Hi, I am Pankaj Kumar. I work in the enterprise software space as a Principal Technology Consultant at SAP America of Palo Alto, CA. I use this weblog to share my thoughts about my professional life as a SAP professional.When thinking about giants of computing…
When thinking about giants of computing one easily forgets that they were young once, this tidbit from What the Dormouse Said about Doug Engelbart is very interesting. His manager is complaining about him to his manager
"Jerry, I know you well enough. I have two things to say, and it will only take sixty seconds point number one is that you have to choose.you either have to risk it on this guy our you have to fire him the second thing I have to say its that this the brightest guy I have ever worked with."
imported from Google+Very tough story to read. It is just terrifying…
Very tough story to read. It is just terrifying to know that there are millions of girls who are pushed into this every year.
When 6-year-olds are sold to be tortured and raped, it’s time for a 21st-century abolitionist movement to end human trafficking.
Lumia 800 looks good
Lumia 800 looks good
There has been a lot of noise about this new phone from Nokia called Lumia 800. Finally got a chance to read up on it. Following the cues of its earlier buddy N9, Lumia 800 looks very good. Let us see how it goes in the world with MS Mango.
Nokia’s first Windows Phone has a great design and performs solidly, but the Lumia 800 lacks a few perks its competitors flaunt
Can USPS? part two
I recently wrote about if USPS can survive as webvan, on a similar note it was refreshing to see this NYT story about Deutsche Post and how it is thriving and evolving for digital age
The Deutsche Post office across from the train station here offers DVDs, umbrellas, phone cards and toys — with the processing of mail appearing nearly an afterthought. And the facility housing it is not a post office at all. Deutsche Post occupies a corner space in a bank.
What was news to me was how USPS is constrained by law not to evolve or play in limited markets
It’s easy to say that the U.S.P.S. is a bunch of morons, but they live under legislative restrictions on what businesses they can enter and are expressly prevented from entering business unless it’s related to physical mail.
Now thats a bummer. I wonder if these legislative restrictions would be relaxed as things get more digital.
What works in US
In a NYT op-ed about Genius of Jobs, Walter Isaacson made a comment about US ingenuity and how it is THE advantage that seperates US from India and China. In my experience I would say 3 things that work well in US
1. Scaling what works best – Ideas that work are scaled rapidly and money flows to them. You would see no-name companies go from small start to national international in matter of years. Venture Capital does wonders over here. Apple, Genentech, Google and Facebook are prime examples. (Sorry for Silicon Valley bias)
2. Law of Land – is enforced and contracts are followed. Enron, Galleon Hedge Fund, Rajat Gupta etc no one is spared. ( Yeah yeah you can say a lot of folks responsible for Financial Crisis didn’t pay for what they let loose but still I think it is net positive than otherwise)
3. University Education – US has most of the world’s best education institutions. This is one advantage that could erode in future as the cost of education is becoming very high plus new models of education would evolve with ubiquitous internet and collaboration tools it enables.
Can USPS survive as webvan?
USPS has been making losses for many many years and it is not unthinkable that it might not survive with its current structure. Much has been written on various reasons for its demise primarily being email. So when the new blog Digitopoly, by some of my favorite authors wrote on the same topic “Postal mail in the Shadow of Email’ My neurons started firing as it is one of the meme I think about. Other being public libraries in the age ebooks. USPS is unique in its nature and owns the biggest fleet that goes to most of the neighborhoods everyday. It would be a shame if USPS goes under and this network is dismantled. So how it can be saved and be profitable.
One not so radical idea for USPS is to partner with major grocery chains and be their home delivery agent sort of like webvan. So I order from Safeway, Kroger, Walmart’s website and grocery is delivered next day in neat packages by the friendly USPS guy. This does bring images from my childhood in India where the vegetable vendors would put their wares on a push cart and go thru neighborhoods hawking these vegetables. Do you think this idea of Grocery as a Service would work?
(Flickr Photo under CC by sarelkromer)
For the stat lovers in you. This is actually pretty good and can be used for a lot…
For the stat lovers in you. This is actually pretty good and can be used for a lot of other scenarios
slides from my R tutorial on Twitter text mining #rstats « Things …
Tags. 24 altitude autocomplete BlackBerry Bluetooth Boston Cisco cloud computing Dell DNS email ESX Firefox Fox Geocoding ggobi ggplot2 GIS Google Maps hack hardware linux Mac mapping MySQL nightlight…
imported from Google+Hat tip to Nikhil for recommending this article http://hbswk.hbs.edu/rss/6752.html
Hat tip to Nikhil for recommending this article http://hbswk.hbs.edu/rss/6752.html
So after using G+ for few days, what are the features you like , what do you miss…
So after using G+ for few days, what are the features you like , what do you miss and what do you hate As per me
- the best feature is ever present notification button and share box on google properties
- unlimited photo storage for picasa or shall we say google photos
- of course selective sharing via circles or just email
- android app ( though it seems sparse at times)
hate or miss
- Sparks – my friend I had high hopes from you, seems like a half baked product
- Limited folks – that is expected, hopefully more people will adopt it
- how to embed google docs in it
This series of photos from Tiber are just amazing. Thanks to +Amit Gupta for point…
This series of photos from Tiber are just amazing. Thanks to +Amit Gupta for point to it
Scenes from Tibet « Flickr Blog
Scenes from Tibet. Ganden Gonpa Tibet. Tibet བོདon the Tibetan Plateau བོད་. In his Favorites set reurinkjan has collected some of his favorite images from Tibet and a few other places around the worl…