In his rare public comments involving a rival, Wipro Chairman Azim Premji on Friday said his company’s organisation structure was “superior” to that of Infosys Technologies.
“I think, our structure is superior to the Infosys global delivery model,” Premji told reporters here in response to a question on how Wipro’s organisation structure compared with that of Infosys’ global delivery model.[Our structure superior to Infy: Premji]

But then, immediately he said

“Frankly, I have not fully understood the Infosys global delivery model.

How do you comment on something you don’t understand? But that was not the punch line.

“It’s not for me to comment on somebody else’s structure,” he added.

Maybe this is the reason why Vivek Paul quit. 🙂
Update: Smiley added for people who take things seriously.

This may not happen in any other country – a college dropout being asked to give the commencement speech in one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Steve Jobs gave the speech at Stanford University’s 114th commencement this weekend and our local TV channel which specializes in human and animal deaths around the world spent a segment on it.

Jobs began by rehashing the fact that he dropped out of college, and that Sunday’s ceremony was the closest he had ever gotten to a university graduation. He then launched into the first part of his address, which focused on having faith that the dots of one’s life will connect down the road, even if the journey so far has not followed a clear pattern.
Jobs said his biological mother was an unwed graduate student who had planned to have him adopted. She had chosen a professional couple to be the adoptive parents, but because they wanted a girl, he was adopted by a husband and wife who didn’t have college degrees, Jobs said.
They pledged to send the boy to college, and when the time came, he chose Reed College in Portland, Ore. But because all of their savings was going toward his tuition, Jobs dropped out and began taking courses that interested him instead of those that were required—such as a calligraphy course that later inspired him to design different fonts in the first Macintosh.
The last part of his speech was about death. When he was diagnosed with cancer about a year ago, Jobs said doctors expected him to live no longer than six months. He had surgery not long after and has since recovered, but the experience nonetheless taught him another lesson.
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life,” Jobs said. “Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.“[After traditional Commencement antics, Jobs imparts straightforward advice]

During a certain point in time, he lived off the 5-cent recycling deposits on soda cans and the free food offered by the Hare Krishnas. One of the important lessons he had was on how to handle failure.

Jobs also recounted founding Apple in his parent’s basement and his tough times after being forced out of the company he founded when he was only 30. “I was a very public failure and I even thought about running away from the valley,” Jobs said. Instead, he founded Pixar Studios, which recently released enormously popular films such as “Madagascar,” and “Finding Nemo.””It was awful tasting medicine but I guess the patient needed it,” Jobs said.[Apple CEO tells Stanford graduates to pursue their passions]

Here is the full transcript of the speech

Q: How do two Mallu strangers get to know each other?
A: Zimbly using GMail.
It all started when one G.S. Kutty started getting GMails meant for a Narayanan Kutty. If those emails contained some juicy information, it would have been interesting, but these emails contained photos of fish farms and technical papers as Narayanan Kutty was a former United Nations official specializing in acqaculture. G.S.Kutty knew something was fishy and he wrote to Narayanan Kutty’s correspondents that they stop sending mail, which Narayanan Kutty did not like.
N. Kutty contacted Google for help, but never heard back. Maybe he is still on hold. But finally the mystery was solved by N. Kutty himself.

Kutty has found some relief. At a certain columnist’s suggestion, he checked his GMail settings and found his account was set to forward mail to an E-mail address that was one letter off from his own alternative address.

One letter.
Kutty says he doesn’t recall choosing the forwarding option, but he is glad the problem is fixed. So is G.S. Kutty.
“Thank the Lord,” he said by phone from Mumbai.
The other bright side to the delayed solution? If Narayan Kutty had fixed the problem immediately, he never would have gotten to know the other Kutty.[A GMail fan bobbles his account settings, and brings strangers together in cyberspace]

This can be made into David Dhawan movie with Akshay Kumar as one Kutty, Salman Khan as the other Kutty and Suneil Shetty as fish.

• You can’t imagine the stuff you can find using Google Maps
• When Google kicked Yahoo’s ass, they decided to innovate like there is no tomorrow – So you get Yahoo! Photo Mail
  , Movie Recommendations and from Yahoo! Research, Mindset
  

• Apple is going to support podcasting in the next release of iTunes. Now that KQED is offering podcasts of Forum, this would work well for me.

In South Korea

Just a few years ago, Michigan State University scientist Jose Cibelli was considered the leading expert on cloning human embryos to treat and study disease. Now, there’s no debate that the cloning king is Hwang Woo-suk of Seoul National University.
On Thursday, Hwang announced yet again that he had successfully cloned human embryos, this time extracting stem cells from embryos created using the DNA of sick and injured patients. It was the second time in a little more than a year that Hwang had successfully cloned. He remains the only acknowledged scientist to have done so.[S. Korea Takes Lead in Stem Cell Research]

In United Kingdom

Scientists hailed on Friday the announcement that British researchers have succeeded in creating the country’s first — and the world’s second — cloned embryo, a breakthrough that keeps Britain at the forefront of the fast-moving, potentially revolutionary field. [Scientists Hail Creation of Cloned Embryo]

In United States

“I am a strong supporter of stem cell research, but I’ve made very clear to Congress that the use of federal taxpayer money to promote science that destroys life in order to save life, I am against this,” said Bush, speaking in the Oval Office during a brief joint appearance with the Danish prime minister, Anders Rasmussen, by his side. Therefore, if the bill does that, I will veto it.“[Bush threatens stem cell veto]

But here in California, voters passed Proposition 71, which allows the state to fund stem cell research and the headquaters for the new agency will be San Francisco. Thank God, I don’t live in Kansas.

Netscape has released version 8.0 of their Firefox based browser. The UI looks slick and it has nice features like warning while visiting spyware sites and passcard to manage all your passwords. Since it is based on Firefox 1.0.3, you get tabbed browsing and fast rendering with the Gecko engine.
But while taking it on a spin today, there were two things that put me off

• When I click on the feeds in bloglines, it does not open anything in the tab
• When I open many tabs, the tab which is in focus expands, this reducing the space for other tabs and thus reducing the space for their titles. Now to see the names of the other tabs, you have to click on an icon on the right, which is one additional click.

So I am sticking to Firefox, which does not have these two issues

Dan Gillmor is making absurd comments on Google News’ creator Krishna Bharat’s statement that Google News has no view point. He points to an article in the Register which calls Krishna as BharatBot and claims that this is like saying the cat ate my homework.
The register article just complains about the fact that Google News indexes Press Releases (but still tags them). It then goes on to complain that Krishna gives the same reply about the working of Google News. I don’t understand this. If a certain program works a certain way, what are you supposed to do ? Change you answer each time ?
For all the technology news Dan has been covering I don’t think he understands programming and seems to have really liked the Register’s arguments. A program is written using an algorithm. So as Dan says, it could have its programming mistakes sometimes resulting in pictures from some other story appearing in an unrelated news section. But how news gets ranked would depend on the incoming data and not on manual intervention.
If there are more stories on John Kerry, it would get priority than say George Bush. Sometimes when there is a cricket match in India and all English newspapers there report it, that becomes front page news on Google News even though rest of the world has nothing to do with it.
It all depends on the data. That’s what Bharat was trying to say.

There has been a study in Britain on the brain structure of bilingual people and

They found learning other languages altered grey matter – the area of the brain which processes information – in the same way exercise builds muscles. People who learned a second language at a younger age were also more likely to have more advanced grey matter than those who learned later, the team said. Scientists already know the brain has the ability to change its structure as a result of stimulation – an effect known as plasticity – but this research demonstrates how learning languages develops it.

The scans revealed the density of the grey matter in the left inferior parietal cortex of the brain was greater in bilinguals than in those without a second language. The effect was particularly noticeable in the “early” bilinguals, the findings published in the journal Nature revealed. Learning languages ‘boosts brain’

Since most Indians learn multiple languages in school (I had to learn three languages, English, Malayalam and Hindi), does this mean that we have more density of the grey matter than anyone else ?

Could Chandra Babu Naidu have used technology to prevent the suicides in Andhra Pradesh?

Technology can unlock the potential of poor farmers by making agricultural production more efficient. The World Resources Institute’s (WRI) Digital Dividends Project Clearinghouse includes several hundred examples of successful ICT-enabled development projects. One example currently attracting international attention is ITC, an Indian agricultural processor. ITC has initiated the e-Choupal (“choupal” means “gathering place” in Hindi) effort that places computers with Internet access in rural farming villages, creating an e-commerce hub that enables farmers to receive a fair price for their produce.

In Uganda and Kenya, farmers use short message system (SMS) technology to receive updates on commodity prices, which allows them to negotiate fair prices for their produce with traders and middlemen who have exploited them for generations. Bangladesh’s Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha, a non-profit organization, uses boats that are outfitted with computers, printers, and an Internet connection to deliver agricultural education modules to isolated farmers that are unreachable by roads.

Perhaps Andhra Pradesh’s new government could take a page from the book of its neighboring state, Maharashtra. There, the government-funded Kisaan Call Center fields inquiries from rural farmers, who get advice from operators speaking their own language and whose directive is to treat every farmer as a customer, emphasizing respect.

In all of these cases, information technology is driving innovative solutions to the problems of poor farmers. “More Internet” is not what plagues these farmers; in fact, Internet technology is helping them climb out of poverty by connecting them with information, educational opportunities, and financial resources. “Connectivity for the sake of connectivity accomplishes very little,” says Jonathan Lash, WRI president. “Connectivity that links marginalized citizens with needed services, however, can play a major role in economic development.”[In the Aftermath of “India Shining”]

CNN has a story on a innovative way used by IIT Kanpur to bring technology to the masses. They use a bicycle richshaw to carry a computer with high speed Internet access to give classes to people.

A few miles from Bithoor, another cycle rickshaw carries its high-tech load to Gorahah village, where men and women gather side-by-side for a class on electronic mail. The mix is nothing short of a revolution in tradition-bound rural India, where women are often kept indoors.

“We are now learning computers. There is no point if we can’t use that new knowledge. We have to go out and do something worthwhile,” said Snehalatha, 22, who also attends college. Clad in orange pants and a pink tunic, Snehalatha signs up for Yahoo mail, as an impatient queue lengthens behind her.

The classes teach the basics of computing, word processing, spreadsheets, Internet browsing and Web cameras. Once they learn to use a webcam the villagers can take part in online classes, something the info-cart organizers hope to implement later.[Wheels of hope bring Internet to villagers]

MT Design Thought: Entries like these belong to a sideblog since I have no commentary to offer. MT 3.1 will have support for Multi Blogs and after that I should also implement one.