In a recent visit to Landmark, I purchased an audio book titled "Built to Last". At the time of purchase I didn't realize it was the Audio version of the famous book by James C. Collins & Jerry I. Porras. Anyway after listening to 6 hours plus of the audio I think it is one of the best purchases I ever made. The Audio book turned out to be a more convenient format than the paper book, because I could listen to it in portions every day while I drove my car. A best use of the traffic jams that are now becoming common in Chennai.

This book is a classic and reviewed many times on the Internet over the last decade, so I will keep mine very brief. The book is a result of six years of research on what makes great companies great. It does this by identifying 18 "visionary" companies and compares them systematically with "successful-but-second-rank" companies over nearly 5 decades or more of data. I wonder with the power of Internet and access to more data, what the authors could have done more (I am yet to read their sequel Good to Great). The book shatters the core myth that visionary companies must start with a great product and be lead by charismatic leaders. The book talks on these main concepts:

• Preserve the core, stimulate the progress
• Other than your core purpose to exist, everything else can change - have to change
• Follow Darwin Survival Theory, try multiple things and quickly kill the non-prospective one's
• Have BHA (Big Harry Audacious) Goals one after the other to keep the motivation and juices in people flowing

This is a must read textbook for anyone running a company or managing a sizeable team in an organization.

The built-in file download applet in any of the browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari or Opera) leaves much to be desired. They don't support accelerated downloads (parallel downloads), most of their resume function don't work as advertised. So you will need to use a 3rd party download manager especially for huge file downloads. The 3rd Party applications since they hook into browser process they tend to slow or destabilize the browsers. Over the years, I have found GetRight to be the best download managers. 

After I moved to Windows Vista on a 64-bit Hardware I wanted something less resource hungry and with less frequent updates. I found Free Download Manager and I have been pleased with its performance for last several months. Check it out and the best part FDM is free and it is spyware free.

Expecting rains today we (myself, wife and kid) decided to spend our sunday evening today we decided to go to Spencers Plaza. On nearing it the sign in entrace said "Parking Full". I was sure it will be the same scene in Chennai City Centre, so we decided to drive somewhere. I remembered the recently beautified Haddows Road Park maintained by Chennai Corporation. Though we had doubts whether it will be open at 7:30PM, we gave it a try - and glad we did that. The park was beautiful, clean (surprising for a Corporation Park in India), well lit and was spacious enough for jogging and walking. It had a tiny play area by kids - could have been bigger but something is better than nothing.

The sign in the entrance said the park is open from 5 a.m. to 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. So next time you find yourself wanting a peaceful place to go in Chennai, give this park a try.

The Park on Haddows Road is further down from Shastri Bhavan on the opposite side.

Many times when you technical documents or just presentation you will find useful wanting to capture some portions from the screen. Earlier in November 2004 I had written about using OneNote 2003 to do it and in October 2004 I had posted about using a freeware Zabgrab to it.

Though OneNote (esp. OneNote 2007) will work with Windows Vista, Zabgrab doesn't. So in my laptop with OneNote 2007 I don't have a problem, but when I am using a Vista machine without what to do?. Apple Mac 10.x have an easy to use Screen grab tool in-built in the system menu.

The good news is Windows Vista bundles (out of box) a great screen capture tool called "Snipping Tool". The tool helps you to Capture a portion of your screen so you can save, annotate, or share the image.

 
(Thanks to my colleague Murari Rajagopal for telling me about this useful applet)

You can find the Snipping Tool either via Start > Accessories > Snipping Tool or by simply typing Snip into any Search window. But it is easy to create a shortcut for it by using the path %SystemRoot%\system32\SnippingTool.exe. This path should work in all Windows Vista (32 bit) editions. It also has rudimentary painting (pen) tool. The tool allows you to copy the URL associated with a screen area and you can control this in your application through this API

Very recently Chennai Traffic has become a nightmare. From anywhere to anywhere during day time nowadays takes nothing less than 45 minutes. Today I started from Asian Printers (near Royappetah Hospital) at 8.15PM and reached my house at West Mambalam at 9.15 - can you believe it, it took me 1 hour for a journey that should've taken me 15-20 minutes even during peak hours. I was spending nearly 40 minutes of this around Panagal park. It is the scene everyday and Chennai Corporation doesn't seem to be doing anything about it, though they made empty announcements. Media is abuzz that the reason why nothing is done around Panagal Park is due the undue influence of all the commercial establishments there, who don't wish the problem to be fixed. If the problem gets fixed it will mean people spending less time through the area and eventually less business. I don't understand the logic, if you solve the traffic problem here, you will have more people coming and hence more business. But who said everything in India and our politicians do things with logic.

Instead of this location Corporation is going ahead with building flyovers (bridges) in all the wrong places. I don't understand the need for building a bridge near Vani Mahal. Anyway's, the point of this post is why on earth anyone will begin work for two bridges at the same time on roads with traffic going in the same direction. I am talking about the Kodambakkam High Road/North Usman Road bridge and GN Chetty Road/Thirumalai Pillai Road (Vani Mahal) bridges here. Both roads take traffic from Panagal Park (and the surrounding areas) to Gemini Flyover (Anna Salai). Since both the bridges are being built at the same time, both the junctions have got the whole carriageway to single lane. Instead it would have been better planning to take one work after the other. May be the government wanted to complete both the bridges before their remaining 4 years in office

I have got some photos taken during peak hours in both the junctions, see them below:

In the last 3 to 4 months, Indian Exporters are loosing sleep due to Rupee Strengthening by over 10% in a quarter. Though certainly in the long run it is good for the country to let Rupee appreciate - such a speedy appreciation is affecting all exporters. In software exports, this clearly wipes out nearly 50% of the profit (assuming the average of 20% profit in Indian Software services industry).  I feel government is using this as an effective and probably only (non-controversial for Left parties) tool they have in controlling inflation. I believe it is up to individual exporters to device their own startegies to tackle, right from using tools like Hedging (which will help in short run from further appreciation) and to increase the rates and diversifying markets. All these are easily said but for small and tiny exporters especially for Non-IT exporters it can be very difficult and a matter of survival. 

Yesterday Infosys Q1 FY '08 results proves that the problem is serious enough. Though their revene have grown by 7.5%  in Dollar Terms; the revenue in Rupee terms has remained constant around Rs.3500 crores.

In this connection, instead of saying more I would like to refer you to this superb interview with Mr.Lakshmi Narayanan (Vice-Chairman of CTS). No one could have said it better. And that's what I admire about Mr.Lakshmi Narayanan, his ability to see the issue not only from the biggies perspective but from the entire industry's spectrum. Read the interview in PDF format: "Rising Rupee a Blessing for China"

Just when I was about to post this, I saw a story on governments relief package, I am yet to study it so I will talk about it in a later post.

Recently eWeek carried an article Offshoring 2.0: The Post-India World - "Experts agree that India will soon no longer be the biggest offshoring center". I found the article to be baseless, shallow and far from truth. With the world economy (and Indian economy) growing for last 3 years at a stretch, many people want to stand away from the crowd and become instant doom sayers. It is sad eWeek wants to join the bandwagon of Prophets of Doom.

The article doesn't name the experts who say it is doomed or the studies other than the one by its sister organization IDC on a study of cities worldwide. Let me substantiate my views with our experience in Vishwak.

The article talks about increase in salaries as a primary (and only) reason for this, so let me take that up first:

1. Faster career growth - No doubt the Salary in India is increasing day by day. We have seen our salary outflow doubling in the last 24-36 months (this is apart from our Team Strength Increase). Just this raw data can be very misleading here and you can easily portray doom from this. Dig deeper and you will find this. We have found our people to be more ambitious than in the past, taken up more responsibility and grown up in their career. So we have been able to get better billing rates for the same person, obviously you don't want Person "A" to keep earning the same money for the company year on year. You want it to increase. This is more than productivity increase I am talking here, I am talking about a Software Engineer, becoming a Module Lead, Project Lead, Project Manager and so on. Here Indian IT companies have mastered the balance between career growth to technology training and hands on experience. It has taken Indian IT companies more than 2 decades to reach here. I doubt whether China or Vietnam or East Europe can come to this level instantly. No doubt one day they will come here, but it will take them atleast 5 to 10 years and by then Indian IT companies would have leap-frogged to the next level.
2. About a decade back when offshoring started from western countries to India it was primarily cost arbitrage of 1:10. Today it is not 1:10, but still significant and at many cases still at 1:3 or 1:4 levels. Senior level people salaries have certainly narrowed with US levels, but still there is a 1:3 or at least 1:2 advantage to India. Entry level salaries in India have grown but even now they are not even closer to US figures. Taking the minimum wage in many US states at $10 per hour, still there exists a cost advantage at a minimum of 1:2 levels to India's advantage and obviously software engineers in US get many times more than $10 per hour. Only graduates from IIT & IIM you will find higher salaries and clearly they are exceptions as they are premium across the world.

Next comes the productivity, process advantages:

1. Don't forget the complexity and scale of projects Indian companies are handling. Most of the CMM Level 5 and CMMI companies are based in India and compare that with East Europe and China, it will speak for itself. Just like China having the worlds largest manufacturing units, India has some of the largest Software Engineering campuses. Imagine where else in the world you can get thousands of software engineers in a day, get them organized into teams and start working - all the infrastructure, process, learnings for doing this is available only in India. In the last decade probably Silicon Valley had this, but now undoubtedly it is India. And again this has taken Indian companies a minimum of 2 decades to achieve this far.
2. Software writing is not all about English language, though it is a huge requirement. It is about Creativity and Lateral thinking. I am not saying that all Engineers who graduate in India or who join IT work force in India have it. But India has the highest percentage of these people, again this has been the result of 2 decades of work to come here.
3. I am sure Indian IT companies are already investing big monies more than their counterparts across the world on developing Automation and Code Generators, which will give them the advantage of solving problems using lesser human labour. I am only saying lesser and not about eliminating manual work altogether which may not happen in distant future.
4. Last comes the political stability that Democracy brings in (India is the world's largest Democracy that is proven to work for last 60 years) and the Law of Land (Intellectual Property protection) that Indian Judiciary brings in (though it is very slow compared to western countries).

Related links:

• Business week has covered the same IDC story here
• Check out the full presentation (and video) I made last year on why I believe Indian IT Exports will only grow?

This week one of my colleagues gave me a DVD of the movie April 1945, A Nation awaits its ...  "DOWNFALL". Surprisingly I didn't put it in my CD shelves for watching one of the days (which will never come) but managed to see it today.

In the last half-a-century much as been written and movies taken about the Holocaust & World War II. But many of them skip the last few weeks of Hitler or mention them in passing paragraphs. This movie is all about the last few weeks, when it was certain the Nazis have lost. This different perspective makes the movie different and enjoyable, even though it is 2:30 Hours.

Oliver Hirschbiegel (the Director of the movie) chronicles the last desperate days in Hitler's underground bunker, as the Red Army unrelentingly closes in. It's April 1945. The streets of Berlin are defended by armed children, and the fate of Nazism is sealed. Some blindly believe Hitler capable of some last-minute miracle. Yet there is still a human drama to play out... Read a nice review of movie here.

If you are interested in war history and the human toll it takes, this is a nice movie to watch.

In India, everyone likes to think the rich culture and close-knit families gives people the psychological cover to handle modern day stresses. This is believed to shield Indian (and Asians) societies from growing menaces of Gun shooting in schools, Sexual Harassment of kids, etc. which have now become repeated occurrences in the western world. Critics have said that, in this connected world no society can completely protect itself from these menaces - and in India though Sexual harassment of kids happen they go unreported due to community fears and pressures.

Recently (about a week or so back) I learned the news of a shocking incident that happened in a Chennai School, which was covered up and went unreported in any main stream media. The school is one of the popular private English schools in the city and I came to know about it through few of the parents who have their kids studying in the school and who were called for a meeting on this. The incident was about a school support staff (watchman or someone) had taken few girls (studying 4th or 5th standard) into a room, locked it and tried to misbehave with them sexually. Reportedly he didn't succeed much as the kids shouted and they were rescued subsequently. What was shocking was the attempt the school made to cover the incident up, they didn't handover the culprit to police and the school board's reluctance to even dismiss the culprit (he was eventually fired after pressure from parents).

As a parent this is a shocking news. Parents have been recommended by experts to teach school going girl children and make them aware to the extend possible (of course you can't make a 8 year old aware of sexual advances) of not going when strangers / adult males call them unwarranted.

Update 9/July/2007: After I posted this story yesterday I was pointed to the Deccan Chronicle (Chennai Edition) 8/July/2007 issue which has carried this same news.

Economic Times newspaper today carried couple of interesting facts about Mobile usage in India:

1. Mobile VAS (Value Added Service) business in India is poised to touch Rs.8,200 crores this fiscal - a 65% growth from Rs.4,950 crores in previous year. This reinforces our believe on the huge demand for Mobile Content Management.
2. India has 9.27 Million PC Internet Subscribers, against 31.3 Million users who access Internet through their Mobile devices. One out of every five mobile users (165.1 Million Mobile Subscribers) access Internet from their phones.  
3. For the first time in recent Telcom history in India, ARPU is growing but currently the growth is happening only in CDMA operators. So there seems to be some hope at the end of the tunnel for Telcos.

Reading this, I remembered an Interview I gave few years back "Mobile Phones will be the First and Only Computer for Many in Developing Countries".

Over the last few months I noticed tons of SPAM entries in the trackback lists in this blog. I realized it is better to switch off “Enable trackback service” in your dasBlog configuration:

But what about existing SPAM entries that are already present in the blog. I found it to be very tedious to delete every SPAM Trackback URL manually. That’s when I decided to have a tool written to address this issue. You can download this Free Open Source Application from here. Run the application and point it to your das-Blog content folder, it will read all the *.dayfeedback files and display all the unique domains in the Trackback URLs. Then in one go you can clean up all the *.dayfeedback XML files.

The Source Code (Visual Studio 2005 Project) can be downloaded from here. Please note the application is in Beta and no major code-audits and reviews have been done on that; so I strongly recommend you to take a backup of your content folder before using it. Download the application from here

Designing Windows Application UI with Visio: I had this application to be written by one of my team members in Vishwak. The Engineer understood the functionality and came back quickly with a working prototype. But the User Interface left much to be desired - it was a typical Geeky UI, it required me to select a check-box for each entry (I had to select 20,000 Checkboxes in a grid for the entries in my blog). So I decided to re-do it. I started writing the User Interface suggestions as a Word Document, that's when I thought there should be a better way to do this. Though we have Visio extensively for UML, Flow-Chart, Network diagrams, DB Designs I haven't personally used it for UI Design. I thought let me give it a try and picked up Visio 2007 and started doing the UI design with it, with the help of my Delivery Manager (Chandra) on Visio techniques I completed it in 20 minutes or so. The Engineer understood this instantly and the next day I had the application completed (Download the UI here in Visio format or in PDF format)

At the end, I felt good that I learned a new item (Visio for UI) today.