THE Y-AXIS by Rajesh Kumar

Before The Washington Post suffered it. Amit Agarwal talks about it. Rishi Raj laments it. Mani Karthik says he does not care. A zillion posts are already up on Google's recent PageRank update. After While the web is full of commentary on Google's recent PageRank update, here's some food for thought. We compared the PageRank of some of the leading IT Companies corporate websites in June and October. It is quite puzzling that Infosys.com and Accenture.com suffered a PR drop by one notch from 8 & 9 respectively to 7 & 8 now. In the same timeframe, TCS.com has gone up one level from 7 to 8 level. It is also notable that in the same period the Google reported inbound link to Infosys.com has dropped, which is quite mystifying. When one compares the Google reported backlink figures among the top names in IT industry, IBM has seen its backlink numbers jump from a high figure of 62,100 to astounding 1,11,000 which perhaps explains its PR 9, before and after. Most people

While there are a zillion sites in the social networking genre and hundreds spring up by the week, Bibliophiles would love this social networking site called Shelfari. This is a space to find out what is being read by others on different subjects, what's really hot in terms of the latest bestsellers and to discover what others are saying on books you have read or plan to read. An absolutely delightful sight that lets you discover and discuss books with book lovers worldwide. You can also build your 'to read' list based on reviews by others, as well as join(or form) a community around a specific subject or them. Click here or the image below for my virtual bookshelf . Shelfari: My virtual book world

Sukumar has done a post on a lecture by Dan Tapscott who has authored Wikinomics ( The full title is Wikinomics- How mass collaboration changes everything ) with Anthony Williams. Actually this book has been in my to read list for almost a year and it is only now that I have been able to lay my hands on a copy - thanks to Odyssey . One of my old agonies with bookstores in India is that they don't get books till it is branded as a success in the western world. Somehow, in this respect, the world is not flat yet! Though I am just forty pages deep into it and hope to post again once I am done reading, I remain quite convinced on how IT enabled mass collaboration is changing the world as we know it- come on, we knew it even before we started reading this book - Wikinomics appears to give our own thoughts that much more backbone of reasoning to make it more believable.(In the below Video, Dan talks at Google on the thoughts that make Wikinomics). I shall be back once I am done readi

Buying behaviour can be crazy and difficult to comprehend.Look at this one.The fat lady was uttering frighteningly within my earshot," This Patiala wasn't good. I want a larger one ". The guy serving her was stunned, and all he could mumble was,"This was the best we have sold. We will see how we can make it better". Then he vanished behind the counter only to return after five minutes with another stack of salwar suits- yes, you guessed it, yet more Patialas. Till I went to shop with my wife this Dussehra, I erroneously believed that large Patialas represent a serving of a certain type of liquid, which only the connoisseurs could partake in the company of their best friends. Neither did I know how happy a shopping experience could be, for a husband, when the wife is busy buying dresses. I never knew ladies stores have become so advanced, that they have figured out the need and the mantra to keep the man happily engaged, while the wife keeps on telling the shop

Voice & Data reports that a furniture store in South Africa till recently used to lock up its employees in the workshop so that they focus on their work. Nothing too much till you realize that the workshop did not have appropriate rest room facilities so when the workers needed to go to the rest room, they had to send in their p-petition to their managers via SMS, who would come and unlock them. That gives rise to the horrendous possibilities: Imagine worker X 's phone has weak network coverage. Worker Y ran of his phone's pre-paid charge, now how does he discharge? S'pose worker Z's phone battery drains out - now how will he! However, all this will pale, if you think the possibilities if the manager's phone suffers from any of the above. What a blast. PS: The govt moved in to stop this, naturally.

Dr Jagdish Sheth , renowned thought leader was at Madras Management Association on 15th Oct and as a member I had the privilege of attending his talk, which I can describe as simple and mind boggling. Dr Sheth spoke on Seven Self Destructive Habits of Good Companies which is published as a book. Dr Sheth pointed out at the beginning of his presentation that a third of the companies listed in Fortune 500 in 1970 had vanished by 1983! Dr Sheth spoke about the seven habits as: Denial (of realities) Arrogance (Often success breeds this) Complacency (When companies have tasted the fruits of success and don't feel the need to better themselves) Competence Dependence (When they have something they have identified as a core skill which seem to have worked for them - the requirement for the skill may get washed out due to disruptive change, maybe technology led) Competitive myopia (Identifying your competition incorrectly and then refusing to see the truth) Volume obsession ( "Let&#

This is my 100th post. It has taken me 2 years to reach to this milestone. I started blogging as an item to satisfy my curiosity (Let me be honest -my mean interest was to get a Gmail account - I had heard they were offering Gmail accounts to select bloggers with 1 GM space. My hope was to be one of them. I did not get a Gmail account this way but got sort of fascinated by this media). And by the way another blogger obliged me by sending a Gmail invite. Interestingly, this is not my first experiment with web content.Way back in 1999 I had created a website which though not updated since 2000, to my utter surprise, still exists and can be accessed. I don't have the password to the update the contents to have to let it R.I.P. In two years of blogging, my blogposts have wandered from what's happening in Chennai (the city I live in), business books that I liked, to marketing, and even an occasional bit of technology. The posts that have got me the highest visitor response have bee

(Of late I have been receiving incessant emails from 'children' and 'widows' of former presidents of some countries in other geographies, who require my business advice, acumen and assistance in salvaging the treasure which the late dictator bequeathed upon them..My response to them, once and for all , is below) Dear Great Grandson of Dr Laboomba, I am in receipt of your email dated 6th October containing the urgent and confidential business proposal worth a sum of dollars 10,00,000. I am also in receipt of a kind email from your great grand mother indicating the importance of the international business proposal that you wish to pursue with my humble self. However, I am not exactly sure if the said wife of the late Dr Laboomba is your exact great grandmother. After all, your great grandfather, the late Dr Laboomba was a rather prolific specimen of mankind, and traces of his combination of x-y chromosomes is found in the genome structure of children who came

Mahesh Murthy, one of India's greatest experts on digital media marketing, was at SearchCamp unconference in Chennnai this morning. The house full audience was all ears as Mahesh laid out his eight predictions for 2008. Mahesh's eight trends for 2008, as he forsees them: It is not just about Search alone: As per Mahesh, companies would like one agency to handle all digital marketing handled by one agency, which could include SEO, SMS, online marketing etc. Right now companies go to different vendors for different initiatives within digital marketing. It won't just be about Google : Mahesh feels, over time, a set of competitors would emerge to Google. Marketers would have to evaluate choices from others such as Yahoo, MSN, and local leaders such as Baidu in China, and others in Korea, Australia, Russia. It will require expertise to target specific markets, which is good news for SEO professionals. SERP formula would be broken : It is now possible to create a site and guess

(With due apologies to Capt Gopinath, who has made flying possible at our personal expense. Put in plain English, we don’t have to fly only when on an official trip, or when the NRI techie sends in a ticket for his parents. Simplifly!) When I went to Chennai airport this afternoon to receive some personal guests, the Air Deccan flight was still in the air. As per the notice board, it was five minutes past the scheduled arrival time, and the flight was reportedly on time, but has still not landed. Mysteriously so. No sweat. Very few people were at the gate to receive the Deccan flight passengers, forcing me to infer, either, Air Deccan passengers do not get folks to receive them, or, no one expects a Deccan flight to land on time, so maybe the folks will turn up after some time to receive their near and dear ones. Meaning, they will come when they realistically think the flight would be landing. They only have to guess, since the flight status on the Air Deccan website was ‘unavailabl

Okay, I admit this upfront.Tim Harford's Undercover Economist is a must read. Read the below to see a real life problem. Mayor of Moscow :Tell me, who's in charge of the supply of bread to the city of London? British Host: No one. I should have read Tim Harford's Undercover Economist long ago. This book seeks to find, analyse and explain for a layman, economic sense (blended with copious supply of common sense) behind some of the most ordinary phenomenon from real life. Well, some have compared this to Freakonomics , but I would say my experience with TUE as much superior. Economics is a field of study which , as some great light said, predicts the past. It tends to be drab, and academic, due to which most of us do not even want to spend (waste?) our time in understanding the economic phenomenon. This would be quite different, if the teacher the Tim Harford. My favourite chaoters of this book remain "Who Pays for your coffee" ( an eye opener) and "The Cros

Dear Vishy, We learnt about your win in World Chess Championship in Mexico. Infact I read about it two days after you won. No, I was not in the crowd that went to welcome the Indian Twenty20 cricket team in Mumbai.Nor did I feel that all that Indian sportsmen could won has been won. To be truthful, I was just not aware that there is any such tournament such as the aforesaid World Chess Championship happening around this time. No, I am not such horrible in following sports. I mean I did come to know when Indian boys won the Asian Hockey Championship recently. I mean, didn't they slam Srilanka or someone down by nearly or approximately 20 goals to nil. Every time the goal hit the net, the crowd was reportedly up on the toes,yelling, jumping, and laughing.Bound to happen in a spectator sport. Coming to that later. Now,when it comes to sports, we Indians also only know two emotions, extreme happiness and horrible disappointment. You play a wonderful game called Chess. We have heard t