Day –2: Public life makes me more responsible

These posts are as part of making my life public in order to be more accountable. You may see the purpose behind such an experiment in this post. And other posts in the series can be had from here.

Briefly, on achievements: On professional life, I could complete small part of a report. Trying to standardize many of my routine activities. Obviously one of such is this series of posts.

Interesting concepts on my mind during the day:

1. First create the processes, then automate.
2. Life is all about planning for the future and start working for it to happen.
3. If there is a cost reduction, whether the savings get added to the bottom-line or passed onto the customer, is very important to the shareholder.

9:45 - 10:30PM	Preparation for sleep (Food, brushing, bed arrangements etc). Would update in a separate post what exactly I do.
10:30PM - 5:11 AM	Slept. Typically I should wake up around 5:11 AM when my alarm rings. But I woke around 3:30 AM and I have decided to lie down on bed until my alarm rings at usual time. I could sleep again at 4:40AM and woke up on time.
5:11 - 6:20AM	Morning thoughts ( Started to plan around standardization of my time usage)
7:30 - 8:30AM	Worked on a Excel sheet. Figured out a fundamental mistake that I made previously.
8:30 - 9AM	Training to my maid (It is a part of 6 month process to train her so that she would be able do all the household work without my intervention)
9- 9:41AM	Morning activities
9:41 - 10 AM	Reached to office
10AM – 1:15PM	Worked on excel sheet and designed 2 images.
1:15 - 2PM	Lunch time and spent with colleagues.
2- 6PM	Worked on the partial report.
6PM-7:20PM	I was reading e-mails. One of them, I have responded.
7:20 – 8:30PM	Reading news articles on web on energy sector.
8:30 – 9PM	Reached home and taken bath.
9- 9:30PM	Written this post.

Comments on the day: Definitely today is one of the highly unproductive day. However, I am becoming more responsible and I will become much more efficient in the next 6-9 months.

To-do task from tomorrow: I will have to write hourly updates to let myself aware of how I am spending my time.

My life is public. First on the series!

I will start writing in a interesting template form, for a while please adjust with this raw data. And I will also have to explain some generic tasks that I do regularly which I will do in a separate posts on each of them.

Briefly, on achievements: Today two most important decisions were taken. To implement them, I have decided to make my life public and started to write these posts. Taken rest for the next week.

	Woke up at 7AM
7 - 9AM	Morning thoughts (Typically I spend my time to think about strategic directions at broad level on my life) . Today I have taken important decisions on my life (will update this after 3 months on what it is!).
9-11 AM	Morning activities (Brushing, head-bath, shaving, breakfast, etc)
11-12:30 PM	Writing the thoughts behind this "online diary experiment" on this blog and Rural India blog.
12:30 - 1:45 PM	Spent time on updating look and feel of both this blog and Rural India blog.
1:45 - 2 PM	Lunch
2 - 2:45PM	Writing notes on my performance during the last 6 months
2:45 - 3:30PM	Written few pending official mails
3:30 to 7:15	Slept as I was awake most of the last night
7:15 to 7:30	Planning
7:30 to 8:15	I was trying to recall what my colleague suggested me on the report that I made. It was hard time, could not recall most of it.
8:15 – 8:30PM	Bathing
8:30 – 9:45 PM	Writing this diary

Accountability to the world!

This post is about how I am accountable to the world as I consume resources.

Terminology:

Accountability is one of the best way to bring the efficiency into any system. For example, during my Mumbai life, I gave house key to my maid and no one else, and so, she was always accountable to all my household items.

Life is all about the kind of choices we make. We need to be very careful in each and every choice that we choose because those will set the directions.

Past one decade, I have been doing the following experiment (other experiments are here, here). I first publicly announce that I am going to do a particular task and the fear of embarrassment would always make me to be on right track of that task. For example, I announced 6-8 years ago that I never take ice-creams, chocolates, cold-drinks (aeriated soft drinks), etc. During first 2 years, it was very difficult to resist on occassions (like when I go along with close friends). But then, I could resist because I used to feel that someone would question me. However, now I don't have any interest on all of those items but that's a different story.

Standardisation of any activity makes much more efficient. For example, cardboard box or ship container has revolutionized the whole logistics sector. I am working on all of routine tasks to get some more standardized.

External Audit is the one of the best way to improve the processes. I have been doing this experiment for a while(other experiments are here, here). On every task that I do, I make sure that someone who is better at that job would provide their opinion on how I did. This has always resulted tremendous improvement in my thought process.

Blogs are usually opinions/experiences of individuals. In some sense, it is like a diary of an indiviudal/group of people.

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I strongly beleieve I consume much more resources of the world than most of the population in the world. I should be accountable in the sense that I use those resources in an optimal way and for the right use. In order to bring accountability to the world at large, from today I am going to note down what all I do on every day. I expect the readers to audit my actions.

What do I consume?

I consume a lot of intellectual resources such as ideas/results of all previous generations, access to infinite amount of knowledge on this Internet, computing power, etc. Similarly I consume a lot of physical resources such as land, water, air, etc.

What do I produce in return?

My own intellectual ideas.

Whom do I be accountable to?

I should be accountable to current & future generations.

What do I do now?

I will maintain a public diary of all my actions on every day from today (hour by hour format).

Benefits of this process?

At first, as I mentioned above, I announce things first then attempt to do them later. This process makes sure that I am in line with my plans. Secondly, I want to improve the way Ido things. This would be achieved by getting an audit of all my actions by any expert sitting anywhere in the world. This is just similar to the case that, your friend always suggests on your actions.

Goal of this process?

My broader goal is Rural Development. This is just one of the process wherein I want to be evaluated by world at large.

Comments, welcome!

Data recovery companes in India

If your hard-disk drive (of Laptop or PC) has stopped working then all of your data is like it is just evaporated. However there are some companies which can recover them using latest technologies with advanced facilities (such as Class 100 clean rooms, etc). Some of these companies are mentioned below.

http://www.stellarinfo.co.in/
http://www.unistal.com/
http://www.techlogicindia.com/
http://www.ragadatasolutions.com/
http://www.diskdoctorsindia.com/
http://www.micro-solution.net/
http://www.dcrc.in/
http://www.janitordata.com/
http://www.rediscoverers.com/
http://www.ace-data.com/
http://www.datarecoverydelhi.com/
http://sites.google.com/site/datarecoveryexperties/
http://www.disc-technology.com/
http://www.aspiretech2.com/
Mr. Aniruddh, Mumbai : +91-9892729956

If you have experienced with anyone of these companies or some other company in recovering your data, please do provide comments here.

PS: If you want to erase a file beyond recovery, then you'll find them from companies like ontrack, voomTech and disk-wiper.

Inspirational lecture by Randy

Yet another inspirational and incredible lecture by Prof. Randy Pausch. If you have an hour of time, please watch it.

Randy is a professor at CMU and gave the following lecture when he came to know that he was going to die in a few more months. This talk is about his childhood dreams, how he could achieve them and followed by how he helped others to achieve their dreams. Interesting part of this lecture is that it is all fun. Amazing one and I strongly recommend you to watch it.



Similar inspirational lectures by JK Rowling and Steve Jobs are here. 

Cable TV, DTH, IPTV operators fights is good for consumers benefit!

Recently I came across a news that Aksh Broadband offering IPTV service in Mumbai. More details of it are follows.

Name of the service: iControl
Service launch date: Possibly from 23rd June, 2008
Refundable Deposit: 1000/-
Installation fee: 100/-
Broadband: MTNL connection is needed (which is almost impossible to get a new connection!)
Monthly fees: 100/- for 100 free channels
Pay-channel pricing: 5/- per channel and currently no pay channels exist
Features: Time shift, Video on Demand (200 movies in a year)
Offer: Video on Demand is free for the first year.
Issues: Currently, broadband connection on Alcatel or Ericsson ports is supported but not on SOTL port.
Booking contact number: 1500 or 126555

At last, monthly price for TV channels has come down to 100/- with great facilities.

Cash card transactions are much higher in India. Why?

There are two types of e-commerce transactions on Internet. First, the consumer who makes the transaction on his behalf or family or for a friend and secondly an agent (ICT kiosks, Internet Cafes, etc) who completes the transaction on behalf of his customer.

Indian e-commerce industry minus IRCTC is almost like we are still in infancy stage. So it is clear that insights from IRCTC would help us in understanding the e-commerce trends. Fortunately, every month, IRCTC publishes actual statistics on transactions with complete details on its website.

If you observe statistics of any month, first thing is that you would wonder that cash card transactions are like 1/3 rd of total transactions (rest are credit or debit or netbanking). And in fact, cash card transactions growth rate is much higher than all other modes of payment. Then you start feeling like you have never heard of them anyone using it, but how come such large number of transactions?

Being an insider in this industry I would like to you give you a detailed story behind this wonder. First, let us see the business model of a cash-card company:

Platform: It is two sided. Cash-card companies just tie-up with numerous merchants/service providers (like telecom or ticketing etc). And later they start acquiring agents to use their technology platform. Typically these agents are: ICT Kiosks owners or Cyber cafes or computer education centers or the latest PCO/STD 2.0 etc.

Target Audience: Who all can’t goto a website and/or can't pay through credit or debit card for remote payments. This means, those agents become the middlemen between the remote customer and the service provider.

Commission: Most times, cash-card companies get discount from the service providers (usually 3% to 5%), a portion of which would be passed to their agents (for example air ticketing works in this manner!). Otherwise, customer is charged (for example, IRCTC don't give any commission to cash-card guys and so, agents would charge customers on top of the ticket cost).

Other revenues: Of course there could be a small percentage of direct consumers who would use the cash-card on web. But that is not what makes significant cash-flow for a cash-card company.

Future: So it is obvious that cash-card transactions would become much higher than credit or debit card transactions when cash card companies can acquire much more agents (in particular rural areas) along with more service providers (such as electricity/water distribution companies).

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Now comes the biggest disclosure: In fact, strength of any payment card system lies with the following three points.

1. They must tie up with as many merchants as possible.
2. Technology/process that makes the consumer to use the card for payment.
3. Card distribution should be efficient.
   

Now, how are the famous credit card companies (VISA or MasterCard) placed in the above points. Firstly they are accepted with innumerous merchants. Secondly consumer can use the card at merchant outlet or online or telephone or SMS or etc. Thirdly, Banks issue credit/debit cards to the consumers on behalf of VISA/Mastercard. Now coming to the costs of this ecosystem of digital payments is usually less than 5% of the value of the transactions (VISA, Banks, Merchants share this 5%). As the Mobile payments is getting matured, this value is getting closer to 3%.

Of course, companies involved in this payment ecosystem also have additional revenue through other value added services such as interest charged to the customer by providing them credit, etc.

Suggestions for Rediff, Sify, Indiatimes etc

For the past many years, I had some ideas regarding how to utilize e-mail service and offer various other services effectively. As I have weakness with my writing, I never put it down until last year. I wrote the following e-mail (November, 2007) to all top brass of Rediff.

I just would like to share few thoughts on Rediff's offerings to make it more competitive over other players like Google, Yahoo, Facebook etc.

The goal of any Internet company is make the users addicted to its services. Counting over 50 Million users, Rediff has great strategic advantage over its competitors having a specialized focus for Indian Internet users. Straight to the point, my observations are below:

1. Rediff should design a service similar to iGoogle where in, logged-in user would have all the offerings as widgets. This page should incorporate Web 2.0 features such as the following.

2. All widgets are available to the user on a single page(or multi-tabbed screens) and moreover he would have control over placing/ordering of those widgets.

3. When a user clicks on a widget for maximizing it, then the widget turns into a full-screened service (similar look of current offering). However on a specific corner, he would see more IMPORTANT STUFF of other services (I would explain this in the following notes).

4. By default, when a user logs into a particular service,say email, he would see the maximized screen of that particular widget (in the example scenario, it is email).

5. Each user would have a public profile and a private profile (this categorization can be increased to 3 or more, however let us stick to two types of profiles for the sake of explanation).

6. Public profile of an user contains all the widgets containing the services those he would like to share. This could be his personal photos, personal videos, Blogs, personal notes etc. Also remember, this includes the favorite stuff such as photos, videos, bookmarks, blogs etc all those but of others (content).

7. Common Private profile contains the stuff which the user would like to share exclusively with his personal friends.

8. Public profile content across all the services is searchable.

9. In any service, user has options to share with others. For example, while watching a video (ishare) he may would like to inform his friends as the video content is good and this should be through a "note from friend".

10. Also each widget can be customized by the user about its position/placing or other settings such as shared/unshared with a specific user.

11. On the usual e-mail screen, when the user moves the cursor over any email id (or on right click menu) he would be able to get many social network options such as "Add as my friend to profile, Scrap him, See his profile etc".

12. "Important stuff" which appear when the screen is maximized to a specific service are basically from the other services are: Scraps, Birthday Reminders, Updates on Friends private profiles, etc. "Notes from friends" could also be included here. This is the minimal line of
the total widgets page. Also these notes includes, chat applet and this could be a default option unless the user opts it out for a period.

13. Subscription to a particular service is by adding a widget. This procedure of addition is similar to iGoogle/Google Desktop gadgets.

14. Ads do appear in a particular fixed location of the screen.

15. When Rediff goes mobile, you can place the widgets as a linear list.

The goal of this is make all your services are interlinked with each other and the best, you would have at least 60 million user base for each of your offering. I believe that Google is having similar plans in mind in launching iGoogle. I came across a news that even yahoo has similar plans in this direction. However, specialized focus on Indian content would make Rediff to compete with global majors.

Surprisingly there was no reply from anyone of the top management at Rediff. Please wake up, don't be dumb!