Background
About a year back, I was at Big Creek elementary School for Nithin’s orientation/academic day, where the class teacher would tell what the students would learn and also our responsibilities as a parent. Mrs. Mary Ellen Drone, the teacher, is an amazing person - let me put it this way, I never came across a teacher anywhere close to her.
At the beginning of her presentation, Mary just made a casual reference to her husband (Randy), who happened to be in the same classroom. Mary said “Randy has MS and is …

I just happened to notice that a friend of mine had given glowing LinkedIn recommendation  for his boss. Let’s call the boss as John Doe for now. I knew very well that my friend hated and despised John Doe. My friend used to joke that John Doe is an enormously insecure, self-doubting, pessimistic and sarcastic personality wrapped in Xanax. So obviously I was shocked by the glowing recommendation and prompted for a phone call. Following is how the conversation went:
[after usual pleasantry exchanges, we delved into the issue at hand]
me: …

You may not agree to some of the suggestions here. In this dwindling economy, it’s imperative that companies take as much measures as possible to conserve cash. Some of them may not appear significant, but look at this way:  you could take one of your employee for lunch with $30, which should help build the morale. In other words, every penny counts!
Before you do anything, take an inventory of the situation and let your employees know about the real deal. Do not try to hide the obvious.

During these tiring conditions, …

I was talking to a fellow CTO of a startup company based in the bay area. Apple occupied most of our discussions. Prior to the economic downturn, when the credit was abundant, CTOs were okay in buying  Apple computers for their developers.  Guess what? CTOs are now questioning the need to buy expensive Apple laptops for their developers.
Apple laptops definitely has the cool factor written all over it. But a Dell laptop with Ubuntu does bring the same functionality to the table. Since most of the developers use either PHP …

As we are nearing the end of 2008, we need to start reflecting on our startup madness of 2008. Following are the list of ideas that were overrated and over-hyped for year  2008. Definition of over-hyped: over 100 companies working on the same idea.

Social Networking: The over-arching theme was to build a social network for almost anything. Do you know a verb? lets start a social networking about it!!
White-labeled and Hosted Social Networking solutions: You would’t believe the number of companies offering these services.
Video Delivery: Thanks to YouTube, everyone jumped …

PC World just reported about Satellite Broadband initiative by ViaSat.
I can’t imagine companies are still chasing fancy and dumb ideas in this economy. This clearly shows that why we are heading into recession, also why we deserve it.

What I don’t like about this business idea?

Scheduled for launch in 2011.
Speed is only  2Mbps, that too in 2011.

Why I consider this a dumb idea:

It takes lot of money to own and operate a satellite, plus they come with an expiry date. It is not like an undersea fiber optic line, which can …

LinkedIn is down today with the following message:

We are busy upgrading LinkedIn with technology and features to add even more ways for you to leverage your professional reputation and network. We will return around 9:00pm PT.
We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience. Thank you for using LinkedIn!
Is this newsworthy and why am I blogging about it? Many entrepreneurs, especially CEOs with big corporation background, tends to emphasize on 24×7 uptime along with the necessity to handle gazillion hits on the launch day. Most people don’t even understand the …

Updated on 12/3/2008 based on feedback from Paula at Divorce360. This blog entry  focused mainly on their marriage/divorce calculator. However, their site does offer lot other tools for people going through (or contemplating) divorce. While it is not a useful site for me, it may be for you depending on your situation. I.E., do your own DD.

Approximately 1.3 million couples divorce each year. Divorce360.com was created to help people contemplating, going through or …

Wigix is the new way to buy and sell on-line. It’s a socially-driven marketplace, where you can communicate with like-minded collectors and traders. Get a live pricing history for each item and negotiate prices intelligently. Social communication encourages informed buying. This is the actual business description from Wigix.com. Well, that sounds like eBay, right?
Ever since eBay alienated it’s customer base with consistent commission rate increases, numerous sites are popping up to attract the disgruntled ebay customers. Wigix’s mantra is to offer a reduced fee structure, which was the cornerstone of …

Is it the CEO, CTO, COO, CIO, CMO, CSO?

This is a loaded question. One  must understand the responsibilities of each of these roles first. Do you know the  difference between a CIO & CTO, Sales & marketing?
Your comments (or see the following poll) are welcome on this topic, I will publish my thoughts in a week (OR whenever I find some free time and not working on myGPSID!!!)
[polldaddy poll=1157574]