April 2006

It’s worth starting a startup based on an idea even if it is easy to copy. First of all, it will take competitors a long time to realize that your idea is even a good thing to do. Even when competitors realize your idea is good, (a) it will take them a long time to implement and (b) they’ll probably screw up critical things. And finally, working on your ideas will lead you on to new ideas. So you’ll be a moving target; by the time competitors copy what you’re doing now, you’ll be doing more. ...

The IIMB PGP99 Birthday calendar is online. You can add it to Google Calendar, iCal or Mozilla Calendar. Here’s the XML version.

Why is nanotechnology in the top Google queries from India? Comments ravi 15 Apr 2006 10:48 am: from all countries in the list indians are the only one with something technical in their queries. hurrah for that Prabhu 17 Apr 2006 6:03 am: Could be due to the fact that Sujatha is writing an article about it in a tamil weekly S Anand 17 Apr 2006 7:37 am: If so, Tamil Nadu would have to be a big chunk of India’s Google searches. Given the absense of other Tamil queries, I doubt this was the only factor… but it sure must have contributed! Gautam 26 Apr 2006 6:05 pm: funny how sania mirza ranks over aishwarya, though !

I was reading John Battelle’s The Search , and realised: We don’t sit down on the computer and say, “Let’s do a search”. True. We want to get something done. We know it’s out there somewhere. We search. So every search on a search engine is a commercial opportunity. Contrawise, every site must let people to do what they want to do on the site. Think… What do people want to do when they’re on YOUR site?

Meet the Author releases short videos of authors introducing their books on Google Video. It covers fiction and non-fiction, like James Surowiecki on The Wisdom of Crowds, Richard Dawkins on The Selfish Gene, Jeffrey Archer on False Impression and Frederick Forsyth on The Avenger.

Google Calendar is out. But for some reason, it’s too slow for me. Comments Dhar 13 Apr 2006 8:08 am: You are right. It was too frigging slow in the beginning. But after the initial wait, things worked out. :)) Krishna 15 Apr 2006 5:48 pm: Do you still see it being slow? S Anand 16 Apr 2006 6:45 am: It loads slowly, but is OK now. I’m having problems importing data in the iCal format, though.

Grow by shrinking a market. For every dollar of revenue Microsoft made, it took away six dollars of revenue from their competitors. Every dollar of Microsoft’s gain caused an asymmetrical amount of pain in the marketplace. They made money by shrinking the market.

Packaging can make a huge difference to products. It really hit me when I saw this bottle of Heinz’s ketchup. My two big problems with normal ketchup bottles are: (a) the sauce spills to the side of the bottle and sticks to the cap, and (b) it’s tough to pour the last bits of sauce – you have to hit the bottle a lot. Now, I didn’t know I had these problems. But when I saw this bottle, it hit me. You keep the bottle upside down – so it’s easy to pour the last bits of sauce. And they way the nozzle valve is designed, the sauce doesn’t stick to the cap. Perfect! Since then, I don’t buy any other ketchup bottle. Even if I WANT ketchup, I don’t buy it unless I get this bottle. Packaging made be brand loyal. (Caveat: I’m not REALLY brand loyal. I’d buy any ketchup with this packaging. But only Heinz has it right now.) ...

How to be a successful Evil Overlord. Hilarious. Some excerpts: My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through. When I’ve captured my adversary and he says, “Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is all about?” I’ll say, “No.” and shoot him. No, on second thought, I’ll shoot him and then say “No.” One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation. I will not have a daughter. She would be as beautiful as she was evil, but one look at the hero’s rugged countenance and she’d betray her own father. If the beautiful princess that I capture says “I’ll never marry you! Never, do you hear me, NEVER!!!”, I will say “Oh well” and kill her.

Google Calendar screenshots.

Windows XP commands for the command prompt. Comments sathish 11 Apr 2006 11:18 am: this is a cool link

Speed up your torrents. Particularly, get rid of the Event ID 4226 problem.

The Personal MBA. John Kaufman says reading (and practicing) these 42 books should be as good as any MBA (and that an MBA is, perhaps excessively, expensive). Some of these books are worth a read in any case. Master Yourself Mastery by George Leonard Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham & Donald O. Clifton Manage Your Life and Work Getting Things Done by David Allen The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey Learn the Fundamentals ...

Beautiful people are paid more because of a positive feedback mechanism. Employers expect them to perform better. They expect themselves to perform better. And these come across. Comments Madhu 10 Apr 2006 7:12 am: he he.. my research deals with whether board of directors have any impact on CG et al. I should probably consider the looks of the board as an important parameter S Anand 12 Apr 2006 7:10 pm: It’s supposed to be a stronger effect with women. You could factor that in :-) Madhu 14 Apr 2006 7:28 am: and probably suggestion reservation for women in the board;)

The seven plus or minus two rule. That’s all your brain can remember.

On a related note, 60% of the search queries that lead to my site this year were Calvin and Hobbes quotes. “i can’t help but wonder what kind of desperate straits would drive a man to invent this thing.” topped the list (Calvin referring to a yo-yo), with i always catch these trick questions following closely. People searching for Excel related stuff were next (20%): excel indirect(address(, row() excel offset address and the like. ...

Reducing your memory usage in Firefox.

Martijn’s Calvin and Hobbes Extensive Strip Search is back. It doesn’t let you search the quotes themselves, but a (pretty detailed) description of each cartoon instead. (Mine searches Calvin and Hobbes quotes). Comments Anonymous 21 Oct 2006 8:55 am: if you know calvin and hobbes u know how many are there. I have been looking for March 24, 1994 for an ages and this helped me to find it in a minute. great site I do recomend

What programmers do.

Live Plasma. An interesting way to explore music and movies. Great visual design too.