– Indian Railway starts e-tickets and Indian Airlines uses ATM receipt as a boarding pass!!

Last updated on: November 3, 2005 at 2:30 am By Desh Kapoor

This is progress! The Indian Railways is moving ahead with times. When most of private airlines DONT have an e-ticket.... the world's largest employer is giving out e-ticketing! Life just became a lot simpler for the train traveller. Instead of booking a ticket on the internet and waiting for it to be delivered home, the Indian Railways has now extended the e-ticketing concept to four trains under Western Railway. All one has to do is take the e-ticket print-out along with a photo ID card before hopping onto the train. The railways has, in a way, taken a leaf out of the aviation sector. Jet Airways had started the print-a-ticket-to-fly concept earlier this year. Indian Airlines went a step further and tied up with IDBI Bank last week to offer tickets through their ATMs—transaction slip generated by ATMs can be used to board the flight. Read more

– CNN's Aaron Brown is leaving…

Last updated on: November 3, 2005 at 12:00 am By Desh Kapoor

Damn!! Holed up in the hotels on my regular travels - CNN is my refuge! And Aaron Brown was one of my favorites! Aaron Brown, once one of CNN's most prominent anchors, is leaving the network after a shakeup that gives his prime-time slot to rising star Anderson Cooper and expands it to two hours. Cooper's old 7 p.m. EST show will be filled by an expanded version of "The Situation Room" with Wolf Blitzer, the late afternoon program attracting attention for its arresting use of multiple video screens. Read more

– Pakistani rape victim is Glamour's woman of year

Last updated on: November 2, 2005 at 11:57 pm By Desh Kapoor

Mukhtaran Bibi, a Pakistani rape victim, is to receive a "Woman Of the Year" award today from the US magazine Glamour. The 31-year-old Punjabi villager will also receive $20,000 (£11,350) at a ceremony in New York's Lincoln Centre alongside 11 other nominees including Catherine Zeta-Jones. "This is a story that I think is going to shock everyone who hears it," said Cindi Leive, editor-in-chief of Glamour. Mukhtaran, also known as Mukhtar Mai, shot to prominence three years ago for her court testimony against neighbours who gang-raped her on the orders of a council of elders. The rape sparked international outrage and a legal saga that is now before Pakistan's supreme court, where 13 men could face the death penalty. US media and civil rights groups have showered Mukhtaran, who is barely literate, with plaudits since she arrived from Lahore last week. Read more

– The lie of Aryan-Dravidian theory and the Max Mueller hoax

Last updated on: November 2, 2005 at 9:49 pm By Desh Kapoor

Refer to my last blog entry.... Actually, to me this Aryan invasion theory was always nothing but absolute BS.. even in school. And the reason at that tender age was pretty simple... our History books clearly showed that there all the three "races" - Harrappan, Aryan, and Dravidian - worshipped some form of Shiva and Vishnu. To me three "races" distanced by time (as Harrappan and Aryan was supposed to be) as well as space (as Aryan and Dravidian was supposed to be).. to come up with same or similar deities was too much of a coincidence! In fact, some research shows that the opposite happened - the Indian race - if you will - left the shores of India and moved up along the Central Asian region and Black Sea to end in areas around Greece and Europe. Read more

– BBC proves Vivekananda right after a century!

Last updated on: November 2, 2005 at 9:48 pm By Desh Kapoor

Here is a validation of the fact that the Aryan-Dravidian theory was all screwed up to begin with!! Sent by a friend "Do not believe such silly things as there was a race of mankind in South India called Dravidians differing widely from another race in northern India called the Aryans. This is entirely unfounded". This is not from a saffron scholar of the 21st century. But Swami Vivekananda said it before an audience in the then Madras city as the 19th century was drawing to a close. Not knowing where the bright Aryans came from, "off late, there was an attempt made to prove", he laughed and said, "Aryans lived on the Swiss lakes". Yet the theory trotted out by F Max Mueller in 1848 tracing the history of Hinduism to the invasion of indigenous people by Aryans around 1500 BC has obsessed India since then. Read more

– Microsoft plans on-line version of Windows

Last updated on: November 2, 2005 at 8:45 pm By Desh Kapoor

Even though this seems like a reply to Google... but world of computing may not be the same again!! Computers as we know them... may disappear one day... in an interconnected world of devices!! Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday announced on-line versions of its Windows operating system and other popular software programs, hoping to defuse a growing threat from Google Inc. and other fast-moving challengers. With a new website called "Windows Live," Microsoft hopes to create a new platform that will unfasten some of its applications from a computer hard drive. The change reflects Microsoft's recognition of the growing demand for applications and services that can be used from any place, at any time, as the lines between the home and office blur and portable computing devices become more powerful. Read more

– TV You'll Want To Pay For

Last updated on: November 2, 2005 at 8:43 pm By Desh Kapoor

Is iTunes going to change the face of entertainment industry forever? The TV programming companies are taking notice!! It has now been 20 days since Apple announced it would sell selected ABC-Disney television programs via iTunes. As of Monday, iTunes customers had bought more than than 1 million videos. At first glance, these sales figures seem like another nail in the coffin of broadcast television. If we can get television content online, on demand, whenever we want it, how will networks convince us to tune in on their schedules? For that matter, how can they be certain we'll tune in at all? Read more

– $1 mn Honda Fuel cell powered Car!

Last updated on: November 2, 2005 at 8:41 pm By Desh Kapoor

This is an incredible progress.. maybe we can see the cars become fuel cell powered within our lifespans... and the dependence on Oil disappear altogether! Honda leased the FCX fuel-cell car to the Spallino family at the end of June, part of an experiment to see how the cars would hold up to daily driving demands. The New York Times reported that the car cost about $1 million, making it far more expensive than even the many luxury cars that populate Southern California roads and highways. "When the cars pull up to me, the Porsches and the Bentleys and all that, I just sort of say, well, that's nice, but for what this costs I could buy 10 of those," Jon Spallino told the newspaper. Read more

– Champy's 5 Principles of Project Mangement

Last updated on: November 2, 2005 at 5:44 pm By Desh Kapoor

These are Five Principles of Project Management proposed by James Champy - the guy who brought BPR into vogue! Have a solid business case for the work. Always know why you are doing a project, and how the performance of your business is expected to be improved. If what's expected isn't clear, your project -- or program -- is already in trouble. There will be no guide for making important decisions, like what to spend. Make sure that you have active executive direction. The more parts of a business a system touches, the more decisions that will have to be made. Different departments, business functions or divisions will have different views of what a system must do, and someone has to settle the inevitable arguments and drive for standardization. Otherwise, the project will expand dramatically in scope, time and costs. A senior line business executive has to be on duty to make the calls. Read more

– Recruiters having it tough as more companies look for MBAs

Last updated on: November 2, 2005 at 2:35 pm By Desh Kapoor

Here is an interesting interview with the founder of Wetfeet which does research for job seekers and employers on the job market in context of MBAs. First, traditionally big recruiters, namely the consulting firms and investment banks, have increased their number of hires. In 2004, the 15 companies that hired the most candidates from our sample population brought in an average of 16.5 full-time hires. This year, that average jumped to 27 new hires per company. Second, more companies that don't have institutional on-campus recruiting efforts have been making the trip. We found that the number of employers who hired students from the survey population was about 20% higher than last year. Read more