Will work environment in the USA allow this?
A friend of mine forwarded this news clip video of a Ford plant in Brazil. The finishing comment on the narrated video is quite interesting. It says that labor unions will not allow such plants to be built in the US. If this is the story at Ford, I wonder how many other companies are in similar situation and therefore setting up plants elsewhere in the world. After all this talk of off shoring and its ill-effects, perhaps the root cause and work culture of a given environment needs to be examined.
US thrived on innovation and mechanization. You would think that process efficiencies would be welcome for cost reductions and productivity improvements. Now the question is whether other countries will use such efficiencies to elevate their own economies and take it to the next level.
The video is less than 5 minutes. Take a look:
http://info.detnews.com/video/index.cfm?id=1189
Google App Engine Pricing
On May 27, Google announced the pricing for Google App Engine. The announcement can be read at http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/annc/20080527_google_io.html.
The bottom line:
Free quota to get started: 500MB storage and enough CPU and bandwidth for about 5 million pageviews per month
$0.10 – $0.12 per CPU core-hour
$0.15 – $0.18 per GB-month of storage
$0.11 – $0.13 per GB outgoing bandwidth
$0.09 – $0.11 per GB incoming bandwidth
Web applications are the main market Google App Engine is targeting unlike Amazon’s Elastic Cloud which is providing more computing and storage resources for other purposes.
I wonder if Yahoo will also look into its operations and find a way to monetize all the costs that went into its infrastructure development. I find it fascinating that businesses like Amazon and Google are monetizing the infrastructure that they developed for their core businesses. If only other corporations figure out a way to share their experience and become enablers to let others build on their expertise and experience. It will become a very interesting and dynamic marketplace. During the dot com bubble there were some efforts to carve out technology pieces from existing businesses but it never took off. Perhaps the time has come for companies to take another look at themselves and expose services which can breed new companies.
How do you get your news?
How do you go about reading your news? I don’t say that news is always worth reading/viewing but if you are interested in current affairs around the world, what are your sources? The following video of a TED talk (< 5 min) gives an interesting map of the world according to the news stories presented on major networks.
I think it is also interest level in understanding the world scene that drives the news ratings. The major news networks are driven by pure economics. What sells is sensation and not thought provoking articles! What’s your take on this topic?
In case you are unable to view the video, the original link: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/248
Blog themes
I have been experimenting with different blog themes to improve readability and accessibility. I am not spending time on the development of themes but merely using a free theme from the net. Let me know what you think.
Feedburner and Videos
If you are subscribing to articles using Feedburner, you may have noticed that videos that are embedded in the post are not distributed using the Feedburner Feeds. I don’t know how to make it happen. In the mean time, you can always visit the site to view the video. I will be adding the word “video” to the post title so that you can visit the main site to view the video.
Mindfulness Video
I came across this video at GoogleTalks – a site where talks from different walks of life are video taped at the Google campus. I find there are very interesting and diverse topics available from GoogleTalks series.
One of the topics that is very dear to my heart is “meditation” and improving work life balance. Recently a friend at Intel had forwarded some information about a talk on “Conscious Living” – how to manage work and daily life stress through mindfulness. I had always felt that there should a healthy and open discussion about such topics at work place. Especially those environments where hard work means putting in 60-80 hrs/week. A lot of Fortune 100 companies talk highly of work life balance on their websites but I don’t know how much information is provided to employees on how to achieve more by taking care of themselves. I am glad that such topics are being discussed and speakers are being invited to give talks at companies. I hope such that such talks are not limited to “new age” companies or tech industry in Silicon Valley.
Even if you are a long time meditator following a particular type/style/brand of meditation, the message is still relevant – functioning from a settled state of mind improves effectivity and therefore achieve better results.
Note: The video is about 70 minutes long
Microsoft Office 2007 to support ODF
Microsoft announced today that Office 2007 will provide native support for ODF, PDF 1.5 and XPS. This is good news because users can exchange documents using ODF format which is an open standard instead of the proprietary .doc format. Here is an excerpt from the announcement:
“When using SP2, customers will be able to open, edit and save documents using ODF and save documents into the XPS and PDF fixed formats from directly within the application without having to install any other code. It will also allow customers to set ODF as the default file format for Office 2007. To also provide ODF support for users of earlier versions of Microsoft Office (Office XP and Office 2003), Microsoft will continue to collaborate with the open source community in the ongoing development of the Open XML-ODF translator project on SourceForge.net.”
The full article can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2008/may08/05-21ExpandedFormatsPR.mspx.
This should allow users of Open Office and its derivatives as well as other third party document production systems to create documents that can be read by a variety of programs. Let’s see how this unfolds in second half of 2009 as the Office SP2 is slated for release in first half of 2009.
Baggage rules - more changes
Back in March 2008, I posted an entry on Domestic US Travel – Baggage rules changed!.
I just read the news article that says that American Airlines will start charging $15 for first checked bag (effective June 15). I wonder if additional bags are going to be charged more per bag. I suspect other airlines will soon follow suit.
The other day I saw an advertisement by Air India offering tickets for $600 for trip from NY to any destination within India that is serviced by Air India. While this looks very tempting, the fine print read out all the extra taxes and fees which were about $500. Pretty soon the airlines will start advertising the fare is only $x but the fees and extra charges amount to $2x.
<sarcasm>Instead of charging more for each checked bag, perhaps each airline should put a collection jar - asking for donations to offset rising fuel costs!</sarcasm>
Perhaps it is time for companies to reward workers (full time or part time) who can telecommute and save the companies some money. Technology provides many choices for telecommuting and unless a face to face is a MUST, companies should encourage people to work remotely.
Myths of Innovation Video
In March 2008, I posted a blog entry on Myths of Innovation. I didn’t write a summary at the time because the topic is so vast and there are many interesting points. It is better to read the book to get the full flavor. However, I did find a few video lectures, on YouTube, by the author Scott Berkun talking about his book. If you enjoy watching videos and want to get a summary of the content of the book in a video format, here is a version of the lecture. I would recommend this to any one who is fascinated about behind the scenes stories of popular innovations.
Note: The video is about 51 minutes in length.
Tackling Email Overload
Is your email inbox under control? Are you a fan of Inbox Zero concepts i.e. do you like to ensure that you keep your inbox clean? I like to see my inbox empty just to keep my mind clear that I have addressed every email that has come my way. Here are the rules I follow for organizing my emails
- I set up filters for coloring my incoming emails:
- identify my name in the TO: field – color 1 e.g. green
- identify my name in the CC: field – color 2 e.g. blue
- identify my name in the BCC: field – color 3 e.g. yellow
- Go through each email: quickly determine if action is required, if so file to action-required folder
- If no action required, delete it if there is no further need to store it
- If I need it for future reference, file it in archive folder
That’s it for my folders – Inbox, action-required, archive. I rely on the search mechanism of the email system to find any old emails.
I go through my Inbox to sort out what really requires my attention, then it is on to real work in action-required folder and I feel that I have addressed all emails requiring my input.
Note: For more information about Inbox Zero, you read more about at http://www.43folders.com/2006/03/20/action