digital curry

The class brought together the concepts learnt in class throughout the semester. Seeing them applied in various contexts in the projects which were presented in class before was useful in building confidence and more proficiency in learning how to apply the framework in different situations. I had seen the IDEO video before in an earlier class on design methods. There it was mostly about how to gather user needs and requirements and synthesize them to design products. Therefore, it was all the more interesting to look at it now from a experience centric perspective. It's interesting to note here that most technology companies (amongst others I'm sure) now have some sorts of groups focussing on user experience. More often than not user experience is thought to automatically follow if you design a good product. The IDEO video, and it's discussion in the light of looking at it by 'putting on the co-creator's hat' brings this point nicely into perspective. While a g...

So my bicycle journey's weren't always dreaming about difficult things. For those of you who have never been to Lucknow, it has a really nice area called Hazratganj which is a popular hangout for everyone in Lucknow. Luckily, I lived at a 5 minute walking distance from there. I was living in a room in an apartment, a couple of other students preparing for a medical exam were sharing the apartment with me- and one of them introduced me to "ganjing" or something like that - which basically meant when you're exhausted with studying you go and stroll around the place and grab a bite at one of the popular restaurants there. The other attraction was in the evening you got to see a lot of girls :) ! I read the Godfather quite a while back but I remember there is a mention of a "thunderbolt". It's when you see a girl and at first glance you're totally mesmerized, speechless, hypnotized........ I was returning from a Maths class when the "thunderbolt...

I was riding my bicycle back from college today, with the cool Michigan wind sending a gentle shiver through my body, and I was reminded of the days I was in Lucknow, cycling my way back after the tutorial classes for the joint entrance exam late at night. I have so many fond memories of my bicycle :). I had scheduled my classes in such a way that my Maths and Chemistry classes fell on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and Tuesday and Thursday I got most of the day to myself with only physics classes. However, my tutorial class for chemistry was around 8 kilometres away from my Maths class and I would hang around with friends solving some maths problems for an hour or so after the maths class and head off for the Chemistry class. The class ran from 7pm to 10pm. The teacher was excellent and taught at his home and I had to cycle back to the apartment I was staying at after 10:00 pm through Aminabad which was super crowded in the evenings but relatively less crowded at night - although it sti...

So I just read about the announcement of the awaited OpenSocial from Google.There has been so much of talk and hype around Social Networks that people have started throwing around the name and all sorts of sites have come up with their own "flavour" of social networks, pretty much disregarding for most of the time what's really happening. A way for people to connect with others in different spheres of life, extending the interactions that are limited distance and availability. I'll have to still read more about the service to form some concrete opinions about the service itself but its approach seems bang on! Here's why: What's really happening are Three things we've known for ages. 1. Sharing of information makes it more valuable (as long as its not scandalous love letters or something similar - which btw is an important consideration here since i've personally been asked to take a couple of survey where HR people seriously considered the merits of us...

Around two years ago I started a community on Orkut, the Google social network, "Vedas the science and beyond" because I wanted to learn more about the Vedas from others far more knowledgeable than me and have a platform for discussion of issues. My vision of that of a community where people could discuss, question and learn from an objective look at the Vedas. This was based on two observations: 1. Having talked to quite a few people I'd met and who could have known about the Vedas I didn't find satisfactory answers to most questions I had. Perhaps it was my ignorance or their blind belief without an understanding of the Vedas that left me utterly confused. Either way it called for a different solution to try to learn - hence a platform where different people could discuss. 2. The second was giving people a chance to talk about it so that more people are aware of such a valuable heritage left to us by our ancestors. I remember logging into the community every day and...

It's 1:00 am in the morning here and I have this nagging cough and cold. The American health system is absolutely retarded - but that's another story in itself and has already been told my michael moore so I won't mention it. I'm not sure why but I suddenly had the urge to make some tea for myself, probably because of the cold. I also remembered how my Mom makes the most awesome tea with organic black pepper and cardamom in to help with the cold! I hunted around in my bag and found a box of the mix my mom had packed for me :) ! Ma you're the best !! Who else could you count on in the world to pack something so seemingly insignificant but something that she knew I'd miss sooner or later. So here I am cuddling before my screen with the warm, comforting tea in my hand, the subtle aroma of bringing back fond memories and almost transporting me back in time. The number of nights I sat up with tea at night struggling to keep myself awake studying Physics, Chemistry or...

You never really know, what's going to be special each day. So I got up in the morning realizing that it's high time I get a hair cut. I got up late and headed off on foot to look around San Jose and find a hair saloon. I asked a couple of people, but each of them seemed even more lost than I was. Tired, and famished, I started looking for a restaurant instead. Usually I end up eating not so good food, when I eat randomly like that - ok maybe that's not totally true but.....So anyways I get into this nice empty restaurant seeing falafel written outsid. Long story short- because this is one about a haircut- I had the most fabulous tandoori chicken "sandwich" i've had in the US yet :) - I'm going back for dinner there! So I stroll outside aimlessly after that lovely meal and to my surprise as I'm passing by I see a hair saloon. So I walk in and there are three guys waiting. I have some time to kill, so I sit down and start reading some mind numbing rubbi...

You hear so often that the joy of life lies in small things but how often do we get to experience the joy of small things ? I don't know about you, I don't get to do it very often. Try to think back the last time you enjoyed something really small, when you smiled spontaneously, when the sun seemed to shine just that little bit brighter, when you felt the world was smiling with you, when you felt joy in being a small part of the life of this planet ? didn't even realize I would remember them so much, so fondly. When I try to think back, a few priceless moments that immediately come to mind are: 1. Place: Sherwood College: Time: Afternoon The time just before founders and after the hectic house PT competition. Just lying in my cubicle - the dorm 4,5 cubicle - perhaps one of my best places in sherwood :) - feeling the may sun shine down on my face as I lay on the counterpane, my eyes closing dreamily, looking down at the front quad, thinking about my 10 years in school, s...

What a week! And I have an ever more hectic one coming up! I spent the entire day sitting at one placing trying to finish up all my deadline material for this coming week. I have an assignment due on Monday. A final presentation and a big assignment due on tuesday. Wednesday I have two interviews - for practice really - since I'm pretty sure where I'm going to be going. Thursday I'm traveling to Redmond, i'm a little excited and a little overwhelmed by the burden. I'm going to be presenting my project to a group of hotshot designers, and they quite casually agreed that they love asking questions :). That's quite a relief - just something I needed after a week of looming deadlines. I found the quote "I love deadlines, especially the whoosh sound they make as they fly past" funny once. Not any more.... :). Either i've lost my sense of humour or the quote has changed! Either way its not too funny anymore. Also there was a time at IIT where I would wai...

आज मैंने गूगल कि नयी रूपांतरण सुविधा के बारे में पड़ा और इसलिये आज अपनी मातृभाषा में पहली पोस्ट लिख रहा हूँ। Google's new translation service to hindi rocks! This was the first time I was using it and I was typing as fast as I type in english (ironic eh :D ) but that's a thumbs up for google usability. Maybe by writing a new post in hindi everyday I will manage to improve my hindi, ummm I mean revise my hindi. I got 92 on my class 10 boards in hindi. And my essays were religiously read by the masses - ok at least by a few people including my professor :) ! yaaaaaaaay for the new translation feature!

This surely tops the Google dating service last year :) ! Sign up for our free in-home wireless broadband service Sick of paying for broadband that you have to, well, pay for? Introducing Google TiSP (BETA), our new FREE in-home wireless broadband service. Sign up today and we'll send you your TiSP self-installation kit, which includes setup guide, fiber-optic cable, spindle, wireless router and installation CD. Get Started with Google TiSP TiSP in-home wireless broadband is: * Free, fast and highly reliable * Easy to install -- takes just minutes * Vacuum-sealed to prevent water damag I wonder whether the elaborate schematics and diagrams were drawn up in the 20% off time or company time ......aaah the contracting course is getting to me!

Hidden Action: Will Ferguson (F) consult for an outside client after the funding. Will Ferguson leave the company after the funding. What will prevent VCs from taking the information of the Entrepreneur and give/sell it away to another company they already have a stake in. 1. Reputation 2. More tacit and implict and actual technical knowledge required than just the basic idea for the startup. Participation Constraint and Initial Valuation Initial Valuation directly sets the expected utility from the company and the company share of the financier. So initial valuation is directly related to participation constraint whether or not the agent will accept the contract offered by the principal. To determine participation constraint it is important to consider the opportunity cost. For example the previous employees were treated better since they had more technical knowhow and the impact of their leaving was higher on the company. Position on the board is both a monitoring as well as an incen...

Comparative Evaluation Should performance be based on performance of 1. co workers 2. performance of workers elsewhere 3. performance of other companies 2. "Not fair" agent can't control what others do but can act as a performance indicator. Information Intensity Principle If pay takes the form t(z,y) = alpha + beta(z+gy) then beta measure the intensity of the incentives: how much pay varies with effort Optimal intensity depends on four factors: 1. incremental profits from addl effort 2. precision of estimating effort 3. agent's risk tolerance 4. agent's responsiveness to incentives. Monitoring intensity principle 1. Spend more on improving monitoring when incentive intensity Beta is higher. If principle can invest in better measurement/monitoring, then if incentive intensity of high then it is better to have more precise measures of performance. Equal Compensation Effort If agent's effort on multiple desirable activities cannot be separately monitored, t...

Some results from class: 1. When principal (P) is neutral and agent A is risk averse - fixed payment contracts. and the principal bears all the uncertainty 2. When the P is risk averse and the agent A is risk neutral then : "Sell the project to the agent". i.e. franchise contarcts. e.g. the agent pays McDonalds to own the franchise - McD gets a fixed payment and the franchise takes all the risk. However in real life both principal and agent will have some kind of risk aversion and so in real life the contract will be something between the two. The contracting timeline: 1. principal designs contract 2. agent accepts of rejects contract (IR contract - forms one variable in the lagrangian later) 3. how hard is agent going to work (Incentive Compatibility Constraint) (forms another variable for the lagrangian later) 4. Uncertainty is resolved, i.e. we have some outcome; important point to consider how do payoffs depend on the outcome of the project - design decision. 5. cont...

Finally, after months of the gloomy winter weather - well it was cosy at times, especially in the beginning, but four months is taking it a bit too far :) - today the sun was out! I had almost forgotten what good weather was; But today was awesome! The university was buzzing with so much activity, people out everywhere, music at the DIAG, pretty faces all around :) and the gorgeous sunny weather.............it kind of took me back to my first few days at the university last fall! It was a lovely feeling. My 503 exam went ok - at least I hope so; I haven't yet stopped kicking myself for my stupid answer in 503, having crossed out the right answer to a 10 mark question in the last minute on a whim and written the wrong one. I'm trying to console myself that it was destined but it's a losing battle. The weather was so gorgeous that instead of taking the bus, I got down at the Indian store and walked all the way up home from there! Oh, yes and I had dosa :) I can't wait eno...

What's powerful about the long tail is the sheer size of it. Average borders carries around 100,000 titles, yet just more than a quarter of amazon's earnings comes from outside these 100,000 titles. And the thrilling part is this is market is growing - and rapidly! In fact most successful internet businesses capitalize on the long tail in some way or the other. Google gets most of its revenue from the long tail, so does ebay. The two important aspects they overcome are : scale geography expaning not only existing markets but creating new ones! In fact as these companies offered more and more they realized demand followed supply!! The act of vastly increasing choice seemed to open up demand for that choice.\ These niche markets account for anywhere between 25% to 50% of their total revenues and these are not sold by their mortar and brick competitors! The essential lesson to learn is: A very very big number (the tail) multiplied by a very small number (demand) still equals a ver...

If homomorphism between two domains is not well established then analogies are susceptible to two kinds of errors: errors of commission - when irrelevant information is imposed on the target domain. errors of omission - information transferred covers only part of what it pertains to. Memory becomes manifest whenever the behavior of a system is influenced by events that occurred n the past and information about them then must have been retained by the system in some way. An implication of the above is that memory becomes not the property of a system but that of the observer-object relationship because it arises from the inability of the observer to explain the behavior of the system and fully predict it in the absence of full information. K makes an assertion that a system possesses memory if its history behavior cannot be explained by either his psychological processes or the technical processes in place. Social Memory explains history determined behavior by reference to structural f...

So it's 10:47 pm, and i'm sitting here in the shapiro library......with a few other people around, on a friday evening. And what am I doing here on a friday evening ...... trying to model network growth patterns through various preferential attachment algorithms. And the worst part of it is.....I'm loving it ! :) We'll actually that has more to do with the fact that I think I've just managed to solve the ten point bonus problem- that too on NetLogo which I just started a couple of hours (ok 4 hours!) ago and which I thought was going to take me a significant part of the night!!!! I guess i deserve the excitement ? ;)

Marissa Mayer on the usabilty of google search results. http://searchengineland.com/070126-124723.php Nothing too new here.....but the point is once you have done stuff like optimize the top left of the page where do you go from there in terms of usability ? Sensemaking ...anybody ?

discombobulated

Blake Ross has an interesting analysis of the 'subtle' changes in Google search tips and their implications. It's interesting how blurred the boundary can get between suggesting the best service and the suggesting your service. Another interesting thing to note is the difference a single tiny icon can make in the searching process. Basically, it boils down to getting the attention of the user. In the case of Google the implications are so vast because: 1. The suggestion occurs at a place that might virtually be the "home page of the internet". 2. It occurs at a place where the user is in "need" of the information - i.e. searching for it! Here is the complete article: http://www.blakeross.com/2006/12/25/google-tips/ Another take on the issue from Matt Cutts