Commencement Address ...

Here are couple of commencement address I like.

Stanford University 2005
Steve Jobs made this commencement address and rightly called it "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish"

Harvard 2008
J K Rowling delivered on "The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination"

Both Jobs and Rowling share their experience in life in their addresses. They have different stories to tell but the message is more or less similar. Its all about perspectives, the way we want to see things, what lens we want to see them in.

How do Great people happen, r they born with greatness or is it impossed on them or is it how they react/respond to the circumstances that make them great (in the end)!!!

Read them to get your own meaning or perspective!

Sparks !

One of my colleague at office forwarded me Chetan Bhagat's "Keep the Spark" Speech, the inaugural speech made by him to the new class of Symbiosis.

I am neither a fan of Chetan Bhagat nor think high of his writing abilities. Even then, I read the speech. There were few things in the speech that poked my brain. Some of them were

• Nurturing and protecting the spark !
• Life is like the nursery school run with a lemon in the spoon. No point coming first if the marble falls
• Let Go !
• Don't be Serious, be sincere !

Thought provoking and Inspirational!

If you haven't read it yet, you can do so here

Yet another incident packed weekend ....

Another weekend .... full of incidents ...
Friday was the great run ... I ran 6 km in the evening... well, I am practicing for the Delhi half marathon on Nov 9 ... dinner .. phone ... then I slept like a log ... was too tired because of the run ..

Saturday... was in office... yes, I know... weekend working ... noy my estyle .. but I think sometimes it helps .. it is a problem only when it becomes a habit ... ya ya ... it starts with sometimes .... within sometime it becomes alltimes !!! :)

Was in Delhi in the afternoon.. and there was yet another bomb blast ... well.. this was prettyy close.. the blast happened on the road which I take to reach Delhi from home ... quiet scary .. guess all bomb explosions should be scary !!!

To top it all ... saw 'A Wednesday' just now ... well... whattay movie.. a must watch... I am not going to disclose anything about the movie ... If u havn't seen it yet ... u need to do it rite away ...

read 'Bringing down the House'... a book on which the movie 21 Blackjack is based ... I picked up from my friend's place ... yup.. I visited a colleague of mine on saturday .. had lunch at his place .. actually shamelessly ... since he was not hungry .. and I had his share of lunch what his maid had cooked ... :)

I am planning to go home this week ... need to give some finishing touches to my marriage preparations !! .. hmmm.... yes.. u got this rite.. I am blushing .... :)

I am hope work will be pretty manageable this week !!!

The weekend that was ...

Today is Wednesday and I am going to write about the weekend. Well, It is not about how I am waiting for the coming weekend but my (mis)adventures of the last weekend. Wow! Writing about a weekend on a Wednesday, I will go places with my sense of timing !!

I cant even remember what I did on Friday. I didn't do much I guess, I was up at 6 on a saturday morning so should have slept pretty early. My roommates parents were here, and they took care of my meals during the weekend!

Had an appointment with my Dentist at 12, so set off to Delhi on my bullet. I wanted to reach there before 12, well my last few appointments were pathetic. Once I reached 1.5 hrs late and the next time 15 mins late, so I wanted to make a point to myself by reaching there early. With all the thoughts and preparations, I could manage to leave home only at 11:15, thanks to the maid, who took her own sweet time in sweeping and mopping the house. I rode fast and managed to be there by 12. :) Bravo !!

My dentist was in a good mood, he was going on a holiday to Pune. I suggested another interesting place, Lavasa, nearby Pune. I think I managed to kill his enthu by some 25%, he was regreting why didn't I come a week earlier. :). I had said the right thing at the wrong time, poor guy!!

I had South Indian lunch with my office colleagues. I spoke to the waiters in my mother tongue and got faster response towards our orders than the rest of the ppl sitting there. Things like this happens in India, you see a person from your town, you walk the extra mile to keep the person happy!

After lunch we moved to Oxford Book Store in CP. The ambience of the store is pretty good. The collection was refreshingly different, books categorically placed. The stafff is friendly, the cafe's menu is inviting, the ambience is superb. I recommend you to visit the store when you are in Delhi. The catalogue is pathetic, I asked for few books which they didn't have in their database and I believed them. During billing, one guy found a book which was not in their database! The staff gaped with an open mouth. The security is not so tight and I dont intend to describe it :) .
I almost scanned through the entire collection of books and bought some three books. 'The real price of everything', 'Keep off the Grass', 'Wise and Otherwise' and a book on China - kinda business book.

I met an Alum from my alma mater over there, exchanged pleasantries, exchanged cards and the usual stuff. An entrepreneur bubblin with lots of passion and enthu.

From there we made our way to IHC, to watch Makhrand Deshpande's play 'Sakaram Binder and the Constable'. Pretty decent storyline, but the performance of the actors were stunning !!! Makhrand takes acting to an entirely different level, and the supporting actors did one wonderful job. The performance was very captivating, well it was one of the best plays I ever seen and to think of it, I have seen more than 100 plays - English, Hindi, Kannada.

The real adventure began when I started towards Gurgaon. It was drizzling, I thought it is just a harmless drizzle and started on my Bullet. There were traffic jams on the way, which is an expected thing when it rains. I had no clue how much it had rained when I was watching the play. As I waded through traffic and to some clear stretched down the road, I came across a huge traffic jam in a place where it should have been a free flow. There were no intersections for a few kms, even then there was a traffic jam. Expecting some Vehicle would hav broken down, I slowly made my way on the left side pavement. What came later was a complete shocker. There was water on the road. Rather the road was in the water. It was more of the road going into the pond and coming out. I had never seen so much of water on the road. There was not even a single inch of road that was visible. Cars were making their way slowly through it. Few cars had smoke coming out of them, I slowly made my way. The car in front of me stopped and I braked and put out my leg for support and my feet couldn't feel the ground till my knees were under water. I had never ridden my bike through something like this. I thought the water will flow into the engine and the bike would stall. Thank God, nothing happnd. Once I came out of the water, I could see cars parked on the edge of the road and I could hear the hissing of the engine which wuldn't start. There were few 2-wheelers, the kickers being kicked 'n' no. of times and not even a single sound from the engine. These people had a long night ahead.

I was lucky that night, I thanked all my Gods for their timely shower of mercy on me and I reached my home some 3 hrs after I started off from Delhi. Afternoon it had taken 35 mins to cover the same distance !! Well, time for Delhites to sing "Rain Rain go away".

Came back home saw Kung Fu Panda and slept!

Sunday was chill. Finished 'Keep Off the Grass' by afternoon. Went out in the evening, bought 'Thousand Splendid Suns' and 'Shantaram', bumped into an office colleague, spent some time in the market, came back and slept off.

Well, Saturday was longer than Sunday !!

I have to write my review of the book 'Keep off the Grass' and also "Splendid Thousand Suns", which I finished last night. I will write about them when thoughts flow freely. Right now, the mind is concentrating on the stomach. I guess it is time for me to go and have my dinner.

India Shining ...

I came across this shocking article today on my company's discussion forum. It is very well structured, thought provoking article or it is fear invoking article. The great Indian Growth animal has come across a fork in the road. One path puts it back on growth and the other one is what the article describes.

As Robert Forst puts it, "

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference "

I am not sure which path is the one that is less traveled and I am not sure whether it makes a positive or a negative difference. We were at the forefront of change few years back, and we made a choice then which resulted in the growth story India is proud of, but we are not able to continue that growth story for long. We have stumbled on it as soon as we started it.

I think lot of people wonder which path to take. What is that we need to do, to change the destiny that we are staring it. Is this what Nehru meant when he made that historical remark 'India's tryst with destiny' during his independence speech. Well no one can ever be sure of that.

But what we need is a list of things that we need to do, to come out of this mess - if at all I can say so.

Well, we do not have to start the research now. Goldman Sachs has already done it. Based on the research carried out by Jim O'Neill and Tushar Poddar, they have come out with a list of Ten things India has to do to achieve its 2050 potential i.e., to be one of the top two economies of the world.

The list is as follows:

1. Improve Governance

2. Raise Educational Achievement

3. Increase Quality and Quantity of Universities

4. Control Inflation

5. Introduce Credible Fiscal Policy

6. Liberalize Financial Markets

7. Increase Trade with Neighbors

8. Increase Agricultural Productivity

9. Improve Infrastructure

10. Improve Environmental Quality

The full report on the same is available here.

It is time we wake up from our deep slumber and get India back on the growth wagon.

Great Place to Work

This post is long due. I wanted to write about this soon after our company retreat. A lot of points were discussed during the retreat and one of the major agenda of the retreat was, as far as I understood, to make my division a great place to work. We were into diversed groups and asked to make presentations. Presentations we made, ideas we shared, concerns were raised, expectations were set and hope was revealed. All in all, a whole lot of things were unveiled.

When I look back at it, I wasn't sure what were we harping on. I think each one of us, defined a great place to work in our own way and our presentations were set on that understanding. So there were tangential views, far divergent from the views expressed before. I thought we were not converging on anything. As I feared, the ideas that were shared ended as Ideas without any of them translating into actionable items. The groups were asked to put across an action plan for making their 'idea' happen, and the groups religiously got back and I think that was the end of it.

Since I had not thought about our division in the lens of 'Great places to Work', I started to think on these lines. I was better off than most of my colleagues before I entered the red brick walls of my B-School, I worked in Texas Instruments, which was no. 1 in 2004 and no. 2 in 2005, in the Great places to Work in India survey. I was familiar with the systems and processes which makes a company a great to place to work for. So I started comparing the two. The comparison increased my confusion and I sought some element of clarity. Then I chanced upon this article on Great Places to Work in India.

The article talks about how a company is different from the rest when most of them appear to be similar. How one outperforms the other, how one ensures employee buy-in but the other doesnot, what are the parameters that make a good company great, so on and so forth. It is a captivating article. I suggest one should read this, whether they work in a great company or not, one should read it. It provides different perspectives towards the way a company functions, things which are not noticed will assume prominence, things which were taken for granted come to the lime light, certain things which are obvious are not at all obvious in most of the companies, few of them are small things which have humongous consequences. The author has done a great job in structuring the article and has increased the impact of the parameters by citing live examples from different companies.

I want to list down few interesting aspects of the article. It talks about relationships.

Relationship b/w employee and management : Trust
Relationship b/w employee and job : Pride
Relationship b/w employee and colleagues : Camaraderie

The author does a deep dive into all of the above aspects. To understand and appreciate it, one has to read the article

The Rainy day ....

It is poetry time again. In the last few days I have been absorbing this poem 'The Rainy Day' by H W Longfellow.

It is a beautiful poem starts off as an observation of a rainy day and comparison of a typical rainy day to life. The best is kept at the last, when the poet feels that it is the common fate across all the people and hopes that every one should go through a dark patch once in their life time to appreciate the best parts in their life. The lines are wonderfully crafted - 'Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary.'

The poem is good stand alone but what made me appreciate it more was the Harvard commencement address made by J K Rowling on 'The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination'. In her address, Ms. Rowling , talks about the advantages of Failure. what propelled her to become the woman she is now. She hit rock bottom and her greatest fear had been realized, and there was nothing to be afraid of. She also takes a strong stance when she says some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

Failure provided her an inner security, made her much more confident about her abilities, she discovered more about her during these testing times than ever before. She realized the strength of her will and her ability to fight back. Failure teaches a lot of lessons, lessons which we would have overlooked during better times. The Darwinian statement 'Survival of the fittest' assumes a totally different meaning than it was before.

Everything said and done, there are better ways to learn about things than just the hard way but learning it that way makes one internalise the learning and adopt it very easily in their life. The perspectives and the attitude towards life and the rest of the things changes. As H W Longfellow says,' Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary'.

The poem 'The Rainy Day' can be found here and the commencement address of JK Rowling here.

In line with my previous post, the line of HW Longfellow was a status message of a friend on my gtalk and so was the URL for the JK Rowling commencement address. I am sure both of them do not know each other. :) Patterns, Patterns and more patterns !!!

The patterns in Gtalk

There are lots of patterns in the status message of gtalk. To begin with Gtalk is a chat tool provided by Google. There is an option to provide a customised status message by every user, which will appear below their name on their friend's gtalk friend's list. Few of them leave it blank, few of them put quotes, few of them provide the music track they r listening to, few the hot news headline, few of them put their current state of mind, few of them put their aspiration, few provide links to the article or website they like and few others use it as a marketing tool to promote their website !!!
So all in all a simple status message provides a platform for people to say to the rest of the world what they want to.

When you look at the status message, you can make out the state of mind of the individual, whether he/she is happy, sad, gloomy, depressed, so on. Even the people who feel they r not good at expressing themselves in words, come up with a status message with a punch !! Thats the beauty of the gtalk status message. These status messages have introduced me to interesting songs, thought provoking quotes, wonderful websites, and terrific one-liners. It serves as a key to the Pandora's box.

If you want to get the attention of your friends, put up an interesting/sensitive/controversial status message on your gtalk and behold your friends will be pinging you left, right and centre. The message can be something like 'I am in Love'. Your friends will noy just chat with you but they will be discussing about your status message when you are not online as well and you will get all the attention you want.

If you keep track of an individual's status message for some time, you will know what is happening in other person's life. I am talking about people who do not mind expressing themselves on gtalk. There are varying shades here. Few of them just want to put quotes, few of them restrict themselves to what happens in the work place and very few venture into the personal domain. But things are chaning at a rapid rate here. People are moving from nothing to something, from links to quotes, from quotes to work place experience and slowly the personal side of the individuals is making its way into the gtalk status message.

Now, let me talk about the pattern that led to this post. This is the pattern with a timestamp. To put it simply, at any given instant of time if you scroll through your gtalk list and read the status message of the individuals, there might be few patterns in it. The first I time I noticed that was when most of my friends had a status message which reflected negative feelings. Someone had something on pessimism, someone was cynical, someone hated something, so on. Since then I started making a conscious effort to check the status messages of my friends regularly. Once I did that I was very surprised. There are patterns everyday. I must tell you, I have more than 200 people on my gtalk which includes my colleagues at office, my MBA batchmates, my engineering classmates, my sport mates, so on. They are located across the globe. This is not a pattern that is visible across one set of people in one geography. These are the patterns that was always there, but we never noticed. Interesting similar stuff happen to lots of people at the same time !!!

The simple text based gtalk status message has changed the way I see things. I can lock myself in my room and know what is happening with my friend thousands of miles away without actually talking or chatting with him/her.

I think the time has come to change the old adage 'Face is the index of the mind' to 'gtalk status message is the index of the mind of the invisible netizen'.

Alice in Wonderland

During the course of the week that just zipped past, I read Lewis Carrol's 'Alice in Wonderland'. The book is kinda nice. After reading few heavy mgmt books, this was a welcome change. What interested me in the book is the imagination of Lewis Carrol. The book is for the kids but there were lots of places where I could relate to Alice and I think others can relate to it. It is kinda funny but good. It is a small book, may take couple of hours to read it.

There were few interesting one-liners I came across in the book. Kept a note of it. Here they are:

o I am older than you, and must know better
o The best way to explain it is to do it
o You don't know much, that's a fact
o Which way I ought to go from here?’
‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat.
‘I don’t much care where–’ said Alice.
‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat
o It is love that makes the world go round
o The more there is of mine, the less there is of yours
o Be what you would seem to be

I am smitten by Lewis Carrol, so I am planning to read his 'Through the Looking Glass' as well.

Speeches by Al Pacino

Al Pacino.. what a great actor. He features among the top actors of all times. What poise, what delivery! He gets below the skin of the character and delivers the dialogue as it is very natural.

This post is not about Al Pacino or his acting. It is about few dialogues he delivered in few movies I like. You may not agree with me about attributing the success of these dialogues to Al Pacino since it is the person who wrote the screenplay came up with the dialogue. But what stands out is the way in which it was delivered. Be it Inch by Inch inspirational speech in 'Any Given Sunday' or his saving Charlie speech in 'Scent of a Woman', the way these dialogues were delivered, I cant think of anyone who could have done justice to them as done by Al Pacino.

Its been a long time since I saw them and heard them, but even to this day I remember them, The inch by ince one, word by word. The inch by inch one featured on the introduction section of the sports notice board in our college. Thats the power of the dialogue, but to make sense of it one has to see the clip, there is no shorter way to it. You can look at the clip and read it as well here. The piece is an inspirational one , not just to the team playing but to any one. It is more of someone sharing his life's learning than inspiring people to play and give their best in the game. The parallel drawn between the life and the game is truly exceptional. I think it pumps the adrenaline in anyone who reads it.

The scent of a woman stands in a totally different light altogether. It is more of someone holding on to a value and standing by it. Here also the life's experience comes into play, when he talks about the fork in the road. With well crafted examples he clearly defines whts integrity, whts courage. It is a revolt against the way the system is. It is not just about saving someone from a bad judgement or a not so good circumstance but it is about preventing the people from making a mistake, a mistake which is going to cost a great deal, about killing the soul of a young lad, about changing the way people look at things, giving prominence to certain terms which is used frequently but never understood - integrity, leadership, courage, spirit, soul. The speech and the video can be seen here.

Both the speeches shows the power of one. The one individual who had the experience, who learnt few lessons in his lifetime and helping the younger lot learn from his experience than the hard way, or the way he did. It is about conveying the experience in a manner and a circumstance where the people can relate to it easily and are in a position to appreciate and inculcate amongst themselves.

My 101st Post

Till today morning i didn't realise that i have made 100 posts on my blog. The last blog communication 2.0 is my 100th and this post is my 101st.

I started blogging in December 2004, when i came across my a blog written by my senior in college. Since then my blogging has been a bit On and Off. There were periods of intense activity such as my marathon practice, when the "bookworm" bit me, so on. Few of my posts were on what I wanted to post and me getting back to bloggin again just like you meet to discuss when to meet next types. There were several resolutions made to blog consistently and they were broken the next day. I don't know why I didn't blog as I planned to, may be it was the time, may be schedule, may be I didnt have much to share, rather I was not comfortable in penning down things, probably I was afraid that my friends might tease me, may be they might realise that I am stupid, so why risk it. :) . All these were the reasons but not at the same time, but I went through periods for each excuse I have mentioned. Well, over a period of 5 yrs, I think I have been able to overcome some of these and I am still working on some. But new reasons/new excuses have come now, but I will mention them later. ;)

Moving to the content part of it. I started with copying stuffs from the web, sometimes referencing it, sometimes not. Then I slowly moved to writing my thoughts on the article and referencing the article. Then they were poems. I love poems. So I had to share what I liked, so there was this poems fanatic, copying lyrics here and there and putting it in his blog and probably he would have appeared eSmart :) !!!

Then came the personal struggle phase. Where I started penning down my experience in my struggles in the class or on the play field. I think this was the phase I became confident about my writing abilities, and started penning down whatever I felt. I think I wrote few of my interesting blogs during this time. From then on, things became a bit smooth and I started blogging pretty regularly. I didn't want to make any resolution this time around since I had broken quiet a few before. So I decided I will blog only when I felt like doing so. I blogged, when I got an idea or when I learnt a lesson, or when something impressed me a great deal. Then the bookworm bit me, I started writing reviews about the books I read. It helped in recollecting what i read too and helped me in organising and articulating my thoughts too. This way it is kinda nice. I think I am still in that phase and I will be subjecting you to more of these book reviews!

All this while, I have kept my personal life outside this blog and as of now, I have no intention of bringing it on to the blog. Lets see if time changes things.

Thanks to IPL, I have been forced to think on these lines. It took me nearly 5 yrs (4.5 yrs to be exact) to reach my 100th post. I need to see how long will I take to reach the next 100th milestone. I am pretty sure that it will be less than 5 yrs, how short I need to wait and see. Don't worry I will not blog for the heck of blogging.

For all the good times and the not so good times, cheers to blogging !!!

Communication 2.0

I think I have been smitten by the communication bug off late, otherwise I wouldn't have come up with two posts on communication in the same month. This post is more from a formal communication perspective but it has some application on the informal side as well.

I had some thoughts on communication which as of now i feel are very relevant and apt. I am sure the list is not complete and if you feel i have missed out on something please feel free to add.

Speaker related
-----------------
Confidence of the speaker
Enthusiasm/passion/drive
Analogies
Description
Effectively explaining to all
Humor
Personality of the individual
Relating to the audience / Understanding the audience
Command over the language - Simile, metaphors
Body language
Eye contact
Voice modulation
Choice of words/ Vocabulary / Jargons
Accent
Improvisation
Listening
Responding/reacting to questions
Honest replies
Short and crisp messages
Clarity of thought
Tone of voice
Approachability/ Accomodating

Subject related
-----------------
Clarity / Understanding of the concept
Providing the audience what they want than what one knows
Improvisation

As one can say there is more attributes at an individual level than at the subject level. Most of us classify these skills as soft skills. If one has to reach high up, i think it is a good idea if one keeps a not on the above while communicating.

Face of the Company ....

Most of you know that I work in a consulting company. We get to face the client on a day to day basis and our top management keeps insisting that we are the 'face of the company', any interaction with the client is an opportunity and it has to be treated so,We need to put up our best at any given instant, so on and so forth. All these had not sunk in till today.

Today i was part of a presentation made by few members from a reputed company. I was one among the audience.

The first presenter was kind of OK, not all that impressive. Given that the Vice Chairman of the company was part of the audience i expected him to put up a good show. But a lot was desired or expected from him. The presenters who followed him were not great too. This actually made me think about the company. All of a sudden i realised that i was trying to judge a company based on the very few people I had met. I was not sure whether it is right on my part to judge the company based on the few people I interacted with ?

I know the company very well, few of my friends work for this company. During my undergrad days I wanted to be part of this company. So I didn't pass any Judgment on it. But I am not sure whether I would have stopped myself from judging it, if I didn't know the company at all. Assume that the company's name was something like XYZ and Co., would it have made a difference. I think yes, I would have built an opinion and next time anyone would have asked me about it, I would have given my not-so-favouring opinion.

So the question still persists, "Is it right on our part to judge a company based on the people we interact with?"

My hypothesis is that most of us do it. We make opinions or pass judgements based on the people we interact with.

It makes sense to a certain extent. These days almost all companies make tall claims, one cannot distinguish the bad apples from the good ones, untill a deep dive is done. Well no one has the time to do it too. So one makes impressions based on the employees of the organization. Interesting thing is, it is such a fast paced world, one might get very few opportunities to interact with different people from the same organization. So that the balancing between good and not-so-good might not happen, and probably the client might create a not-so-correct opinion about the company.

Now, I understand what the top management in our company mean when they make the sentence, "You are the face of the company". Every word we say, every action we make is passing messages to other people and we need to be watchful of that and probably use it to our own advantage. Good people will always create lot of good will to the company, as its face.

Well, as the popular saying goes, "Face is the index of the mind", we are the index of the company we represent.

Pen it, while it is HOT !!

There were a few articles that i wanted to write for sometime now....

Few of them were
o Status Update
o Mind of a group
o Proof Reading
o Attention span/interest

and this was a long time ago.

Last week i wanted to write on the Great South Indian Entrepreneur, not on any specific individual, buy my hypothesis about the lack of entrepreneurs from South India, but i couldn't manage to find the time to do that. I am happy that i could manage to pen my thoughts on communication though.

My 2 cents on this is, One has to pen it down as and when one feels like. If one waits for the right time or opportunity, the thoughts would have vanished or the desire to pen diminished.

So Pen it, while it is hot!!!

The weekend ....

It has been a quiet a busy weekend for me. Friday nite i spent my time with Pepsy. Saw 'Iron Man' in a local mall here. The movie is pretty good.

Started reading 'One' by Richard Bach, till the wee hours of morning and completed it too. Went to Delhi on saturday, had lunch with a colleague of mine, visited Crossword, bumped into friends who took my case big time for the free reading i was doin in Crossword. Bought couple of books, came back to Gurgaon, had dinner with Pepsy and Shaddy, saw Mumbai lose to Delhi in a nail bitting match. After the match, i managed to watch 21 Blackjack.

Sunday morning started with 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist', completed it by afternoon, cleaned my room, saw F1, felt miserable for Sutil, saw RCB driving the nail on DC's coffin, went out had dinner and now blogging.

Well kinda hectic weekend with two movies, two IPL matches , two books ... with a long day tommorrow i think i need to rest now. i think i will watch a movie now or start reading another book.

i write reviews of the book i read on my blog, but not the reviews of the movie, i think i will start that sometime soon.... well u will get more to read about if u check this blog regularly...

One

Read Richard Bach's 'One' this weekend. The book is good but it is not in the same league as 'Jonathon Livingston Seagull' / 'Illusions'. I expected more from Bach than what i got out from One.

The book is about alternate world or parallel universe.

If you understand trees, i think it is very easy to explain. A tree in mathematics is actually inverted real life tree. It has a root at the top and it has branches going down, and it has nodes where more branches branch out.

"One" talks about one such tree. Here the reason for branching is the choice one has. If you pick up one choice you traverse the branch corresponding to that or if you take the other one the other branch. In life usually one may not revisit the choices again. Effectively in life, each one of us traverse a particular path by making the choices we make. The alternate world or parallel universe is a phenomenon where in, the other choices exists or the other branches are traversed.

"One" connects these branches by making Bach and Leslie move across the tree, thereby making them realise the magnitude of the choices they had to make. Bach has put in lot of imagination into the book.

While reading the book, i could imagine the move 'Matrix' - becoz the movie talks about choices , the red pill or the blue pill, the left door or the right door, so on. The question is 'What If?'. The problem with choices are, it is difficult to estimate the significance/consequences/effects of the choice when we are supposed to pick one of the choice. The reality hits hard sometimes, sometimes one gets lucky. After all that one goes through, there is no way of telling that one can get their choice right the next time.

You can talk about alternate world / parallel universe, but what matters is right here and right now. I am not sure if there is a standard way of looking at the choices or going by intuition/gut feel is the right way to make the choices. But one thing that resonates in the book is "The choice is the difference". One is whatever he/she is, is due to the choices he/she has made during their course of life.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

I read this book "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" by Mohsin Hamid today. I had bought this book couple of months back and could read it only today, thanks to my friend Devendra who slept on it all this while. I had to go to Delhi to fetch it back.

The book is kind of captivating, if you can relate to the story. I could therefore i finished it in a single sitting (sometime lying down).

About the book:

The book is about a young pakistani discovering himself amidst the hustle and bustle of global politics, terrorism and love. The interesting part of the book is its narration style. One has to give it to the author here. The main character of the book Changez is walking back in the memory lane and narrating it to an American Tourist, who never says a single word in the entire book. Hamid throws in some fillers during the narration which acts as stress releasers and gives the book its unique touch. I am not sure it is common, but this was the first time i came across this narrative style, where the other person doesn't even utter a single word.

Coming to the story line, the story is about the young aspirant Changez, who clears several hurdles to get into Princeton. Once there he continues to study hard and manages to be one of the best in class. Post Princeton he gets into a top firm doing valuation and also finds the love of his life.

I could easily relate to he making it into Princeton, his campus life, studies and then managing to get into one of the top firms. I happened to study, during my graduation and post grad days, with set of students who went to Harvard, Princeton, Stern, Stanford, so on. I have personally experienced the hunt for the best company. I think this made me to pursue the book with keen earnest, i walked back on my memory lane with each sentence i read. I had something or the other to think about in the initial chapters.

The love story is beautiful brought about, well i cannot add much to it apart from appreciating it. When it comes to working in the best firm and the competition in it, it is what most of us do. It does not matter, where one passes out from or where one lands up, the race against time, the race to outperform the others will always be there. It is not just monetary, power or ego, i think it pulls someother strings beyond that. So our dear Changez enters the corporate world at an early age of 22, and excels! He is the no. 1 amongst the new recruits, pet of the big boss and there is no stopping him.

Comes 9/11 and the whole thing turns around. Changez starts questioning about the way he is, the way world is, ways of the people. He starts looking at his life in a totally different lens and the whole world changes its colour for him. As with most people, who begin introspection, even Changez goes through a period of confusion. His love life is in a turmoil, not because of him or maybe because of him, poor thing had nothing to do with it. He couldn't understand or completely comprehend Erica's behaviour or her feelings towards him. Her love towards the deceased Chris and his attitude towards the world he had left behind, takes him through a journey of discovering self.

The way this change has been explained and brought about in the book his splendid. The reader feels that the reason for change is pretty obvious. Nothing is thrust upon, the change flows through very easily. Changez embraces 'Focus on the Fundamentals', the tagline of the firm he worked for, in his pursuit and the Fundamentalist rises. Changez transforms from a young career oriented boy to a questioning man! He searches for answers, the land that he had got used to so well, becomes an alien land and he longs to go back to his country. He gives up everything, the job, the pay, the love and goes back to his country, to be with his people.

As per me, what the books fails to capture is what next, he discovered himself, he went back, what nexxt?? A smart, intelligent kid, goes back to his motherland, and then what?? I am not sure whether Hamid should have proceeded further, but i think it stops at the right time for the reader to completely observe what the author wanted to.

Overall an interesting read.

Weather in Gurgaon ....

As a write on an early Wednesday morning sitting at my table in my room in Gurgaon, the weather outside is terrific. It is raining for the past one week, the temperature has come down drastically, the humidity is superb, the whole atmosphere is so very romantic. It reminds me of my school days in my hometown Bangalore. The weather used to be so good, all those early morning cycling to get to the school, walks in the afternoon, cricket in the evenings, chaats thereafter. During those days i never thought weather is something people crib about. Well i realised it the hard way, when i landed at Delhi airport when the thermometer read 49.5 Celsius.
Bangalore has lost most of its weather, but there are instances such as today which takes me back to those days and engulfs me with the blazes of my sweet childhood memories.

So you can ask me what am i doing inside the room when the weather outside is so pleasant. Well, i have a job and i need to get to that, pleasant or unpleasant, the job has to get done. Moreover, if i want to share a cup of coffee with anyone in this romantic weather, there is no one here, i am all alone and tied to my room. So i think it is better to get to office and join those innumerable conversations about the weather and how v r subjected to sit inside the office and generate revenue for the company !! :)

It is very hard to imagine Delhi/Gurgaon to be this way in the middle of may, instead of the sun breathing down our back it is the rain which is providing an umbrella of clouds for us!

Communication

The third dimension of communication ...

All this while i thought there were only two dimensions to communication. One Verbal and the other non-verbal. I think these two needs no introduction. I have come across people who are good at both verbal and non-verbal. If there is a good co-ordination between verbal and non-verbal that shows the confidence of the person and his/her command/clarity over what they are talking about.
I have learnt a great deal by watching those people.

Command over verbal comes from ability to express oneself in the vocabulary one has or the vocabulary the audience has. For the communication to be effective, the confidence of the person should be reasonably good and the co-ordination between verbal and non-verbal should be excellent.

There is a person in my office who has exceptional communication skills. He is part of the top management. He chooses his words carefully and when he completes a sentence there is hardly any ambiguity or misinterpretation in whatever he says. He is very particular about communication and he has consciously made efforts to reach that pinnacle in communication. He has lot of energy and pumps in huge amount of passion in whatever he does. His speeches are always captivating.

The third dimension of communication that i talked about came through noticing him. There is an organizational wide process we have to do and this person is driving it. He is very passionate about that. As with most of the organizations and organizational initiatives, most of the people do not feel that the new process is going to do any good and few of them feel that it is a waste of their time and energy.

Time and again he speaks to these people with the same passion and drive i was talking about in the earlier part of the blog. It is very captivating. He takes you through a journey and expresses his vision with crystal clear clarity and lays down his plan of how to get there. Usually people get convinced then and there, but over a period of time they get back to their original state. It is not a one-off case, but most of them oscillate from no-opinion to complete buy-in and then back to no-opinion.

This person has lot of respect in the organization and no single soul doubts his abilities or leadership qualities. Still i didn't understand why the people didn't have a complete buy-in to the cause. After some thought, i think i figured out the reason behind it. This person's communication is good, he is expressing himself very well, he has clarity, he has confidence and he has the power equation towards him but what i think he is failing to achieve is, he is not able to rub-off the passion and the drive he has for the initiative to other people. People listen, understand the words, but not the passion or the emotion behind it. So the third dimension to communication really communicating these emotions to the listener or the audience. If one masters that one can move the crowd in which ever way they want to.

I think history has people like Hitler, Martin Luther King Jr. , Lincoln who could do that. King Khan does it in many of his movies, rather to think of it, i think it is his most significant USP. You remove Khan and put some1 else there and ask them to deliver the same dialogue i think mose of the audience will not be moved at all. King Khan ensures that most of them walk out of the cinema hall with tears in their eyes. He communicates the emotions too. Agreed there is the dialogue, background score but one cannot ignore the Khan element in them .

In everyday life too there are people who do that or instances where people rub-off the emotions, may be due to the nature of the emotion itself. If one is in a very good jovial mood and someone works with this person for sometime the other person will (might) also get into a good mood but the same may not be true if the first person was in a bad mood. There is some rub-off of the good mood across individuals.

So this communication of emotions, is what i refer to as the next dimension in communication following verbal and non-verbal.

Secrets by Rhonda Byrne

I spent my sunday reading Secrets by Rhonda Byrne. I didn't know much about the book just that it was the no. 1 bestseller in Crossword, Landmark and Reliance Time-out. I had read the preview of the book in the bookstore and thought that it is more of an inspirational kind of a book, so didnt buy that.

Now, how did i get my hands on the book? I got the book as a gift from one of our vendors as part of their relationship management exercise. The interesting part is the relationship manager had written something like 'Sharing with you the spirit that drives our team'. I am not sure whether she meant this or not, it made me read the book.

About the book:

It talks about the secret law, the law of attraction, the entire content of the book revolves around this law. There are quotes by the people who have internalised it and certain illustrations of people who are benefited by it. The book is well structured. It starts off with introducing the law and simplified it further for better understanding. It provides processes for using the law and illustrations of the application of the law in certain aspects one values the most, like money, relationships, health, world, life and the self !

While reading the book what came to my mind was the quote from Paulo Coelho's Alchemist, "When you know what you want the whole world conspires you to achieve it". Secrets is about this and much more, in secrets the whole world is replaced by the entire Universe and the contribution of the self in order to achieve the "it".

Another thing that struck me was, Secrets talks about thoughts. If you have good thoughts you attract good thoughts and you feel good and if you have bad thoughts you attracts bad thoughts and you feel bad. Along these lines, in Mahabharata, Yudhisteera, the elder brother of the Pandavas, goes around the world and comes back and informs Lord Krishna that there are no bad people on earth whereas Dhuryodhana does the same thing and comes back and says that there are no good people on earth. As per the Mahabharata, Yudhisteera is the good guy and Dhuryodhana the bad guy. So is it because of his thoughts that Yudhisteera attracted only good guys towards him and Dhuryodhana attracted the bad guys. I am not sure if the tale itself is true, but if it is it just reinforces the message in Secrets !!!

The book is not heavy and written in a simple language with lots of illustration and does not promise heaven on earth. One can finish it in a single sitting.

There is a movie on Secrets as well. I haven't seen it yet but surely will do so.

Regarding the book, it is worth a read !

The Motorcycle Diaries

I just now finished reading motorcycle diaries by Che Guevara. The book is more of a diary of Che during his travel across Latin America.

I expected the book to be more about Che, how he became the revolutionary, what influenced him to move away from his profession . Well, the book just falls short of that. There are 3 or 4 pages in the end which talks about the revolutionary Che. It is more like a speech Che is making to the general audience than the transformation. I think i had wrong expectations about the book, but if you treat the book as a travel diary, it is an interesting read.

It gives a brief account of the life and culture in Latin America. It throws in some history of the land as well. The interesting bit about the book it never compares each country with Argentina (Che's home) or to any of the previous countries visited. There are fleeting comparison on the economic drivers, dress and the language. The regions visited were poorer, the mines were a typical owners exploiting the locals. Che is moved by all these, but at any point there is no connect between things that moved him across regions. There is an instance in the book were a couple talk about communism, but there is no build-on after that. He comes across a rebels planing a strike but he keeps away from it. It is more of taking things the way they come and hardly any contemplation thereafter.

What i feel is Che observed the pain of the people during his tour but there was something in the later part of his life which changed him and his attitude towards the way he saw life and the people. And his previous observation of the people in Latin America got new meanings which might have strengthened the cause he believed in and probably fuelled the revolutionary che became.

More insights into this change in nature and the new interpretation about the life in Latin America will be useful and will be very handy to understand one of the greatest revolutionaries of the century.

IF by Rudyard Kipling

This is one of the poems that i like.

Each time i read the poem a different line stands out. I don't know why. It might be due to the state of my mind then or different things to be significant for me at different points in time. Whenever i read it takes me to a different place and soothens the mind and brings in tranquility.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master,
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

Heaven of Freedom

I came across this poem in Kishore Biyani's Retail book "IT happens only in India" . I somehow got hooked onto it and googled it out. Tagore has woven the words very beautifully, it is his vision for the nation. We have the preamble which is about how the country should be but it is no where closer to Tagore's vision.

One of my colleague's in office came to know about my liking for this poem and mentioned that i am looking at Utopia. Utopia is something ideal and anything ideal is kind of impractical (the way i see it), but Tagore's vision for the country i dont think it is impractical, it is something that is doable.

What i feel is we do not have to look at country here, we can replace country here with the company that we work for. Is it Utopia? Is Utopia what we need? Why is our company the way it is? Can we do something about it? Can we be the harbingers of change?

The poem is as follows:

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
by narrow domestic walls;
Where the words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening
thought and action--
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father,
let my country awake.

-Tagore

The Google story

Everyone knows Google today. Is it the company or the brand or the search engine. I feel there is no line between all these.

In the last decade Google came into prominence through its amazing search engine. As time moved on, Google hit the lime light again with their Advertising initiative. Even thought they have some 120 products under them, Search and Advertising are by-far the most important products Google has come up with. These two are making life tough for its competitors.

It is a company built on technology and strategy, both of them with equal proportions. Their attention to detail and clarity of purpose have resulted in they sweeping the market time and again. As per the CEO, Google has a vision in place, a vision which will take 300 yrs to materialise. The company is focused on "Ubiquity first, revenues later". Their programmers are told "Usefulness first, usability later". If this is the attitude of the company and if they Walk the Talk, there is no way on earth anyone can stop them.

Apparently, the company has a 80-20 rule, where-in the employees will perform their usual activities in 80% of their time and 20% of their time they need to work on new ideas or projects of their own liking. The seeds of innovation are sown here. Google News is one such by-product.

The company is doing good even though the competition is getting tougher day-by-day, but Google has occupied a very important place in the minds of the customer and it will take a herculean task for any company to replace that space.

Well, Google is here to stay !!!

Even this shall pass away ....

Even this shall pass away nature and beings.

Once in Persia reigned a king,
Who upon his signet ring
Graved a maxim true and wise,
Which, if held before his eyes,
Gave him counsel at a glance
Fit for every change and chance.
Solemn words, and these are they;
"Even this shall pass away."

Trains of camels through the sand
Brought him gems from Samarkand;
Fleets of galleys through the seas
Brought him pearls to match with these;
But he counted not his gain
Treasures of the mine or main;
"What is wealth?" the king would say;
"Even this shall pass away."

'Mid the revels of his court,
At the zenith of his sport,
When the palms of all his guest
Burned with clapping at his jest,
He, amid his figs and wine,
Cried, "O loving friends of mine;
Pleasures come, but not to stay;
'Even this shall pass away."

Lady, fairest ever seen,
Was the bride he crowned his queen.
Pillowed on his marriage bed,
Softly to his soul he said:
"Though no bridegroom ever pressed
Fairer bosom to his breast,
Mortal flesh must come to clay-
Even this shall pass away."

Fighting on a furious field,
Once a javelin pierced his shield;
Soldiers, with a loud lament,
Bore him bleeding to his tent.
Groaning from his tortured side,
"Pain is hard to bear, " he cried;
"But with patience, day by day,
Even this shall pass away."

Towering in the public square,
Twenty cubits in the air,
Rose his statue, carved in stone.
Then the king, disguised, unknown,
Stood before his sculptured name,
Musing meekly: "What is fame?
Fame is but a slow decay;
Even this shall pass away."

Struck with palsy, sore and old,
Waiting at the Gates of Gold,
Said he with his dying breath,
"Life is done, but what is Death?"
Then, in answer to the king,
Fell a sunbeam on his ring,
Showing by a heavenly ray,
"Even this shall pass away."

- Theodore Tilton

This is going to hurt a little bit ....

After deliberating on it for a very very long time, i finally managed to get the braces on. As i sat in the dentist chair, the following song was ringing in my ears.

This is just going to hurt a little bit

One thing I like less than most things is sitting in a dentist chair with
my mouth wide open.
And that I will never have to do it again is a hope that I am against hope hopen.

Because some tortures are physical and some are mental,
But the one that is both is dental.
It is hard to be self-possessed
With your jaw digging into your chest.

So hard to retain your calm
When your fingernails are making serious alterations in your life line
or love line or some other important line in your palm;

So hard to give your usual effect of cheery benignity
When you know your position is one of the two or three in life
most lacking in dignity.

And your mouth is like a section of road that is being worked on.
And it is all cluttered up with stone crushers and concrete mixers and
drills and steam rollers and there isn't a nerve in your head that
you aren't being irked on.

Oh, some people are unfortunate enough to be strung up by thumbs.
And others have things done to their gums,
And your teeth are supposed to be being polished,
But you have reason to believe they are being demolished.
And the circumstance that adds most to your terror
Is that it's all done with a mirror,
Because the dentist may be a bear, or as the Romans used to say, only
they were referring to a feminine bear when they said it, an ursa,
But all the same how can you be sure when he takes his crowbar in one
hand and mirror in the other he won't get mixed up, the way you
do when you try to tie a bow tie with the aid of a mirror, and forget
that left is right and vice versa?

And then at last he says That will be all; but it isn't because he then
coats your mouth from cellar to roof
With something that I suspect is generally used to put a shine on a
horse's hoof.

And you totter to your feet and think. Well it's all over now and after
all it was only this once.
And he says come back in three monce.
And this, O Fate, is I think the most vicious circle that thou ever sentest, That Man has to go continually to the dentist to keep his teeth in good
condition when the chief reason he wants his teeth in good condition
is so that he won't have to go to the dentist.

- Ogden Nash

Books to read

Hindu view of life by S Radhakrishnan
Man's Search for Meaning
Fooled by Randomness
What they don't teach you at Harvard


I came across these books when i was browsing the net or through few of my friends. But i have not been able to find time to read them yet, whenever i am pressed with work, i think about them and i get this feeling in my head that i need to read them in a single sitting, which i understand that is not possible, well one does not have much control over their feelings. Everything said and done, these books are haunting me for a fortnight now, dunno when i will get into the grove to start reading them. As i type now, i feel i will be able to do that once i get back home. Well, i have not talked about the new place that i have shifted to. Will talk about that in a little while.

Given the baddy and dinner and the usual bakar, i am not sure i will be able to do it. But lets see how i will be able to manage these things. :)

"My Precious" diary

It is always a pain to find time to blog. Not that you are too busy or something, whatever free time one gets, they do not want to spend time in front of the laptop. I prefer reading to blogging. I hang out with friends, watch some movie or something. But sometimes i feel, there are lots of things happening in my life and my memory is not able to keep pace with my life. So there should be some way i would like to revisit the experiences i have had. One sure way to do it is to catch up with those people with whom you shared those experiences. A simpler way and a personal way to do is to keep a diary or blog. I am not that determined or disciplined to keep a diary of my own.

During my childhood days i felt that i have to keep a diary. It might be more because of more of what i had heard than the actual need for it. That diary will be 'My Precious', it will have all those thoughts i have in mind. I will pen down each and every experience i will have. I will be truly honest with my diary and it will be my best pal. The euphoria around the diary or the mere thought of having a diary and to be honest with it was a big thing to me in those days.

Well, i thought more about it than actually starting one. I got one of those big diaries my dad had and filled up the contact page with the beautiful handwriting i had then :). Then my siblings, as curious as they are, started peeking into what i am doing with a diary. Well, whoever has siblings understand this. Whenever you need your siblings they are not around or they dony comply. When you dont need them, they are always around and they poke their nosed in everything. Well, this brought me back to the real world. I started to feel that if these people get hold of my diary with my thoughts and experiences in them, they are going to make fun of them and it would be just a matter of time when my friends will be laughing at me. Well i think the fear was bigger than the enthu or i was not matured enough to handle that, my diary started and ended on the same day and i couldn't muster enough courage to revive the enthu back.

Later in life whenever i felt the need for a diary, i had to rationalise it with my bad writing skills and i would rely on my memory. By then, people had started complementing me on the photographic memory i had. Other's belief was my belief and i had decided that i could rely on my memory than a diary and it was an easy and a safer way out.

But very late in my life i realised the importance of penning down thoughts or revisiting the experiences while writing about it. In doing so, one will think more and deeper about it. One will come across different perspectives of looking at the same thing. One will know more about oneself that way, some sort of realization of the self sets in. There will lots of lessons to be learnt all along the way !!!

Well, the boy was 8 yrs then and he is 26 yrs now !!!

Travel this week !!!

I have been travelling a bit off late. I always loved to travel but the last week's travel got to me.

My travel schedule was Bangalore - Delhi - Ahmedabad - Delhi in 3 days. All of them were early morning flights (5 am to 6:30 am) and one has to reach atleast 1 hr before the departure and had to wakeup nearly 2 hrs to departure, and all these days i had to wake-up at 3-4 am.

Smart thing to do is to sleep early and wake up early, but my engagements used to keep me awake till 1 or 2 in the morning.I am a person who doesn't get sleep in the flight, most of the time i read or listen to music, if i am not engaged in a conversation with my co-passenger. All in all i got to sleep only for 8 hrs those three days !!! not that it is too less or something, but coupled with the tiresome travel and the work committments it becomes a bit more demanding.

I reachned a stage where i couldn't keep my eyes open, then i realised its time for me to hit bed. I left office at 5 pm, bumping into the client, the vice chairman of the company and all those people whom i didnt want to while i was leavin the office that early. There were raised eyebrows but i couldnt even raise my eyelids. It was one of those moments when Murphy scores a point.

I reached home at 5:30 and hit bed. I got a call from the CEO of the company at around 7:30 and i couldnt figure out what was happening. Apparently he wanted to know my views on something and based on the other people who were on the call i did speak some sense, what exactly i do not have a clue. :)

All in all, it was an exciting and a demanding week. There were few lessons learnt on the personal front.

Pending items

There a few things that i wanted to write about and i haven't got the time(rather enthu) yet.. .but will do so very soon ...

1. Status Update
2. Mind of a group
3. Proof Reading
4. Attention span/interest

Whats in Web 2.0

Blogs (short for Web logs) are online journals or diaries hosted on a Web site and often distributed to other sites or readers using RSS (see below).

Collective intelligence refers to any system that attempts to tap the expertise of a group rather than an individual to make decisions. Technologies that contribute to collective intelligence include collaborative publishing and common databases for sharing knowledge.

Mash-ups are aggregations of content from different online sources to create a new service. An example would be a program that pulls apartment listings from one site and displays them on a Google map to show where the apartments are located.

Peer-to-peer networking (sometimes called P2P) is a technique for efficiently sharing files (music, videos, or text) either over the Internet or within a closed set of users. Unlike the traditional method of storing a file on one machine—which can become a bottleneck if many people try to access it at once—P2P distributes files across many machines, often those of the users themselves. Some systems retrieve files by gathering and assembling pieces of them from many machines.

Podcasts are audio or video recordings—a multimedia form of a blog or other content. They are often distributed through an aggregator, such as iTunes.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) allows people to subscribe to online distributions of news, blogs, podcasts, or other information.

Social networking refers to systems that allow members of a specific site to learn about other members’ skills, talents, knowledge, or preferences. Commercial examples include Facebook and LinkedIn. Some companies use these systems internally to help identify experts.

Web services are software systems that make it easier for different systems to communicate with one another automatically in order to pass information or conduct transactions. For example, a retailer and supplier might use Web services to communicate over the Internet and automatically update each other’s inventory systems.

Wikis, such as Wikipedia, are systems for collaborative publishing. They allow many authors to contribute to an online document or discussion.