The Millionaire Maker: A review

Last updated on: May 1, 2006 at 5:51 pm By Desh Kapoor

Got my hands on yet another finance planning book written by Loral Langemeier. The premise and the niche that the book identified for itself is that while rest of the authors surmise on how the Millionaires are created, Loral actually has taken up challenges to attempt to create Millionaires out of absolutely normal people - a la Robert Allen. She starts off with the Building Blocks of "Wealth Cycle" which are: 1. Gap Analysis: basically the difference between Current State and Future Desired State. 2. Financial Baseline: This is the Current State position - taking a stock of where you are currently! Read more

Five Month old YouTube is a Hit!

Last updated on: May 1, 2006 at 10:50 am By Desh Kapoor

Five months??!! Thats all?! Wow. This is the power of the internet.... where some site that is cool to be at attracts millions of folks within a matter of months! YouTube has done well despite the presence of Google Video! And to me that is its success! The closest Terry Turner comes to Washington politics is his job as a bureaucrat at the Pentagon -- until, that is, he fires up the camcorder pointed at a makeshift TV studio in his Arlington apartment. Read more

Most Expensive Hotel Suites in the World

Last updated on: April 30, 2006 at 10:42 pm By Desh Kapoor

$37,000 - yeah that's per night!! That is the kind of money the rich and famous spend on their hotel stays! Its amazing, but the rich and famous are fairly vain kind of folks! So such businesses do well! Penthouse Suite at The Hotel Martinez: $37,200 Cannes, France Cannes is a summer haven for sun-deprived Europeans, and the annual film festival is one of the biggest events of the season. The Penthouse Suite at The Hotel Martinez is the ritziest place to stay, located on the seventh floor of the hotel. It has four bedrooms, and the enormous terrace has a private Jacuzzi and views of the Mediterranean. Read more

Economist Galbraith Dead

Last updated on: April 30, 2006 at 12:36 pm By Desh Kapoor

John Kenneth Galbraith, the Harvard professor who won worldwide renown as a liberal economist, backstage politician and witty chronicler of affluent society, died Saturday night, his son said. He was 97. His first two had created history: Galbraith's fame was cemented with the 1958 publication of The Affluent Society, a phrase that soon worked its way into our language, and The New Industrial State, a follow-up work published in 1967. His books appeared at a time when America was without peer as an economic power. link: Read more

US Insurers getting away from the Coasts!

Last updated on: April 30, 2006 at 12:17 pm By Desh Kapoor

It may soon become impossible to live on the coasts! I saw someone say that next century will see many once-prosperous cities in the US in ruins.. I dont know if the weather or natural disasters will directly do that.. but at least the market forces that are influenced by the disasters will make that happen! Usually, the market forces do attempt to move the society in a certain way that it may not have been possible by design.. mostly its an aggregate of the selfish individual motives.. but in the end it turns out to be the most optimal decision. Insurers Retreat From Coasts:Alarmed at the sharply rising cost of hurricanes and other disasters, home insurers are pulling back from some U.S. Read more

Patriotism

Last updated on: April 30, 2006 at 12:10 pm By Desh Kapoor

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. Read more

Machine & Humans

Last updated on: April 30, 2006 at 12:08 pm By Desh Kapoor

The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do. Read more

Indian Engineer Murdered by Taliban

Last updated on: April 30, 2006 at 12:01 pm By Desh Kapoor

This is another of those incidents which make you realize that mad men are still roaming around free in this world... and that US despite its professed War on Terror has made hardly a dint on their ammunition! Indian engineer killed byTaliban: A Taliban spokesman said Sunday that they had killed an abducted Indian engineer in Kandahar as he tried to escape. Meanwhile, the Indian Embassy in Kabul said that a body had been found in Kandahar and is suspected to be that of K Suryanarayana. Read more

Google buys the Graphic Tool – SketchUp

Last updated on: April 28, 2006 at 6:47 pm By Desh Kapoor

Google is at it again!! It has bought SketchUp - a company which gives a free version and a "pro" version of an online graphic tool for people to use.. It seems like the operating system will be made a redundant business advantage.. MSFT may probably be left holding its OS while Google and other companies will find ways to harness that to rule the desktop! Google SketchUp Beta, the brand new, free 3D drawing tool isn't an obvious fit for the Google desktop application canon. However, this blend of vector-based 3D drawing and CAD-like control lets you rapidly build 3D models that can be exported to numerous bitmap and compressed file formats and, more importantly, geo-coded and shared on the company's Google Earth satellite imagery program, which is also free. So, it's a undeniably cool, oddball app that has the potential to turn one of Google's most popular services, Google Earth, into an even more powerful and personal tool. Read more

BJP Muslim leaders disallowed in the mosque!

Last updated on: April 27, 2006 at 11:37 pm By Desh Kapoor

The BJP and its sister parties just seem to have lost the plot big time!! They need to take a re-look at where they are headed in life.. because this is NOT the way forwrad in any scenario! They arent coherent on any policy and go around putting their own office members to peril or plain embarrassing them!! “The Muslim community is angered by the way some district BJP leaders used filthy language against Muslims in roadside public meetings to celebrate Hanuman Jayanti prior to April 14. They had threatened riots, re-enact of 1987 masjid attack and throwing of shoes on Pir Baba,” most of the office bearers of District BJP Minority Cell said. Read more