2000

Deloitte Consulting gave a presentation today for campus recruitment. Apparantly, we have to be in business suits to sit in any of the presentations! But luckily, since Deloitte has an informal culture, they said ‘business casual’ was OK. I squeaked past with just a tie. Need to buy a suit! The hall could seat about 100 people, and was full. Of course, you had to sign 24 hours in advance to get in, and they take attendance outside the hall. I took a copy of their annual report (which they were distributing outside) and sat in the front row. A huge contingent had come for the presentation: 1 big shot from manufacturing, 1 senior HR person, the liason for LBS and DC, 3 managers, 2 senior consultants, and 2-5 others who had recently joined! ...

Today was my first class at the London Business School, and I’ve written up my experiences on day 1. I plan to keep updating it.

The session on Mergers, MBOs and other corporate reorganizations by Paulo Volpin started 5 minutes late. Reason: They had a problem with the computer projector. Fixing it turned out to be a hi-tech exercise, though. A guy came in with some kind of a hand-held device, pointed it around like a remote control, and the projector was on. 6:05PM – 5 minutes lost. 5 minutes later, “IP address conflict”. The Professor gives up and moves on to trusty slides. He came prepared. ...

This would be it. If Ram Vilas Paswan sticks to his word and provides toll-free ISP numbers, Internet access in India would really shoot up. I’m sure Caltiger would be the first to benefit from this.

Krislyn’s Strictly Business sites is a portal for business sites. It’s appeal is in its flat structure and small list of good sites.

LBS’ placement cell publishes a magazine called Target, some of whose pages I’ve scanned. It gives an idea about what consulting and finance is, what companies look for, how to prepare for interviews, alumni feedback, etc. Sorry about the small size of scanning, but I had to conserve disk space. I’ll bring the book to IIM-B when I come back.

I went to the Tower of London on a guided tour with a hilarious Yeoman Guard. The Tower Bridge, just next to it, is what people usually mistake to be the London Bridge. Oxford Street was expensive, but great for window shopping. The British Musuem, however, is free, and is a whole universe in itself.

Vault.com is another great career resource like Wetfeet.

Remember the US site that lets people auction their votes? Now they’ve moved it to Bulgaria, out of the US jurisdiction. The Internet is truly borderless!

Internet Indicators has a report on how the 4 layers of the Internet economy have been progressing.

Biz, AOLiza and other chatbots are programs that lurk chat space. Have a look at their conversations, especially this one with a guy who was jilted. It’s bewildering, and yet…

I’ve always liked devices attached to the Internet. Web cameras are a hot favourite. Earthcam is a portal for web cameras. Google has more webcam directories.

In 1900, David Hilbert outlined 23 unsolved problems in mathematics. Many of these have been solved today, with the notable exception of the Riemann Hypothesis. Today, if we solve any of these, we get $1 million.

AdReady has a neat idea: pop up advertisements near the mouse pointer, when the mouse is sitting idle. Cool. But I don’t want anything popping up when I’m reading! Besides, since this is an easy idea to copy, I doubt they should have it as their USP.

Wanted Joseph Bosco, for the crime of ogling at girls in Sweden and not even writing to me about it. Better do so quickly before someone searches for your name and finds it on my site!

A guy called Baumgartner at the RPI set up a site that lets people auction their votes. Users of Gnutella (and Napster) are free-riding. People are faking videos real-time. Author’s reviews are forged. Life in the 21st century doesn’t look promising ;-)

Amazon.com moved retailers to the web, and disintermediated retail inventory. SimonSays.com is a publisher (Simon & Schuster) on the Web. Stephen King’s an author on the Web. You can buy his book from him directly, and online. He’s releasing The Plant in installments. Each installment will be about a dollar. That’s pretty cheap for an online book, but then, he only has server storage and tracking costs and all that. He says he’ll stop writing the next part if people don’t pay enough. Payment rate is over 75% so far. This is an experiment to watch.

The Economist has an article on The failure of new media – about how the Internet’s a disappointment. In fact they have lots of articles on the Internet.

Don’t know what a web log is? It’s a site where people talk – usually about the Web. Some are discussions. Some are moderated. Some are narratives – like mine. Scripting news is my favourite, and SlashDot’s another popular one. Blogger’s the most popular, I hear.

AstaLaVista is an ‘underground search engine’. I’d been there before, and since its survived this long, it must be good.