Bushido & other Musings of a Japanophile

See the latest posting on the Tokyo Samba Festival in my blog:
Bushido & other Musings of a Japanophile

Explosion in downtown San Francisco

There was an explosion in downtown San Francisco at 9:50 am this morning. I was on my way to the city from East Bay at the time. Luckily the traffic was not affected much except in the downtown area (which is to say that the traffic was a bad as ever but no worse :-)).

After a couple of hours, investigators determined the cause to be an electrical explosion in PG&E's aging infrastructure in the city. Although it turned out to be an accident, the chaos and lack of information and direction for about 2 hours clearly suggests that the city is far from prepared to deal with terrorism incidents. The needs to be clear channel of information in such cases - the public should know who to listen to for authoritative directions. While all this was going on, Ron Owens - the popular talk radio host on KGO 810am was busy selling mattresses:-)

Here are some links for more information:

http://cbs5.com/local/local_story_231131708.html

The new economy

About managers

Compliance is making work easier for some people :-)

Career goals in the WorldCom, Enron age

Petroleum - the new after shave :-)

With gas prices at the pump almost touching $3 for a gallon of regular, Petroleum might be the next after shave - enjoy and share this one:

The Nine Reasons We Don't Do What We Should

A good read - it might just help put your professional and personal lives in order :-)
How to Save the World

OrganizedHome.Com: clean, cut clutter, get organized

We really, really need to read this.
OrganizedHome.Com: clean, cut clutter, get organized

A Primer on Gasoline Prices

One needs to know what's happening with the world Oil situation these days - here's a good primer on where does the money you pay at the gas station eventually goes to.

Pop quiz for you - the tax component as a % has remained almost the same over the years - considering that the gas price in California today is almost twice what we were paying in 2000, that would mean the the government is earning twice as much in gasoline tax revenues - and certainly their costs related to administering gasoline tax has not increased much.

Also, considering that the property values have doubled in California over the last 4-5 years, again resulting in doubling of property tax revenues for the state government - why is the State government running on a deficit then.

Any comments explaining the above paradox would be welcome.

Primer on Gasoline Prices: "A PRIMER ON GASOLINE PRICES"

InformationWeek > India > India's Next Step > August 8, 2005

A very insightful article by Paul McDougall at InformationWeek magazine. Paul is the resident Outsourcing expert at InformationWeek and has written many good articles on the subject. Here he writes about the "Next Step" in the evolution of the Indian software industry - the move to selling software products as opposed to only services.

While selling software products bring to the mind the specter of Indian companies getting even higher value addition and hurting US based competitors, the reality is likely to be different. In a mature free-market economy like USA, there is always room for competition and competition brings with it the added advantages of better products at lower cost for the customers and eventually results in an expansion of the market itself. This compensates for ay market share loss for the existing players.

Besides, software product development is becoming increasingly like car manufacturing. The so called "Japanese cars" like Toyota Camry and Honda Accord, etc. may actually have as much local content as cars from GM and Ford. Similarly, to sell products to US customers, Indian software companies are making great investments in establishing a team in US that works closely with potential customers in pre-sales, post-sale implementation, training and on-going support. These teams become the core of knowledge in these enterprises and continues to be expanded in USA to stay close to the customers.

Another advantage with Indian software companies offering products in the USA market is the new opportunites that it offers to US partners to offer more customer friendly business models. For example, document management used to be a very expensive, enterprise technology - where the customer had to invest huge amounts in software license fee and hardware to achieve the benefits. My company - Newgen Software - partnered with a Silicon Valley startup to offer Document Management to Enterprises as a hosted, subscription only business model. We are now trying to offer similar solutions in the Business Process Management area with our US partners focusing on vertical and horizontal segments of the market.

Read more in this article by Paul McDougall...

InformationWeek > India > India's Next Step > August 8, 2005:

Here's the reference to my company in this article:

"Like other foreign software vendors that saw big opportunities in the United States--SAP among them--Indian companies increasingly want to turn their local successes into a greater U.S. presence. That includes business-process and document-management application vendor Newgen, which says it has a 40% share of the Indian market for software that connects workflows. The company wants to partner with vertical-apps developers in the States to aim its offerings at health care, financial services, and the government. 'People take us more seriously now because many of these enterprises have themselves gone to India for services,' says Sanjay Kalra, VP for business development.

While he's focused mostly on large companies, Kalra believes the low price of the company's various business-process modules, which cover functions such as invoicing and accounts payable, also could appeal to the small- and midsize-business market. 'Even a company with only five or 10 people in accounts payable could break even on our product in a year,' he says. 'They could get rid of three people.' That raises the specter that low-cost automation will join outsourcing as a threat to U.S. jobs--again, thanks to India.

But that may be jumping the gun. While the comfort level with Indian IT expertise has greatly increased, and the cost savings of using lower-priced software is attractive, going up against name-brand players in more established Western markets won't be easy. Newgen offers a lower total cost of ownership, Kalra says, but he concedes that the U.S. market for the software his company sells is mature."

Argue, you're an Indian!- The Times of India

Unlike Amartya Sen, I'm not so sure it's a good thing. I think being analytical is constructive but being argumentative - just for the sake of arguing - is wasteful - and eventually self defeating.
Argue, you're an Indian!- The Times of India:

Why is the telephone touch-tone key pad arranged differently from the calculator key pad?

A very interesting trivia question - but I haven't been able to find a definitive answer yet. The article linked here does try to provide some information. Please do comment if you have any ideas.
Keyboard Trivia: "Why is the telephone touch-tone key pad arranged differently from the calculator key pad?"