Came across The 9 Men who run China via Tim Iacono. Amazing, never knew Chinese policies are decided by engineers at the top in Politburo Standing Committee.

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I have wanted to move away from Kubrick look which was showing of age. I liked Squible for its different look. It also matches closely with the design I have had in mind.

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Recently a close friend started an aggregator for India related news with the name Grabline. Well wishes to him. Take a look if you are interesed in reading India related news at one site.

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These days there is lot of talk about mass media and its future in the coming age. There are those in the blog world that pronounce that mass media will be marginalized more and more as we move further along. Then there are those in the mass media like Forbes who dedicate a full issue for attacking the bloggers.

My personal belief is that a lot of stories in the blog world start by referring to something seen/read/heard from the mass media and then the author’s take on it. I am not saying that there is nothing original written in the blog world but rather there is good amount of let’s say filtering from Mass Media that happens. Posts about good stories get published a lot and get a lot of comments. While if the mass media committed a folly, it would be pointed out loud. Most of the blog writers do something else for a living while journalists or professional writers do it for a living so naturally they have more time to research and are generally better articulate in putting their thoughts on paper. Coming back to what is mass media disappeared one day - it would be a very dull day for bloggers. So much that we might even see a drop in internet bandwidth usage that day :D

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When I started Beta Thoughts one of the very first categories I had created was consulting. Idea was to share some of the thoughts, best practices etc. that I have gained over the years. During the last few years I have been to many places, got to be part of exciting teams, different work environments etc. One thing that has remained constant is two golden rules that were told to me by Michael Chio, an excellent consultant on my very first consulting gig in Bay Area. I have lost touch with him over the years but I still remember his golden advice. Here they are

Never Say No - Never say a out right no to what is asked from you. Besides isn’t it true that given enough time and effort most of things can be done. Even in cases where you know that this task cannot be done, ask more questions to about the task, get more clarifications of the variables of the problem being asked. It may be the case that you haven’t understood the problem. If still you think the answer is no give enough simple and clear reasons why the task can not be done.

Do not panic - this might be written on the front page of Hitch Hiker’s guide to galaxy but it is also true in consulting world. You might have blown away the last week’s effort but do not I repeat do not panic. Your panic situation will send an exponentially higher signal to the client. There is nothing worse than a consultant panicking in front of a client. Analyze the reasons it happened and what you need to do to resolve this.

I have added a third rule to this

Communicate - Humans like to talk. It is very important that you are talking about your progress with your client. You might be doing a yeoman’s job but without communication it might not be as worthful. It doesn’t help to just sit there and do your job one needs to talk to peers and higher ups.

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Long time readers of Beta Thoughts would know my love for Maps. May be this comes from the time I spent in creating GIS for Chandigarh while still at college. I was so happy when Google released its map offering with cool AJAX features. I even did a little screencast using Wink.

Today Yahoo released the Beta version of its maps application based on flash and I love it. Yahoo maps API is so easy that it takes less than few minutes to comeup with your stuff. Based up on their Javascript API I created a flash based map of the center of desi land i.e. Lawrence and El Camino cross section with a overlay of “Indian Food” You can see my favorite grocery shop in the map along with 10 other points.

So far it is only US based (I can see smoke coming out of Niks ears) Hopefully they will cover the rest of world along with a little island somewhere in Asia-Pacific.

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Tim talks about the growing inventory of Hummers at the local dealer in sunny and beautiful San Diego(the epicenter of Housing Bubble). He even clicked few photographs from the so called undisclosed location

What I liked about the post was that it shows the power of blogging or an excellent piece of citizen journalism as Dan Gilmore of BayOSphere calls it. Tim ends the post with a thoughtful metaphor

The reason that the story of rapidly rising Hummer inventory is so interesting and so amusing, is that America’s most ostentatious Sport Utility Vehicle, the Hummer SUV, is a metaphor for America in the world today - overweight, overpriced, inefficient, and unloved.

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