In the new year, I hope..

As the year comes to an end, I couldn't resist posting these dialogues from my favorite movie - Shawshank Redemption. To those who have been already rejected, or those who're waiting for their decisions, or those who're applying in R2/R3, all I ask is to hope. Hope that you'll crawl through your river of shit and come out clean on the other side.


Andy: Dear Red. If you're reading this, you've gotten out. And if you've come this far, maybe you're willing to come a little further. You remember the name of the town, don't you? I could use a good man to help me get my project on wheels. I'll keep an eye out for you and the chessboard ready. Remember, Red. Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. I will be hoping that this letter finds you, and finds you well. Your friend. Andy.

Red: I find I am so excited I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it is the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain... I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.

Wishing you all a successful new year 2010 !

The expected...

...ding from MIT. No surprises here. After all these I dont expect anything from Darden as well.
I'm just wondering now if it is worthwhile applying to another set of schools in R2. 

Rejected at Kellogg

My biggest hopes crashed now. I am rejected at Kellogg

My Kellogg Interview

Yesterday evening (IST) or today morning (CST), I had my Kellogg interview with an AdCom. She called me just about at the scheduled time. After some small talk and confusion with pronouncing my name, we started with the interview. She explained about the format (blind, 30mins).

First, the discussion revolved aroung my entrepreneurial experience - the challenges, lessons, results etc. Then the interviewer asked the following questions:

Why MBA?
Why Kellogg?
What would you contribute to the Kellogg team culture?
Describe your leadership style
What would your friends describe you as?
How do you interact in a team?
What are your interests outside of work?
Is there anything else you would like to talk about?
Do you have any questions for me

Surprisingly, the interviewer did not ask me about my goals, so I fit them partially into Why Kellogg and Why MBA.

I cannot comment on whether the interview was awesome or really bad, but it seemed very casual and I just answered all the questions. It was OK. On the flip side, I talk a bit fast and as I said earlier, the phone interview wasnt the best way to start off.

And now, the waiting begins !

Fuqua says I'm not invited

Surprise ! Surprise ! I'm not invited for an interview at Fuqua. This is what my application status says :( . I guess this means a nice reject email at the end of the season

I had lot of hope on my Fuqua application as I've written some of the best essays for it. It really doesnt make any sense to me of how I could have been rejected without interview. I atleast hoped for an interview. Alas, my efforts and hope seem to have gone down the drain.

But can't do anything but buckle up for R2

And Kellogg invites..

I received a telephone interview request from Kellogg yesterday. I was apparently both excited and nervous. I called them up and scheduled it for next week. I was earlier apprehensive about the interview waiver. But this could be good chance to strengthen my candidacy to Kellogg. One takeway from the short conversation is that the AdComm who answered me was a very nice person. He explained the format of the interview (max 30 mins) and said that it would be a normal conversation and I dont need to worry about it much. My anxiety is lot lesser after those soothing words :)

However, I am not a good interviewee and it has been years since I actually attended an interview. And a telephonic interview is not the best way to start my b-school interviews. So, you could imagine my feeling now.

The only thing going through my mind right now are the lyrics from Eminem's Lose Yourself

Look, if you had one shot or one opportunity
To seize everything you ever wanted in one moment
Would you capture it or just let it slip?
...
...
...
You better lose yourself in the music
The moment you own it you better never let it go, go, oh
You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow
Coz opportunity comes once in a lifetime, yo

I can't give excuses nor be negligent but give my very best shot at this. Wishing me luck :)

Kellogg Interview Waiver

Kellogg has waived my interview. Although they've explained in the letter that interview waiver does not affect the application, I'm still anxious about that. I sent emails to a couple of Kellogg alumni I knew. Waiting for their reply.

But I'm unclear about the criteria they use for waiving interviews. Is it FCFS (first-come-first-serve)? If that is the case, then it seems fit as I applied just a couple of hours before the deadline, so my request should, by all means, be at the very end of the queue.

That's still fine but I only dread the thought of waiving interviews for applicants who are not competitive enough :(. I fervently hope that is not the case.

More updates to come ?!?!

Duke and the end of R1 apps

I've finally submitted my Duke app yesterday. The good thing about Duke was there was no word limit. So, I had ample space to write what I wanted to, without checking the word limit. And interestingly, my recommenders submitted before me for this one. Guess, they got used to the process more than I did :)

And so with Duke, my R1 apps are behind me. I'd like to take a couple of days break from this routine and get back to my R2 apps. R2 apps are evenly spaced with 2 in Dec and 2 in Jan, so I guess I wouldnt have to rush through anything. But I've got to talk to my recommenders on those yet as I've told that I was applying only to 4 schools and now the list just doubled !

I hope everyone's anxious for the interviews now and a lucky few waiting for the decision after their inteviews. Let's hope for the best !

The "Proc" way of life

This is the perfect flow chart for the daily routine of a procrastinating person like me. Thanks to whoever created it.

Darden app

Finally, Darden app's done too ! One more to go for my R1 apps..and I'll take a few days rest from this madness

I'm not going to dwell into the details of Darden application process, but it was a crazy day right from the start. I was up for 28 hours straight, not just because of the app though. Work tends to strain you the most and it doesnt help if you're running a company like me. I'd advice future applicants to take a break or keep key things on hold at work during the apps.

But I guess "In the End, it doesn't matter". All that matters is if my app was good enough. I'm confident about my essays, so hoping for the best.

And Sloan's done !

MIT Sloan app submission was a breeze, unlike Kellogg. My recommenders submitted a day before the deadline, and I did it with ample time left. I didn't feel the kind of anxiety double-checking everything like I did for K. I guess you get used to it after you've done it once :)

Anyways, apart from that, I feel I did submit a very good app to Sloan. The cover letter was a hitch coz I'm not used to writing one. But I believe I managed to come up with a good one.MIT Sloan essays were the simplest I've written in all my apps. They are not the kind of abstract questions we have in certain applications. Straighforward questions to what you thought, knew and did in a situation. In fact, I just went through just 3 edits for them. For the first time, I guess I was very much satisfied with my 2nd draft itself, even my reviewer felt good about them after making changes for the 3rd time.

I fervently hope I atleast make the 18% cut - check here for what I mean :)

Fingers crossed !
And on the next one !!

Kellogg Submitted !

And finally, after struggling for a month (read my earlier post to know what I mean), I submitted my Kellogg app just a couple of hours before the deadline of 11:50pm CDT. There was a minor hiccup with my recommenders who actually submitted after me ! I was so anxious that I called one of them like 5 times within those 2 hours to get him hit Submit.

Anyways, I'm relieved now. Kellogg has been one of my dream schools and I'm happy to have applied it in R1. I hope it makes my chances better. Now have to wait and see what the Kellogg AdComm has to say :)
I wish all the best for the others who've submitted their K App

And, after a couple of days of procrastinating, I'm on to my other R1 apps.

A 4-hour trek seems better !

You might be wondering better than what. Yea, if you guessed it right, writing b-schools essays.
I went on treks for hours and hours and climbed hills , but there seemed to be an end to it. Not in the case of a bschool app. The struggle doesn't end in hours, not even days. It weeks and weeks.

I never knew writing essays would drive me insane. I almost became a recluse writing them. And the worst part, it just doesnt end. You got to write them, re-write them , and edit them. And after that, enter your hostile friend - the reviewer. He/She would see your essays like a piece of sh&t and throw in comments that make you furious but then again, you dont know whether you're angry at them or yourself. And again, the vicious cycle of editing, reviewing happens, and sometimes even worse - you have to scrap the whole essay and start from scratch. I sincerely pity those(incl. myself) who had to do that.

After all that, your essays you feel awesome, not because you did something but just because you read them again and again, and thought yourself to be unique/interesting/accomplished. Now, you dont know whether the AdCom is going to feel the same, so hit Submit and get sloshed.


Take it easy guys, just being me !
Wish all you the best !

Falling behind

I seem to be falling behind on my application process. I've got the stories lined up for almost all my essays for the schools I'm applying to but I'm not able to find the time to pen them down.

Work's literally killing me, with more and more projects coming our way (which is actually a good thing) but that's not helping me in my app-ing. I'm staying up till 1AM working and talking to clients and the mornings are jam packed. Least I could do was write a "significant accomplishment" essay. I feel these kind of essays are a lot easier to write as they pretty much have a pre-defined structure, or they say CAR(cause-action-result) structure, of what is asked rather than those abstract ones where we would have to struggle as much for getting the structure right as for writing the content.

I initially planned for 5 schools in R1, I guess I have to cut that list short to 4 and focus on them and apply for the other one in R2. But I already have 2 more schools in R2. Seems like a wild-ride for me, this fall&winter.

I guess I never posted my list of schools on the blog. I'll do that very soon - positively by 2nd Sept. But again, I procrastinate :)

Recommenders Confirmed

I guess I've been pretty lazy in posting about my updates, but you got to see the title of my blog before asking about it.

Anyways, the thing is that I talked to my potential recommenders and all 3 of them confirmed their willingness to write a reco for me. No, I am not applying to HBS but I just asked 3 people wondering if one of them may not be so favorable, but luckily none did so.

So, with that done I can turn my attention to a bit more research on my list of schools and start off with the essays in a couple of weeks.

Nevertheless, work's killing me and after adding 2 more customers, it has been quite hectic. So, I need to balance between the two to start very soon

About MIT Sloan

I've been rummaging through various blogs and websites about MIT Sloan and these are my 2 cents about the school.

Arguably MIT is among the best engineering schools in the US and anyone looking for an MBA with a concentration in technology is bound to look at it.
Sloan has an advantage of being in the hotbed of technology innovation and with an alumni network that runs really high. But because of it's distance from the Valley, it might not provide as many opportunities as Stanford or Haas would provide.

But the advantage and also a disadvantage at MIT Sloan seems to be that Sloan is very much integrated into the MIT community. That's the reason MIT Sloan is not called just "Sloan". Being so tightly knit into MIT, people do get a feeling that it's more of graduate degree in technology than a degree in management . Likewise, there are people who feel that it's an added advantage for networking with the whole MIT community.

Another general perspective about MIT's student community is that it's not as colloquial as other schools. There' s much more competition among peers than say Kellogg or Ross. And more over , there are visitors who feel that Sloan students are not "touchy-feely" and doubt the camaraderie among fellow students.

And finally the weather, Boston's freaking-cold and anyone not used to those sub-zero temperatures (like me) might feel really irritated with the climate.

I'd like to know opinions of others too as I'm planning to apply to MIT Sloan for fall 2010.

An Idea for a change

An idea, that I wanted to spread in the blogosphere. Let me know if you like it and see if you can implement it

If all popular bloggers who don't really rely on blogging for paychecks, sign up for Google Ads and lend all that money through Kiva (www.kiva.org), it would be a great service. On one hand, you'll not loose any money as that would come back 80% of the cases, and on the other, you'll be doing a great service to the struggling entrepreneurs and micro businesses in the third world countries.

So, all the wannabe-MBA bloggers who get thousands of hits every day, just think about this. Maybe, we could ask ClearAdmit and Kiva to give "Best-of-lending-blog" awards too :)

A thing about GMAT

I've been advising a few people about how to prepare for GMAT and lately, there have been a few more asking the same questions - How to tackle GMAT? How to get a score above 700? How should I start my preparation? What should I focus on first, Quant or Verbal etc etc.
The questions range from too generic to too specific. I thought may be a few others too could get my gyan on GMAT, if it sounds convincing enough !

My answer to all the questions begins with - know the GMAT, know yourself and have a strategy.
I believe that rather than preparing for GMAT (unless you're an awesome test taker and score at least a 700 in your first mock test , unprepared !), it's always better to learn how to prepare for GMAT. It's more of unlearning what you think you know and actually learn and know what's exactly in it. Know more about the areas GMAT tests you in. Quant and Verbal are too broad too classify for the not-so good of us.

Next, knowing your weaknesses and strengths in all aspects of the GMAT lets you prepare better. For example, if you're an Indian from a good engineering school, you're already pretty good at math to score at least a 49 in GMAT Quant but Verbal section may be a big weakness. But if you consider Verbal as a whole, it is sure to give you goosebumps. So learn what you are good at. May be you're good at grammar (SC) but not at reasoning(CR) or you're good at reading (RC) but not at grammar(SC). It helps to know your pain-points so that you can tackle them more aggessively and tread more cautiously.
Let's take my case as an example. I was good at math and never faced a question that I couldn't answer given the generous time in GMAT, but I did it too fast, fast enough to ignore those finer details in Data Sufficiency and used to make atleat 5-6 mistakes in DS not that I didn't know how to but because I wasn't patient enough. So, I made it a point to go slow at the DS questions and double-check that I was right. It helped..it helped to the fact that I got a 50 in Quant away from the 47-48 I used to get earlier.

But again, it's always better to stress on the specifics - like if you're doing a mistake only in say, idiom-related questions in SC, it doesn't make sense to go through all of SC again and again and not focusing on the issue at hand. So get to the specifics and note them down

So know your weaknesses but how do you tackle them?
That's where planning and strategy comes in. Having a strategy doesn't mean how many hours a day, or how much study material you covered. It's about how you're doing to overcome your specific weakness - what are the steps you need to take to actually overcome them. For example, I knew that inference questions in RC was a weak point of mine, which ask us for an answer based on an excerpt in the essay. So I made of note like this - "Process of Elimination may not work for Inference Qs. Don’t just read the paragraph again from where the inference is drawn from. Read all information related to that subject (might be in different paragraphs and with different names) make points and check with answers." or something like this in CR - "Correct Answers do not deviate from conclusion - Eliminate anything that deviates from conclusion. This made it easier for me to tackle the specifics and not beat around the bush wondering why Iam not good at RC or CR.

So, follow these,make note of your progress, and you won't need to add a mystifying aura to GMAT :) Hope this long long post helps !

Essays and Deadlines are out

I guess Iam probably late in announcing this in the blogosphere but still here I go - essays and deadlines are out for Kellogg, MIT Sloan, Wharton, HBS and Stanford.

I may not be applying to any of the above except Kellogg, my dream school, only next to INSEAD. I went through the essays a few days back and also prepared outlines for them, it's all about giving them a shape now(which, of course, is the difficult part and will take me atleast a month to do so).

You could check some detailed analysis about the essays here. I you ask me, there isn't anything surprising about Kellogg's essays. They're the same as the essays of earlier years but as always they do reflect upon Kellogg's reputation for looking at leadership and collaboration, both inside and outside of your professional life.

So good luck and god speed !

Kellogg Information Session - Chennai

UPDATE : The date has been confirmed as 11th July between 6-8 pm . Please refer to the following link for more information reg the event - http://www.kellogg. northwestern. edu/Programs/ FullTimeMBA/ Admissions_ Events/Off_ Campus_Events. aspx


If there are any Indian MBA aspirants around and luckily land on my blog, please do note that there's a Kellogg Information Session in Chennai on July 04 (tentative date). If you're interested, send a mail across to Karthik Raman (ramankarthik@gmail.com) , Kellogg '09, with your confirmation.

Good luck !!



PS : Pls leave a comment on my blog if you're attending too, we could meet up during the session

Should I or shouldn't I

As is my habit, I've been procrastinating after I dumped the idea of applying to bschool last year and lo ! , this year's application process in on the cards already. The only thought that shot through all my nerves was - "God damn it, will I ever apply to b-school?" and still I can't decide if I want to.

On one hand, it seems to be the right time, and on the other, it doesn't seem to be.
I am the co-founder and a CTO of a tech startup, which is sustaining itself, although I can't say it's profitable. I am in a position where I know that an MBA would definitely take me to the next level, but I am worried about the business at hand. Will I be able to concentrate as much once I start the apping process? Will I be able to contribute if at all I go into a b-school? What if it's a 2-yr MBA, do I have to leave MY company?

I don't know how entrepreneurs decide when it's time for an MBA. Do I need to find a replacement for myself (I mean, can I trust someone to be my replacement, do the things I do the same way I wanted them to be done). Aah.. I definitely need some counselling here.

Ghost Twitterers

I was always skeptical about the use of Twitter by celebrities. Countless blogs and news articles opined about the use of twitter as a tool to bring people more closer than any other social networking site., how you can follow famous people without intruding space and get insights into their ideas and philosophy

But wait a minute, are you really following the celebrity you thought you were following. Chances are that you might not. Apparently, celebrities are employing people for tweeting on their behalf, a third-person to keep their Twitter page live(just like they did with the other social networkig sites) in a new marketing job position that sprung up, what is being termed as a "Ghost Twitterer". Check the article in NYTimes here that dwelves into the issue.

Now this is fine for getting updates about a celebrity's schedules and latest news. But definitely NOT for getting an insight into their thoughts and ideas because they aren't the real person's but a third-person's who tweets just what she interprets and not what she thinks.
I don't see a point in following such ghost twitterers who just tweets continuosly. All she would want is post interesting articles that get re-tweeted and thus increase the followers' numbers and consequently, the popularity.
Twitter has been very careful about spammers and fakes and has been deleting their profiles quite often but can they do anything about this. Definitely not I guess.

So, it's upto you to follow the "celebrity" whose tweets arent always his/her own thoughts

Seeing an Opportunity

I always think how only a few people see an opportunity and succeed when there are potentially millions trying for the same elsewhere, how only a few people are meticulous enough to notice all things around them while others simply run behind one another

An interesting anecdote that made me realize this.

I regularly visit a friend of mine a few miles away. On way to his home, there's a turning where the road is terrible with a huge pothole right at the crossing. I was wary of the road condition and used to slow down at that point and tried to squeeze my bike towards the narrow end of the road where there was little asphalt. I used to feel elated at times when I carefully managed to traverse it.

Little did I knew(atleast for 2-3 weeks) that the other half of the road was clean without any major crack. I always took this half as it reduced my distance(barely by a few meters) and I actually violated the rule by doing so - driving on the wrong side. Suddenly , when I noticed the lane I was supposed to take, I was surprised that I didn't need to slow down , worry of any damage to my bike or worry about any traffic in the opposite direction.

I wondered whether that's how we see opportunities in life too, trying to squeeze past the mundane ones and neglecting the really good ones. Always stuck in a disinterested job and unaware of the interesting ones. Worrying about the obstacle ahead rather than trying to find a solution.
I guess that's why only few people reach the top and others are left behind wondering why they couldn't.

Why you should have a corporate blog?

I guess this is one of the most blogged about topic. But I guess, I'll post my comments too here which I incidentally sent to my colleagues urging them to blog on our corporate blog

Now why blog and what you can blog.

First, the Whys

1. A blog is our company profile out in the world-wide-web, not the lengthy text we write in the content.

2. A blog reflects our company’s attitude and work-culture.

3. A blog creates a better first impression with prospective clients.

4. Blogging compels you to be more creative, at all times.

5. Blogging changes you. It changes you by letting you introspect when you look at your own posts.

6. Blogging makes you a better communicator . It forces you to be clear. If you write something that's confusing, you failed to communicate to your visitors.

7. Blogging is documenting your ideas and opinions. In other words, blogs give rise to new ideas that can be built as products !

8. A blog is a better tool to find customers and employees.

9. Blogging lets you be more open , so it lets you collaborate better with your team.

Then, the Whats

If the above reasons are compelling enough, blog about the following

1. New technology or new development in the technology you work on.

2. Limitations and issues in any tool/framework/language you use.

3. Tips and tricks in any tool/framework/language.

4. How to improve Design and Application Usability

5. Customer Behaviour.

6. Day-to-day issues and how to solve them

7. Learnings from different aspects(anecdotes, project implementations, client interactions etc)

8. New ideas

9. Everything else not listed above

Policies and Guidelines

I have come across various establishments that drive a customer crazy(me being one of them) by uttering the words "it's not our policy to.."

Policies are created to guide any action taken by an organization and avert any outcomes not in favor of the company. They are essential too. But there's the catch. Policies look good when you are aiding the customer or for a better example, protecting a customer's information like the privacy policies of websites that ask for your personal info. But they are dreadful when policies rather than helping a customer , irritate him.

I remember when I had an issue with customer care for my cell phone. It suddenly stopped functioning and as it was under warranty I gave it for repair at the service center. They said it was a bit complex and sent my phone to their head office in another city. Even after 3 weeks, I got nothing, not even a response after continuously calling the service center. Irritated, I took my case with the cell phone company's customer care. They escalated it 6 times but nothing happened. Finally, I asked the cust care lady to let me talk to some senior personnel to enquire what's wrong. But she wouldn't let me. ,All she said was that it's not their policy to provide contact information of required personnel and gave the same recorded reply that my cell was not working(which as if I didn't know).
She didn't know the root cause nor she let me know it. Whoaa! If you don't know the issue and you can't let me deal with it, who is going to solve it??
As a last resort, I had to threaten to sue them to get a new phone as they couldn't repair it.

I guess some policies are meant to be more of a guideline rather than a strict adherence to the book. One cannot have irate customers and think of doing good business.

Partners and Associates

When it comes to startups, your partners shouldn't your subordinates or your superiors. There is bound be an unknown , unacknowledged gap that neither can fill in. It again may boil to a situation similar to your old office where one passes the decisions and the other does it without question.

But startups need conflicts. Conflicting ideas, conflicting ways of implementation but the same principles and passion and urge to be successful. Conflicts that will weed out the unwanted stuff and let only the most wanted and most useful things remain.
And those conflicts will be less discomforting when the people involved have a camaraderie and less ego over those conflicts like friends, colleagues, classmates or even a mentor-mentee but if you've shared a boss-assisstant relation, it could get pretty difficult.

Frustration

A piece of advice about frustration

"Frustration is ambivalent.It can be good and bad at the same time. It is good in letting you find new ways out provided you channel it effectively and it is bad when you take too much of it to your mind and allow yourself to be stressed adversely affecting your physical and mental health.There are numerous cases where frustration has led to devastating results in peoples' lives.

Frustration is caused by many things, frustation on your boss, your wife, the government , in fact everything that can be named on the planet.People try to find ways not to fight the things that cause frustration but to escape from them, but the key to letting it out is to use the energy wasted in the frequent fearful thoughts caused by frustration to do something useful for your own personal good."

So , Confront and Fight, don't escape or oblige !!

Customer Hype

I guess I need to introduce the background before I start this post. I work for a start-up and am trying to generate some for my company through a few projects.

Lately, I've been noticing a trend in customers' behavior(at least among those I meet). Most of the customers that I reach out to for a project proposal ,presentation or initial discussions, seems to create a lot of hype about his knowledge of the internet and web and the technologies involved to develop a web application. He/She boasts about their knowledge of web much before Google started or how they've learnt using email much before I knew it or how even with a lack of programming skills or experience with a technology firm , they understand the intricacies involved in developing a functionality. Then there's another kind that simply thinks software isn't real estate or a factory, so it should be pretty cheap. As cheap as his monthly electricity bill.

All they want to say is - "We've seen it all"

All this seems to me as a ploy to indirectly tell me that - "Hey, I know what the hell you are trying to do and I very well know how much time it takes and how much it costs. So , beware, don't fool around with me".

Now, how do I get a customer out of this mindset and tell him that I'm there to help him and not milk him? Iam struggling at that.
Tough thing aye !!

Over to LinkedIn Apps

Though Iam posting this a bit late, but LinkedIn Apps have arrived and How..
It did stand up to it's need - professional networking.

As the LinkedIn blog says - "The nine applications that you see live today on LinkedIn include productivity enhancing applications from Amazon, Box.net, Google, Huddle, Six Apart, SlideShare, Tripit, and WordPress as well a Company Buzz application developed by LinkedIn"

As you might get from the list of applications and their apparent use , LinkedIn does not look like it gave in to the pressure it feels from Facebook. Contrary to the apps on Facebook(a wild guess of about 20K+), Twitter and other social networks, I dont think LinkedIn is giving access to anyone for adding any application into it. It needs the developer to explain what his or her application is going to do and how it will help users on LinkedIn to accomplish a task. So no silly, funny apps, or games. LinkedIn means Business.
Just 100% useful applications that we could use on a professional level.


Checkout what mashable has to say about new apps that would enrich a users experience on LinkedIn . Looks like we could get updates and work done on LinkedIn itself without the need to open 10 different websites.
Let's see how users will react. Needless to say, Iam thrilled !!

Pricing does change things

These are my musings on the post by Seth Godin on his blog.

I guess change in pricing really changes everything. A friend of mine running a entertainment/gaming lounge has a multitude of games(along with food n drinks) to play but few customers chose to play for longer hours as it was priced on an hourly basis. Interestingly, his earnings were divided almost equally between the games and food because the longer time a customer stayed, the more he ordered. So, he offered a monthly&yearly membership to recurring customers and there were quite a no. of people who signed up.

Coming back to the post by Seth, he suggests a ticket auctioning system by airlines so that people can trade tickets, which to me, seems to be more of an eBay kind of system with all the features of time constraint, minimum consecutive bid, have-to-buy on winning bid etc etc.
But there's more to airline tickets than simply item auctioning. The products that you sell on eBay might not be available after a period of time but they aren't perishable or rendered useless.The seller can again put it up for sale with a renewed price structure. Tickets aren't that way.

It may seem plausible to auction Cricket or Football world cup tickets or Superbowl tickets(for Americans) on eBay, but to have a site just to auction travel tickets is going to be disruptive and destructive.
Imagine spammers buying tickets from LA to NY during Thanksgiving in multiples of 10s and just trying to sell it at double the regular price. You wouldn't have an option of buying one a bit later on at a seemingly affordable price if you are not an early bird. You could say there's a downside of doing so - if the tickets aren't sold, the auctioner will lose.At the price ratio I mentioned, he would break even if half are sold and sell the other at a lower price at the end. But I don't know who would want to fly to meet his family on the other coast and wait till the last day looking at a auction-site to get a cheaper price.

Instead, customers should be able to trade tickets online. Someone who wants to cancel his trip shouldn't end up losing his money when there are a lot others looking for a ticket. He can put his ticket for sale (at the same price he bought or at the current price) and let others buy it. The airlines can charge a nominal transaction fee from the seller and make it up. That way I guess there would be no need to put up unnecessary rules and regulations(that users wont even read completely) and put up an auction site

It's 'SNO'ing

I just came up with an useless acronym for this post. That's SNO for Social Network Overloading.
I recently happened to visit a social network related site when I saw this. My instant reaction was(and still is) "how many more ??".

OK, so I Stumbled Upon it , Reddit, found it Delicious , now should I Digg it, Tweet it, Furl it, add to Newsvine, put up on my wall, make it Live and share on Google ?!!!

Among people I know , some use Digg, some Delicious, some Stumble Upon, a few Reddit, others Tweet (re-tweet) to share information. Again , some of them use Facebook, some Orkut and a few Myspace.
Add to that your daily office e-mail, your Yahoo! e-mail, your Google e-mail, your MSN e-mail(if you are a MS aficionado/employee) , your instant messengers - Sametime at office, Google Talk, Yahoo! messenger, MSN Messenger, Jabber, AOL..phew !!
All this just for a couple of words and links, think about photos,videos,presentations,reminders etc...
And RSS/Atom feeds to finally seal the deal.,
I say "Just Imagine" .

So if you are hooked to the internet, here's what you'd do
1) Log in to your email - Thankfully, atleast you can choose to see your emails under one umbrella.
2) Log in to your instant messengers
3) Open Facebook/Myspace/Orkut/Twitter/Friendfeed. Now whatever be the mode you still open it right !
4) Check your RSS/Atom feeds for some wisdom/current affairs/entertainment.
5) Use the plethora of bookmarking sites to bookmark a few of them.
6) In between , read about an obscure, unknown thing on Wikipedia !!!

And among all these do some meaningful work too (dont you ????)


So, if I want to save my time and share information among all my contacts, I need something to consolidate all of these.
Now there's the catch and the never ending story - first some guy would come up with a tool/website to consolidate all social networking sites (which has already started with Flock Browser and People Browsr), and then the second, then a third(all these with active VC funding), and it continues...

Really, I wonder how many more social networking sites are going to come up in the following years. Next time, when I visit the very same site, I'll not be surprised if I see a scrollbar or pagination to checkout all kinds of options for "sharing information".