Java powers Adwords, GMail and Blogger

I was going through the JavaOne Conference coverage. I happened to read this blog and I came to know that Java powers Adwords, GMail and Blogger. As a Java buff, I was very happy to know this fact.

Double Promotion in Karate

The day in office started off with surprises. I went to office. First, I checked my office mail as usual (what else can you expect from a software engineer?). I was surprised to see that my friend Sai (we call him Maadu) got double promotion in Karate. He wrote to me telling he moved up from White (novice) to White Senior. He is my junior in Karate. I didn't knew my result then. I thought, 'I haven't got a double promotion till now. How could this guy manage to get a double promotion?!' But I knew this guy deserved it because he was sincerely learning it for more than 6 months and moreover, it won't look good if we keep this jumbo Maadu along with the kids in White Junior! Few moments later, I got another email from Sai congratulating me for getting double promotion. I moved up from Yellow Junior to Green Junior. It was another surprise because I didn't attend the training for more than 30 days due to some injury and I had a poor show of my stamina during the grading. But I managed to fight well. It was a happy news anyway. I felt nice and thanked my friend & congratulated him as well. I believe my friend also had a great day.

One India

Where no place is farther than whats' near. Information Technology Minister Dayanidhi Maran is already talking in terms of One India rate. As an investor in the telecom companies, one can ask, 'Will this affect the revenue/profitability of the telecom companies?' I don't think so. Not for the big players who provide service in major parts of India. Given a chance, we Indians talk a lot (For those who take this as offensive, we atleast talk more to prove our mettle). Because we are more emotionally attached with our kith and kin. And talking is also easy. Now-a-days, people working far away from home is most common. Given the 7-8 percent growth rate of India, this trend will only grow. And there are defense personnel for whom this will be a great boon. And there are more people moving/waiting to move into the lower middle-class group. These set of people will only increase the oppurtunities for the telecom companies helping them to generate more revenues. But what will happen to the profit margins? This is where innovation/value-added services come into picture. Innovation could either happen in operational efficiency or in bringing new content based services. Broadband services could also offset the decline in profit margins, but even that will have to get into this path of declining prices. The consumers for the value-added services could be the people moving/waiting to move into the upper middle-class group, the affluent youngsters and the affluent high networth families. The mobile devices should also become cheap to enjoy the new value-added services. And that too will become a reality considering the manufacturing plants being set up by the MNCs. In any aspect, things will only get better both for the telecom companies with nation-wide presence and for the consumers. But someone has to be affected. And they are the small telecom companies with presence in less number of telecom circles (there won't be any circles by then). What is the way out for them? Mergers & Acquisitions. Small companies that have a good cash flow and are profitable will be merged into the big companies. The other smaller companies will be bought out by the bigger players. Having said these points, it is not going to be an easy task. There will be lots of regulatory issues that have to be sorted out by the government. And there will be more confusion regarding the restructuring in telecom industry. An intelligent investor would use this confusion to spot the potential winners and invest heavily in them. Let us wait and see who are going to be the winners apart from the consumers.

Churchill's wit

Mr Churchill sat down next to Lady Astor at dinner one day. She turned to him and said, 'Mr Churchill, if I was married to you I should put poison in your coffee.' Mr Churchill turned to her and said, 'Madam, if I was married to you... I should drink the coffee.'

I came across this during my weekend reading. Most of us are well aware of Churchill. But who is this Lady Astor? Lady Astor is the first woman Member of Parliament elected in 1919 and served until 1945.

Remembering Jack Kilby

Jack Kilby, the man who created revolution in microelectronics passed away on June 20 in Dallas, Texas. Kilby filed for a patent for the invention of monolithic IC in February 1959. I got to know about this man and his inventions when he was awarded Nobel Prize in the year 2000. I also got to know that the monolithic IC invented by Kilby used Germanium and not the Silicon that is used in today's chips. The first IC that used Silicon was invented by Robert Noyce, who filed for a patent 5 months after Kilby filed the patent. Kilby also invented the Pocket Calculator.

I chose Business Line

Most of us find it difficult to find the right source of information. I'm no exception. I was looking for a good source of business news that comes in print media. I chose to test Business Line and Business Standard. I didn't choose Economic Times because manier times, they exaggerate news or they publish speculated news (rumours). Moreover, I didn't like Times of India publication that is from the same group. I didn't choose Financial Express because it didn't contain enough information on stock markets or commodities. But the columns and editorials appearing in Financial Express are worth reading. You can very well find those columns and editorials in Financial Express' website.

Following are my observations on Business Line and Business Standard while testing them for the past 2 weeks:

Business Line(BL)

1. Good analysis of day-to-day price movement in stocks, IPOs and derivatives
   
2. Q&A Section on stock specific queries. It also had a mock of 2-3 persons speaking about the speculated news on stocks (I don't go by this mock or Q&A section but then I enjoy them.)
3. Enough information on commodities and corporate news
   
4. Good presentation
   

Business Standard (BS)

1. No good analysis on day-to-day price movments in stocks and derivatives. But it had a good analysis of IPOs
2. Too much information on commodities
3. Free copy of BS Motoring that I don't need
4. Monthly publication of Smart Investor. But the information I get in this publication can be easily got elsewhere and I don't need this every month.
5. Their presentation style doesn't match with Business Line
6. Most importantly, I was irked by the following errors
• News on IISCO merging with SAIL - It was mentioned that SAIL had workforce of 1,26,827 and IISCO had workforce of 16,218. Then they said the total workforce adds upto gargantuan 2,89,037. => I don't know which number to believe! :( I don't want to see the same set of errors for
• News on Hutch IPO and its shareholding - BS said Hutch is valued at 9000 crore. And it also mentioned that Hucth had added 1200 crore from the acquisition of Aircel. This is ridiculous. Hutch-Aircel was called of long-time back. Are these guys not aware of this information? What carelessness!
• News titled "State owned Telecom firms lag in quality". But the news below this had description of the organisational changes in the top level in SAIL and IISCO. No professionalism.

Sometimes I find spelling mistakes in both BL and BS. But I can live with them. In the end, I found BL to be more reliable and more readable. And, BL doesn't give too much information. Now, I buy only Business Line.

My first blog

I'm excited today. I'm writing my first blog. I first heard about the term "blog" 2 years ago when I was going through Cedric Beust's weblogs. I landed on Cedric's page when I was googling for information on EJBGen. Since then, I've been reading articles from some of the technology buff's blogs and my pal Kishore's blog. But I never felt seriously about blogging because I never kept a personal diary or published an article. I had this feeling only till I started thinking seriously about my future business plans.

My business would be focussed on the domain of Financial Securities. Right now, I'm concentrating only on equity investments. My goal would be to create more wealth and wealth and wealth. In the process, I also intend to create intelligent systems that can help me to create wealth. I'm not money-minded though. I can't grow if my environment is not healthy. I want everyone to grow wealthy.

In this blog, I would share my ideas on how to do equity investments, my thoughts on existing businesses and my business ideas that can be disclosed. I also want to learn from everyone who reads my blog. Ok. This is not going to be a pure financial blog. I would equally mix my blogs with my everyday thoughts on sports, technology, advertisement, films or for that matter, anything that can be blogged.

Quite interesting to see what I've written here. But future will be more interesting than the past.