Month: October 2006

Cricket: Insightful Views from Lillee

Dennis Lillee makes an important point about the ageing Australian batting line up. It is interesting that he has come up with these comments despite the fact that the Aussie team has been performing quite well while England is struggling. This is probably what makes the Aussies so good. Even when things are going well they constantly look to the future. I won’t be surprised if the Aussies try for a blend of youth and experience when it comes to the Ashes.

Gundappa Viswanath

This article brought back memories. I grew up being a huge fan of Viswanath. I remember those pitched arguments with Gavaskar fans. Unfortunately, in those days ODI were relatively less popular. He was a natural ODI batsman. I still remember the time when he used to play for SBI in the local league. Scores of cricket crazy fans would pack the grounds (RKM ground in Chennai for instance) to see the master in action. He seldom took these matches seriously. He would come in at 4 or 5 down, play a few of his favorite square cuts and then get out! The interesting part is that most of the crowd would disperse after he was out!

ICC Champions Trophy: Lousy Schedule

The BCCI schedule for the Champons trophy is ridiculous to say the least. India has a 10-day gap after its first match! Most teams have long needless gaps between games. The matches are unneccessarily “spaced out” to drag the tournament over so many weeks.

All matches have been divied up between the West (Sharad Pawar), Central (Lalit Modi) and North Zone (IS Bindra), despite the fact that there are so many venues in the country. The BCCI politics has not changed, its only that the power blocks have new players!

RTIA: Finally, A Max Penalty

For the first time in more than a year since the Right to infomation Act was passed by the Infian Parliament, the Chief Information Commission has slapped a maximum fine of Rs 25,000 on Banaras Hindu University registrar, N Sundaram, because he did not make available to an applicant an inquiry report on incidents leading to the death of Yogesh Roy, a student, in January. A great step for forward for the Right to Information movement.

Azhar: BCCI making peace?

Its great to see the BCCI making peace with Azhar and most importantly standing up to Speed with regard to the whole issue. Personally, I think Azhar has been unfairly treated. Despite the fact that it seems pretty obvious that many more stars were involved in the scandal, Azhar in particular has been made a scape goat. Its time to bury the hatchet and let Azhar get on with his life.

Wisdom from the TiE Internet SIG

There were several sessions. Here are a few points from the various sessions.

1. Naming and Branding

  • Features of a good name: Relevant, but unexpected; combine tangible with intangible; Always spark emotion; competitive clarity — not just what it is, but what it can do for me; distinct personality to generate inteest.
  • Marketing is all about conversation. What is the conversation about the compny and how do you continue that in the marketplace?

2. Wikipedia is 4 times the size of encyclopedia!

3. For the younger generation, the Internet is all about “self-expression”. They don’t care as much about privacy. Its more about sharing their “cool stuff”

  • Related buzz terms: “Platforms of Participation” and “Browsing Experience”.

4. Why/How Youtube got acquired for a hefty sum:

  • The momentum from Myspace acquisition (Google’s deal with MySpace).
  • Great browsing experience
  • Fits into the “self expression” category.
  • Plenty of copyrighted content generated hordes of traffic.

Silicon Valley Celebrities who participated. Reid Hoffman (Linked In), Caterina fake (Flickr), Munjal Shah (Riya), Michael Jones (Userplane), Ashwin Navin (BitTorrent), Mike Cassidy (xFire), Heather Harde (Fox M&A), Raj Kapoor (Snapfish fame, now a VC at Mayfield).

  • Reid Hoffman, “I am really busy. The best way to get my attention is to reach me through someone in my network”
  • Caterina Fake, “You know…its like, its like…you know…you know,,…its like, its like….”
  • Munjal Shah, “When the money runs out, the business is dead. So you raise all the money you can, but when you get it, don’t spend it”.
  • Michael Jones, “When you raise money from VCs selling the business can be a lot tougher. 50M might be ok for the founders but the VCs migt need 3X. So you gotta think it through before raising money”
  • Raj Kapoor (Snapfish fame): “I hear that at Google/Yahoo etc. for acquisitions under 30M, VPs can just go in and fill out an online form on the company intranet!”

For those technically inclined there was a brief discussion on software technology. Lance Tokuda (RockYou) said, “If you are building a system for lots of users on the web. don’t use Java. Its just too slow!”. Reid Hoffman (Linked In), shot back, “I disagree. Java is just fine if you know what you are doing!”. Someone brought up Ruby and the word was that its great but not scalable.

NY City Cab Drivers

NY City Cab drivers are often the butt of jokes especially on late night television. I was pleasantly surprised to find on several cab rides in NY city that these folks are actually just fine. There is no question they are all very aggressive drivers. But I consistently noticed that they never made any demands of rates, they always used the best available routes to get you to the destination the fastest, they went out of the way to take you very close to your desired stop, never asked for tips etc. I fact one one occassiona cab driver actually took less money than the metered amount because he didn’t have the change! Many of them were Asians or from the Carribean.