All posts by Mukund Mohan

My discipline will beat your intellect
Other

Being “open” in technology

I saw the new Google Blog Search with Meme tracking this morning. I
actually like it. Very simple way to view the top news and items that
are bubbling up in the world of blogs.

A meme tracker or news aggregator takes a list of sources and tells you what’s being discussed
(top topics) and who’s talking about it (top blogs, news sites etc.)

Its
a cleaner interface than techmeme.com Techmeme, much more open about its sources and
also more obvious as to why some news made it to the top versus others.

This
brings up another point in the technology space. One of being “open”. I
understand companies desire to protect their intellectual assets, but
if you look at Apple, they get away with pretty much being a very
closed and proprietary system. No call for being open about which
applications will get approved by them to be listed on their iPhone
store.

Same for techmeme (which also tracks & aggregates
news). Its pretty clear no one knows how or why some items make it to
the top of the new sites. Lots of people have suggested its because of
traffic, most # of times, first post etc., only to find them all being
a “part” of the reason why.

Should they all not be more open about the process? How come they get a hall pass?

Other

Top 10 articles on the Financial crisis

From David Finbarr. Here are the top 3 that are a must read:

1)  The Financialization of America
A broad overview of how 1) insanely profitable Wall St. became in the
past two decades and 2)  this profitability was due to implicit
government subsidization of risk.  This includes the “too big to fail
policy” and the “Greenspan put”.

2) How regulation breeds complex financial products and Why Lax Regulation Did Not Cause the Crisis
by Mindles Dreck.  The author works in the investment banking
industry.  He relates how the industry had actually seen a dramatic
increase in regulation as a result of Enron and the Patriot Act.  But
the effect of regulation was not to make finance less risky, but rather
regulations encouraged the creation of more complex financial products
that outsmarted the regulators and gamed the system.

3) How the Fed lowered the reserve ratio and caused a decade of inflation and asset booms
– In 1995 the Federal reserve created special exemptions allowing banks
to keep 0% reserves in many cases.  This lead to an explosion of the
broad money supply, and successive bubbles in the stock market and
housing market.

Other

How I deal with Information overload on a personal basis

There are way too many social networks, Web 2.0 sharing properties and the like for me (and most others) to have enough time to spend. There’s even a term that’s been coined – Attention economy. Many startups are being told ” where attention flows, money flows”.

There are 3 strategies I have adopted to avoid information overload. One of the is what Clay talked about last week at Web 2.0 apparently.

1. Decide what’s important vs. useful. Useful to me is immediately actionable within a week. I spend my time to do what’s important right now and Instapaper the useful stuff.

2. Build good filters. I have over 1800 friends on Facebook and have met at least 1500 of them in conferences, etc. Rest I have been either conversing on Twitter or been introduced by another friend. I get a ton of things on my Newsfeed. I love the new Facebook filters. Use them constantly and you get great results. They give you control on what appears on your feed and who appears.

3. Outsource some attention filtering. I used to subscribe, scan and track over 400 bloggers. Now I have outsourced my reading by only reading 5 of my friends shared items and HackerNews. They cull the best and give me the stuff that matters. Get good filter friends to share with you on Google Reader.

What’s your strategy? What techniques help you best filter the noise or the news – depending on what you want to filter?

Image credit: wolftrapopera.blogspot.comwolftrapopera.blogspot.com

Other

Designing feature rich vs. feature right

Feature right must always be better right?  John from Zumboni guest blogs at GigaOm, talking about the super phone. In it he makes the argument for a new class of phones that is higher in feature / function than a smart phone calling the smart phones.

Then view this piece in NY Times by David Pogue on an “email only device” the Peek.”

Also view this $20 (no long term contracts) phone from Spice. It has numbers, a speaker and a microphone – no display BTW. There’s another company making a $10 phone (again, this is the unlocked phone, no contracts).

This is the new digital “divide”. A phone with everything for someone and another with only one thing for everyone (well, everyone that wants email that is).

I am always reminded of the microwave at home, which has a clock display. Now, 90% of homes in India, turn their microwaves “off” when not in use. So the “clock feature” is mostly useless.

For over 80% of the “non power users”, the basic 3-5 features are the ones they use 80% of the time. Get that right and the rest is just gravy (OR useless depending on your viewpoint).

Other

Zoho Writer vs. Google Document

Google Docs.

More money. Check.
Bigger name. Check.
More resources. Check.

Must be better?

Save a large file on Google Docs? (Sorry).

Zoho Writer absolutely beats the pants out of Google. If you have to save large files (which I just had to). I got kicked out of Google 4 times. Gave up.

Went to Zoho writer. No problem.

Zoho has THE best office productivity suite on the cloud. By far. Bar none.

Other

How to write in plain English by Harvard School of Public Health

Clear and to the point – writing in plain English.

Summary:
a) Use common, everyday words

b) Use “you” and other
personal pronouns

c) Use “must” instead of
“shall”

d) Avoid using undefined technical
terms

e) Use positive rather than negative
words

f) Avoid using gender-specific
terminology

g) Avoid long strings of nouns

Verb Forms:
h) Use active voice

i) Use action verbs

j) Use the present tense

Structure:
k) Use parallel construction

l) Be direct

m) Avoid using unnecessary exceptions