January 2001

Global Trends: 2015 (CIA) says technological development will be in IT, biotech, materials & nanotechnology. And that India’s main problem will be to improve agriculture.

Some people think CEOs get paid too much.

A good day. Bought 5 books, and cut an audio CD with 15 songs. The Bear and the Dragon | Fist of God | Abduction | Prometheus Deception | Druid of Shannara

More deaths. Chemdex, the B2B chemical market. Send.com, the gift store. Musicmaker, the CD-burner. Foodline, the restuarant agent.

Stephen’s Guide to the Logical Fallacies – a comprehensive list of common fallacies.

Apple releases a UNIX-based operating system – OS X.

Cellular calls will become cheaper. I might buy a phone.

Bhagavad Gita online. Has audio, translations in several languages, etc. Very well organised. The final quote was very fitting for Mr. Krishnan’s IIMPressions, incidentally.

VAIO Slimtop is a computer by Sony which has a flat screen monitor you can write on. $3,000.

It’s been long since I solved lateral thinking puzzles. Hartman’s site has over a hundred (with answers).

Microsoft makes video games – Sony’s domain. Sony moved into PCs – Compaq’s domain. Compaq moves into electronics – Sony’s domain. Intel moves into consumer electronics – Sony’s domain. With growing technology, industry borders become blurred.

Vishwabharat and Lead Networks let you register domain names in Indian Languages.

123india has a list of discounts in Bangalore. For example, US Pizza has a party pack Rs 111.

Consumer Electronics Show 2001 is going on.

We can read the questions for which various ministries are answerable in the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha. What fun!

CIOL’s e-governance channel

The Fed lowers interest rates! Certainly hadn’t expected it till the end of the month. Obviously, since this is the first time they changed rates in-between policy meetings. The market was caught short too. Anyway, the NASDAQ has shot up. IT stocks in India are following.

Now Yahoo! will charge a fee for auctions. No more free PCs. No more free ISPs. No more ad revenues. No more free auctions. The trend is clear. Pay! Unfortunately, they’ll also monitor what’s being sold – an indication that country-specific legal barriers are creeping into the Internet.

Coimbatore: The next IT destination?

Didn’t know dot-coms had unions. Amazon does. A reaction to the layoffs in dot-coms?