Chowmahalla - Peace In The Midst Of Chaos

Over the long weekend, we went out to see Chowmahalla palace in the old city area of Hyderabad. The palace actually is a set of 4 palaces. I am posting few snaps that were taken. You may refer Wiki or Chowmahalla.com if you are interested in its history.

   

Chowmahalla is right next to Charminar in the midst of all the chaos. Charminar, however, will not be what it is without the chaos of the old city. Whereas, Chowmahalla which is hardly half a kilometer away from Charminar has utter silence and peace the moment you step in.

The 4 palaces are built back to back seperated by lawns. Wardrobe, crockery, arms and ammunition and vintage cars are put for display. The clothes and crockery will definitely be an attraction for women. The variety of swords and knives will amaze you.

 

Swiss Knife - Nizam style?

The Palace

Above all, a studio inside the palace offers to take your pictures in royal clothes and for just Rs. 100/-, they provide you a printout which has an antique feel to it. We took one and it is in our private collection. Don't miss it!

I want to see the place at night(Right now, it closes by 5.00 pm) and will wait for an opportunity.

Meanwhile check my Flickr Stream.

Bleed India

Just ran into an Bleed India website. 

The basic idea is to expose the Netas (Abhi-netas???) in our system who give a squat about the nation. Bleed India's approach with a pinch of sarcasm is innovative and they are becoming very popular. But if they keep sarcasm to a dilute level, their website may serve its purpose. They have launched this website as a parody to Times Of India's Lead India campaign. 

... So while the Times Of India tries to find new leaders for a new age (good luck gentlemen!), we focus instead on those who Bleed India; Masters of the Scam, Tigers of the Tightrope: Surely they deserve some acknowledgement of their genius - in staying above the law, beyond the law, in making it and in breaking it..wah! wah! Ladies and gentlemen…you have led us and yes you have bled us.

There are very relevant polls on this site which is based on satire. 

What is bigger threat to India? Valentines Day Or The Recession

Who has Bled India more? Moral Police Or Chor Police

Lead India website has a more concrete and serious presentation about criminals in our political system. "Say No To Criminals" exposes over 500 sitting MPs with the list of their pending criminal cases. 

While Lead India was a bold initiative, the winner of the first Lead India initiative, RK Mishra, joined BJP, which to me, did not sound like a great move. RK Mishra, will now be working with an established political party with over 29 MPs having criminal cases pending (refer NoCriminals.org too). I feel that his cause of joining politics has been diluted as he gets aligned to the ideologies of the party. It is not that I favor Congress or any other political party. India is a nation where party loyalty and policies are given paramount importance over the benefits of the nation (the nuclear deal as one example). 

Also, when we have candidates giving 10 crores for a ticket to fight elections, I seriously doubt if he/she will ever have "betterment of the nation" high on his/her agenda at any point. We will need leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru who will look at money with disdain. Indian administrative layer is bigger problem where elections or democracy may really not help, but I will keep that discussion for later. 

Will India continue bleeding even after the elections or are we in for some good governance? You tell me ...

And Here Comes The Flying Car

No more road trips?

Seen flying cars in movies? Here comes one for real.

"Terrafugia Transition" is first flying car and it passed the first flight test on March 5th, 2009.

It can fly up to 450 miles at 115 miles per hour.

"... two-seat, four-wheeled, carbon-fiber-composite aircraft, which can fly up to 450 miles at 115 miles per hour and is distinguished by folding wings that ratchet out of the way when it’s on the ground. That makes the craft just 80 inches wide, narrow enough to tool down the highway—where it can go up to 65 mph and get 30 miles to the gallon."

The video of the first test:



I want 500 meters stretch infront of my apartment so that I can take off this "car". I am going to write a letter to GHMC for leveling the road.

Should I Vote?

Congress-JMM alliance splits in Jharkhand over seats.

Congress facing infighting in Haryana.

Rift in SP as Jaya Prada renominated from Rampur.

Jayalalitha lures PMK as Congress hits roadblock in Tamil Nadu.

BJP struggles ahead of elections with seat sharing issue in Orissa with BJD.

CPM part ways with Congress and ready for any role in Third Front.

NCP-Congress drama goes on and
Pawar wants Maharashtrian to become PM.
... and many more that you may read in the news.

A myriad of political parties coming under 3 major umbrellas to fight an election with close to 700 million voters and a spending estimated at Rs. 10,000 crores ($2 billion) and we are not sure if we will get a clear end result.

Each and every party is interested in seats and getting into power. In fact, I have not heard any party issues their manifesto except CPM (Read here)

I feel that a large majority of population is not sure whom to vote for just because they neither know the history of the candidate nor what they have done in his/her previous tenure.

Should we explore negative voting?

This way, we vote. A negative vote!

Why Not To Fire People?

Nokia, IBM, SAP, Dell lays off.

TCS comtemplating lay offs.

Till March 18th, 310,714 lay offs (Source).

Prime driving factor is the economic downturn and hence there is a huge pressure to bring finances under control.

Does it really help?

No, I don't think so. The reason "usually" cited when an employee is fired is non-performance within his skill set which got him/her the job in the first place. The reasons do not connect really well and these people probably should not have been hired at all.

While enterprises heave a sigh of relief by laying people off, I think they may be in for bigger trouble by inducing an increased sense of insecurity into the people who survive the lay offs. It does not stop there. The insecurity results in stress at work, depression and health issues. The perception of the employees about the company changes for the worse and these are the people trusted with carrying the company forward.

A survey on layoff survivors reveal some interesting statistics:

1. 87% of surviving workers say they are less likely to recommend their organization as a good place to work
2. 64% of surviving workers say the productivity of their colleagues has also declined.
3. 81% of surviving workers say the service that customers receive has declined.
4. 77% of surviving workers say they see more errors and mistakes being made.
5. 61% of surviving workers say they believe their company’s future prospects are worse.

So here is what I have to say. Laying people off is the least effective way and pay cuts is a the way to go. The teams will be in place and employees will respect the management. The concern may be that these employees become vulnerable to competitive hires, but in this economic slump, who is hiring? With that in mind, when companies have an option either to cut 5% cost or layoff 5% of the employees, why would they even choose the latter? When the market picks up, enterprises holding on to the employees, will be in a better shape than ones who are frantically looking to hire new people to manage the demand generated by their new projects.

Another option is to have employees take vacation with the basic salary till they get new projects. This way they retain the talent and reduce recruitment activities, thereby reducing costs. If these people are shown the door, they are going to send in toxicity into the market which may hurt the brand. Believe me, "word of mouth" is very powerful and with tools likes Facebook and Twitter, information passes virally which can be detrimental to the brand itself.

While it may look like the right choice at the moment, enterprises need to evaluate the third angle which results in inflicting negativity in the employee base who may not be laid off. Also, they need to have a long term vision of where they want to be when the market starts picking up.

Here is an article which questions why CEOs resort to layoffs when such moves no longer seem boost any profits.

Again, I feel, holding on to your employees with paycuts is the best choice.

Working From Home

Let me say ... I love it. 

Working from home is not a new concept but in India, probably it is not encouraged. I am not talking about people who are into free lancing. This about those people who work for large enterprises and works along with a team to deliver services.

Now, why I love it?

1. Freedom: It lets me operate the way I want to and the pressure is far less compared to being nailed down to a ergonomic (or not so ergonomic) chair and the manager or team lead breathing down your neck.

2. More productive: Given the freedom and environment that I am most comfortable with, I get more work done than when I am in office. In fact, I log into start work earlier than what I would do when I am in office. Moreover, when I am at home, I somehow feel more responsible towards what needs to be delivered and does not feel that I am stretching myself. 

3. No distraction: Working from home is a bliss if you need long hours of concentration. It is next to impossible to get that level of concentration if you are in office where people bump into you and end up in casual conversations that you sometimes cannot escape and ultimately lose time.

4. Other benefits:

• No commute
• No traffic jams ( and no heart attacks)
• Save fuel
• No pollution
• Not stuck with canteen food (especially when Chinese Combo has banana and curd rice)

These were personal benefits. But, for corporates, there are huge benefits by promoting this culture.

1. Save on the infrastructure - Reduce investment in power, desk space, desktops, phones and other company utilities. Instead divert fraction of this investment to setup better servers and connectivity infrastructure (VPN, Bandwidth, 3G etc.)

2. People care - Employees benefit out of less travel (health, time and monitory benefit). The concerns of work-life balance by employees get addressed as they get to be at home and they feel responsible for their own time.

3. Business Continuity - For any incidents like 9/11, this kind of operation model always helps with such attacks never affecting the services because you don't station all you employees at one place. One recent incident was the snow fall in the UK where most of the services were disrupted. But there was one case where Silicon.com ensured business continuity by having people work from home.

Working from home has its own set of challenges which corporates may dig out. I am going to try an give some answers here for those challenges.

1. Collaboration & interacting with a team - While this may be one of the prime concerns, instant messaging (IM), VoIP and collaboration tools like Google Docs are always there as a solution to this. For the conference facilities across geographies, there are virtual platforms like SecondLife that can be tapped to reduce travel.

2. Monitoring the staff - Yes, this is a problem. Working from home culture is not going to start working just like that. Unified Communications Technology can be used to create monitoring mechanisms. Clear roles and responsibilities need to be defined for the employees who form a team and thereby creating accountability.

For people interested, here is a post about tips for working from home.

There are some things I miss when I work from home. The human interaction, all the gossips and office politics :). But then, there is Facebook, Twitter and IM for that (i know, not for human interaction). These not just things for personal use. Its high time business starts using these and avail the benefits.

C'mon, this is age of the internet.

Having said that, I have some work to finish before I go to office tomorrow.

Technology Going Weird

I am having hard time imagining where technology will be in the future.

Kazuhiro Taniguchi of Osaka University in Japan has invented a gadget that controls iPod with facial gestures.

A wink, a smile or a raised eyebrow could soon change the music on your iPod or start up the washing machine, thanks to a new Japanese gadget. The device looks like a normal set of headphones but is fitted with a set of infrared sensors that measure tiny movements inside the ear that result from different facial expressions.

This is just the start. We seen touch based controls and now have started seeing gesture based electronic controls (here). But, this one takes it a step further and personalizes the experience with high configurability. Instead of sticking your tongue out to change the track, you can configure to do it by smiling. (I am impressed!). And ...

"If it judges that you aren't smiling enough, it may play a cheerful song."

All those things that we used to see in Bond movies are turning into reality. 

My thought - One day our hands and legs may become vestigial organs ... 

Why I Am On Twitter?

Its been almost 2 months that I have been on Twitter and I already have tweeted 659 times.

Why am I on Twitter when I am already on Facebook and LinkedIn?

1. Twitter is instantaneous information - Any information that you want is on your finger tips. It is faster than text messaging. Use twitter search and you get information that YOU NEED probably faster than Google. There are user scripts also available for this.

2. It lets me focus on my areas of interest - While Facebook and LinkedIn are great Social Networking sites, accessing the information that I need is not an easy job. People who are on Twitter are so passionate that the information shared is valuable and authentic.

3. Great way to be listening to influencing people in Social Media - Twitter lets me "follow" people like Ron Tolido, Evan Williams, Robert Scoble, Tim Oreilly, Guy Kawasaki etc and organizations like Google, Capgemini, Yahoo and Accenture and be updated with what they have to say on a minute by minute basis. I get to learn a lot from people around, not just the guys mentioned about, but also around 125 people that I "follow" on Twitter.

4. Dynamically filter out information that I want at runtime - There are talks about Twitter search being a Google killer. Here is why. Google has indexed contents and any search will pull that information to the surface based on the relevance of the keyword. Twitter, at the same time, relies on what is being talked about the keyword and pulls out a repository of information which was posted even just 10 seconds back. Twitter Search is the way to go.

5. Twitter as a content aggregator - For me, twitter is much more flexible when compared to bookmarking sites and RSS readers. It gives me the option to interact with people whom I have never met (and are not in my "friends" circle). I can make conversations on a particular content with people where as RSS readers let you just aggregate the information and read it.

6. Spread out and be heard - Its said that people meet people through people. I would never even listen to 125 people in less than 2 months and that too people I have not met. For Facebook, LinkedIn and Orkut, the circle stays within the people I know. I am never heard outside the circle and neither do I get to hear from outside my circle. Twitter gives me an audience who are interested in what I talk about and the kind of information I share.

7. Its only 140 characters - You do it quick and short.

8. Multiple desktop clients - Makes it so easy to access twitter. Tweetdeck, AlertThingy and Twhirl to name a few. It helps you with consolidated information instead of having to click all around the web page.

Here is a small video on why and how to use Twitter on a personal level (Courtesy: CommonCraft):



I could give lot more reasons, but I will stick to just one and the last one:

8. Its a party. IT IS FUN!