunted high IQ team will crack it. Can’t wait. References:
1. An interesting debate on whether micropayments will succeed or not between Clay Shirky (against 1  against 2 ) and Jakob Nielsen (for) – makes for a good reading to understand micropayments. 2. Nick Szabo’s Mental Accounting Barrier to Micropayments 3. The Digital Silk Road – excellent paper by Norman Hardy and
Eric Dean Tribble that kickstarted the idea of micropayment systems.

Guns, Germs and Steel

Filed in General Interest, , 7:40 pm by

After reading “Collapse”, i have become a fan of Jared Diamond. Wired magazine has an excellent interview with him and also points to a PBS series on his previous pulitzer-prize-winning book “Guns, Germs and Steel”. This series starts on July 11th. For those that find Jared Diamond’s style to be a bit dry, this TV series maybe a good way to get acquainted with his path breaking work.

Can we help the disadvantaged in India in some useful way?

Filed in sast wingees private, June 29, 2005, 11:52 am by

I and Sridhar Iyer had a discussion today about coming up with a way by which we as the sast wingees group can participate in helping the disadvantaged in India in an effective way. His idea is “can we adopt some poor kids” and get them clothed, fed, their academic progress is monitored by someone that we trust and essentially build them into productive up-standing citizens of India. Guys, can we have a conversation around this and do something about this. I know all of us frequently donate to our favorite charities, but we really don’t know how well the money is being used. So this approach may lead to some more direct contributions to the Indian society where over 50% of the population are below the poverty line. Please note this article is posted to the private area of the blog and the world cannot see it.  So please feel free to post your thoughts without fear of it being read by general public. Myself and Sridhar Iyer are looking for your responses, so that we can take this idea forward. Thanks in advance.