Gee, another writeup on Google..

Wired has this nice story on reasons to love Google. For those who do not live with their noses buried deep in news websites, Google filed their IPO today. Meaning that Google's shares can now be bought by the public. Just another regular IPO? Well, Google has never been a regular company, and for all those cynics who feel that once Google goes public, it will stop doing all the geeky and do-not-be-evil things it does now in order to satisfy shareholders, here's some news: Google did not become what it is today by being stupid or by hiring stupid people and their IPO is yet another example of their brilliance and utter disregard for conventional business practices.

• For one, Google's stock will be sold through a dutch auction. Which means that you and I can get our hands on the stock through an internet auction before the fatcats at Wall Street do.
• Larry and Sergey will still have control over Google. The stock will be divided into two gropus, class A and class B with different voting rights. So all those who believe that Google will change as a result of stockholder pressure can rest in peace.
• The document filed with the SEC makes for interesting reading. No bullshit, no trash talking and no hyped up vision of the future. The best part is the reference to Warren Buffet about not "smoothing" results to please the market- "If earnings figures are lumpy when they reach headquarters, they will be lumpy when they reach you."

As an aside, they still retain their geekiness - The value of the IPO is $2,718,281,828 which is the value of Euler's constant to 10 digits.

Them's all fakes but this Photoshop contest for creating bizzare archaelogical images has produced some real gems! There are some other awesome contest results too, like turning war into peace, some awful technology ideas, and mmm... some glorious food!

Animals and Empathy?

Not so surprising it seems. Research shows that empathy is not such a complex thing as it seems and that animals may be perfectly capable of feeling empathy towards others. Maybe it's time to get some of it back from them.

Spiders and Post-it notes..

Spiders are amazing. They are soft, fuzzy and uhm..tasty too. Their silk in their webs is stronger than steel and now they may produce the clue to creating better Post-it notes too! Scientists have been studying the feet of spiders to see how they manage to stick to surfaces. It seems that the molecular force (van der Waals force) that gives them this sticky power can produce an adhesive force of 170 times the spider's own weight. For perspective, this is (to quote from the story) like Spiderman clinging to the flat surface of a window on a building by his fingertips and toes only, whilst rescuing 170 adults who are hanging on to his back!

24 beers in a day, 24 beers in a case..

When Paul Newman said those words, he couldn't have anticipated the tradition at Princeton that would follow. On 24th April every year, students at Princeton go on a drinking spree of 24 beers in as many hours. Apparently, it's common to come to classes inebriated, and also to slip in a few drinks to try to get through the day successfully. Newman's day as it is called is probably not the best legacy Paul wants to leave behind, especially after his son Scott died of a drug overdose in 1978. Sanctioned or not, it's a great excuse to get drunk!

Some amazing ASCII art here - If you want to create your own, use this handy online tool or download a program.

Destination: Kerala

Paul Therox lists Kerala as one of the 25 best locations in the world to unwind. From the New York Metro:

"I do not buy the Indian miracle—there are just too many Indians, and most of them are writing novels. As with everyone else, their virtues are also their faults, their tending to be backward-looking, caste-mad, attached to the past and to weird pieties about purity. And half the country—surely they cannot all be novelists and computer geniuses?—seems to be bunking down on the sidewalk or squatting by the railway line. Never mind, India is still one of the best destinations on earth."
[The complete list]

Email, search and beyond

I got my Gmail account today. Am happy since I've never been able to get an email account with my name, but getting into the gmail pool before it is released to the general public meant that my name was still available. Check out some of the interesting features. (Ever wondered where some of the interesting stuff from Google Labs with no apparent use on the search page goes? Keyboard shortcuts has been implemented in a big way in Gmail - allows me to use Gmail like pine without taking my hands off the keyboard. Neat.)

If you are looking for an alternative way to search, here are a few good options:

• Scirus is a great search engine for journals and publications along with the usual web search options. Great for research!
• Vivisimo has some great clustering technology which groups your search results (clusters them) so that if you search for apple, you might find a cluster of results related to fruits, and another cluster related to hardware. A neat way to organize search results (and I suspect there will be a much better version in Google soon since they are testing some neat technology)

The world's largest democracy goes to vote..

670 million registered voters, 16 official languages, 28 states and a deep rooted belief in democracy. India goes to vote beginning monday in the world's most massive elections till date. Another first is the use of electronic voting machines throughout the nation which (to quote from reuters) "have been carried on helicopters, bullock-carts, elephants (see image) and camels" to reach polling booths all over the country! I'm so proud.

[Bloomberg has a very insightful story on how elections are held in India]

Firing The Donald

Trump has probably gained more out of 'The Apprentice' than any of the winners or losers. Trump comes across as a egomaniac to me with the way he promotes his buildings, casinos and homes, all of which are branded Trump with a capital 'T'. While B-school students across the country may have flocked to their tellys to watch the contestants act out various tasks and get 'fired' by The Donald, their behavior may not be the best example of corporate behavior. What about Trump himself? A great deal maker, but his own businesses are floundering and he went nearly bankrupt in the early nineties. Fortunately for him (again his deal making skills, I'm sure) his creditors agreed to restructure his debt rather than fight him for the money they lost. His casino business lost $87 million last year. Too bad that he doesn't have to feel it as his holding forms a miniscule 3% of his entire worth - what his shareholders feel about it is another story. Someone could have told him at that point 'You're fired!'

Hooha over Google's Gmail!

How stupid can people get! A California senator is drafting legislation to prevent Google from releasing Gmail out of privacy concerns. She along with many others are concerned that it will be an invasion of privacy since Google will scan emails to display relevant text ads. Will someone tell the honorable senator that no Google employee will be sitting at a computer to scan emails? For heaven's sake, the emails will be scanned by computers, just as they are being scanned right now by every conceivable email service like Yahoo! or Hotmail for purposes of fighting spam. No one sees the email apart from the electrons in the computer and the recipient's eyes! The lengths people go to!

Imagine Cup at ASU

Robert McLaws seems to be pretty impressed by some of the work he saw at the Imagine Cup at ASU where he was one of the judges. His blog on that subject is very interesting. Now I wish I'd spent some time working on something I'd been planning with Vivek. Robert is also one of the judges at the WCS programming contest at ASU later this month.

I don't post jokes here, but this one is too funny to be left alone. From the rec.humor.funny archives :

"I was in the VIP lounge last week en route to Seattle. Whilst in the lounge, I noticed Bill Gates sitting on the Chesterfield enjoying a cognac.
I was meeting with a very important client who was also flying to Seattle with me but she was running a bit late.

Being a forward type of guy, I approached Mr Gates and introduced myself. I explained to him that I was conducting some very important business and how I would appreciate it if he could throw a quick "hello, Chris" at me when I was with my client. He agreed.

Ten minutes later while I was conversing with my client, I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Bill Gates. I turned around and looked up at him. He said "Hi Chris, what's happening?"

To which I replied "F*ck off Gates, I'm in a meeting."

For the record, I'm not a Gates/Microsoft baiter. The joke left me laughing hard though!

Life on a Google Server Farm

You thought the giant Google server farms crunching numbers and letters to index millions of pages and gazillions of search queries every day were just dry unromantic places with rows of computers with blinking lights and humming fans? You are sadly mistaken.

Google's Lunaplex

After research centers in US, India and Switzerland, the Google geniuses are relocating to the moon! Google plans to start a hosting and research center on the moon in the spring of 2007 and has already posted a job description on their website for their Copernicus Center. Yes, it's an April fool prank, but it's a very detailed job description with details of how the center will be implemented. Go ahead read it, it's one of the best April fool pranks Google has pulled!

On a side note, have you seen the sample resumes on the Google India site? Like this resume for a MS guy! Erm, it's a fictitious resume, but look at the kind of people they want - Bachelors from IIT, Masters from Berkeley, two patent applications, 12 publications, an Organic Gummybear award (!!) and no experience in using Windows (haha). Something tells me that these resumes are real with the names changed and a few funny elements thrown in. Well, if that's the kind of people they want on earth, I'd rather go to the moon. (to hide).

How India is saving Capitalism!

Salon goes onsite to Chennai with Katharine Mieszkowski in the first of a series of articles that seek to investigate the offshoring phenemenon that's become a sore point with most tech workers in the US. As Katharine says, the problem originated right here in the US. Not always because of corporate greed as many are keen to portray it, but out of the need for survival after the Internet boom/bust. India was quick to see the opportunity, and it allowed many companies to survive, and startups to flourish. The Internet allowed technology to bridge the gap between production and consumption, and two diametrically opposite worlds in a way that could not have been conceived of before. Of course, that still begs the question : so what jobs will remain in the US? Solutions have to be found, and I for one, believe that a society that's so advanced and intelligent as the United States will not go down because of this. Solutions have to be found that go beyond trashing India for the problem - There are no Indians huddled in the Himalayas plotting to grab the jobs of honest middle class Americans and make their lives miserable - solutions that go beyond the current 'We-will-save-jobs-but-I-don't-have-a-clue-how' rhetoric of contenders to the presidential throne or the 'I-don't-give-a-flying-fudge' attitude of the Government. As I keep telling people, outsourcing is creating a new world order where knowledge is spreading across the globe, and most of all, American values such as the fabled 'life, freedom and the pursuit of happiness' are spreading across the globe - just visit Bangalore to see how much life there is influenced by America. (So sad, however that these values seem to be on their way to extinction in the US.)

UPDATE: I posted the story to Slashdot and got /.ed along with a huge response which is quite a read. Also got a mention in Robert McLaws' weblog at asp.net.