The joys of Obamacare!

If you're planning to have a kid, then Obamacare (i.e. the Affordable Care Act) is awesome for you, IF your health insurance policy honors it, or is grandfathered in. Here's what's now covered at 100%:

1. Breast pumps. The best we found was the Medela Pump in Style Advanced Breast Pump, and it was covered! If you live in Chicagoland, you can get one from Mark Drug Medical Supply (product link here).
2. Well baby visits to the pediatrician
3. Specific types of consultants that you may need to tap during and after pregnancy

Awesome, eh?

Exchange Rate and Inflation -- what to focus on?

Reading through the Rajan Committee Report, I realized something that I think a lot of people already know: A country's exchange rate and inflation are related. More specifically, if there is increased economic activity, either the country's currency must appreciate, or inflation must rise, or both.

However, while currency appreciation affects the rich more, inflation affects the poor more. Thus, the country is faced with a dilemma -- the rich control power, but the poor control the vote bank. The question is -- can the politicians (i.e. the rich) fool the poor long enough to keep getting rich?

Put another way, assuming the rich (and thus privileged) are more used to handling complexity, do complex laws and regulations ultimately hurt the poor and benefit the rich?

Think you know where Brian Adams stayed in Mumbai last year? Really?

Everyone knows where the Gateway of India is, right? In Mumbai, somewhere close to the water, with lots of people around all the time, boats in the background, and something to do with the word "Colaba". Well, if you're not from Mumbai, this is actually pretty good! However, a true "Mumbaikar" would also tell you about the ferries that leave from the Gateway to nearby beaches, where to go to catch a movie nearby (hint: its all about royalty!), and what the locally famous "Cafe Mondegar" is famous for. The question you have to ask yourself is: Even if you've lived in Mumbai all your life, are you a true "Mumbaikar"?

Calling all folks who think they know their cities oh-so-well! Come and try your hand at Google Map's "So you think you know your city?" app, a nifty game that challenges you to identify famous (and some not so famous) places in your city given its location on the map and some interesting tit-bits about it. Here's a picture of this restaurant where Brian Adams slapped a waiter last month - do you know its name? This is the only restaurant serving roomali roti pancakes - which one is it?

You can also face off with a friend in a "lightening round" setting. Google keeps track of your scores, and you can share them with your friends on Google Chat, Facebook, Twitter, SMS or plain ol' email.

However, we at Google freely admit that you probably know a lot more about your city than we do! And even if we did, we would like to know why YOU know the place so darn well. Is the hairdresser at that saloon your friend? Is there that ONE dish you think everyone should order at that restaurant? So, in the spirit of sharing, we invite you to comment on the places you get right. You can also submit places that you think we may have missed, so we can add it to the game and credit you with the entry. Don't worry -- all comments and entries are kept anonymous unless you explicitly want people to know its you.

Getting Started: To start the game, follow these simple steps:

1. Go to http://maps.google.com
2. Don't already have a google account? Now would be a good time to create one. Its easy - all you need is your name, email address and location. Click here to set one up now. Alternately, you can play the game without an account, but we won't be able to maintain your hi-scores list.
3. If you aren't already signed into your google account, go ahead and sign in using the "Sign in" link at the top right of the page
4. Once you are signed in, click on the "I know my city!" button on the top left of the page (see screenshot below)
5. Select your home city and voila -- you're ready to roll! Don't see your city in our list? Click here to learn more

Playing the Game:

1. Once you're in the game, choose which among our 18 different category you want to be tested on. Alternately, you can choose "surprise me" and we'll mix it up for you
2. You will now go through a round of 10 questions. Each question will show you a map location and some clue about this location, along with 5 choices. The clue may be a street photo of the surroundings, an interesting fact about the location, or something similar. You will have 30 seconds to answer each question, but the sooner you choose, the more points you get.
3. At the end of the round, you will receive your score and your rank. If you wish, you can share your score and rank with your friends immediately
4. If you would like to submit a comment or personal review about any of the places you were quizzed about, you can do so using the comments box next to each answer you got right.
5. If there are any new locations you would like to submit for us to include in the game, you can use the form at the bottom of the final score page. If your submission is accepted, you'll hear from us.

Delhi-ites, Calcuttans, Bangaloreans -- what are you waiting for? Let the games begin!

Ztail - recycling products made easy?

Ztail's pitch is that, for certain products, they can guarantee the resale price on eBay, so you know the *true* value you are getting from it. For example, a $500 Toshiba TV has a guaranteed ebaY resale price of $200. This is brilliant at many levels, in terms of automating and simplifying the buying experience!

Some interesting points
- Its free - no charges anywhere
- For now, the resale price is only guaranteed for upto a year after the purchase - after that, you are on your own. They are apparently working on improving this.
- If the TV sellers for *more* than the guaranteed price (say, $250 instead of $200), you *still* get to keep the extra cash. Ztail makes money off of affiliate marketing to the various online stores they direct you to, not off of your resale value. So this is not an arbitrage game, and is much fairer to the end customer.

I'll be adding more thoughts (hopefully) on this soon. What do you think?

Business vs Technology - what comes first?

I recently had a discussion about the business and technology with a friend, over which is more important (in an organization). My friend was of the opinion that technology was more important in a technology company than business management

Two interesting points came out of it:

-- 1 --
There is some confusion between management as an unqualified term (which may imply people or project management) and business management (i.e., what an MBA would do), and between development (what developers do and development managers manage) and technology (the invention/innovation that is being "developed"). The focus should be between business management and technology, not management and development.

-- 2 --
Both business management and technology are important in their roles.
Take the analogy of a bus. The bus is the business potential, the driver is the business manager and the engine is the technology. Now, without the driver telling it what to do and where to go, the engine is of no practical use. Alternately, without the engine, the driver can't do anything.

Now lets look at it a bit deeper.

Without the engine, the driver could still potentially get 20 people to carry the bus to where he wants it to go (i.e. using the same business model but much less efficiently), or get 10 people to carry a minivan instead (scale the business model down). However, without the driver, the engine is still useless (unless ANOTHER driver with ANOTHER bus - i.e. another business potential - can use it, which still means a driver is needed). This showcases the role of business as a technology consumer - without the consumer, there is no product.

Alternately, without the design of an engine (or its practical implementation - the actual engine), the driver would either not be able to envision the concept of a bus (i.e. untapped market need) or would not have a job (i.e. no "realizable" business potential). This showcases the role of technology as a business enabler - without the means, you can't achieve the goal.

A bit deeper?

I would argue that innovation is the mother of invention, and necessity is the mother of innovation. Transitively, necessity (market, i.e. business potential) is the mother of invention (i.e. technology). And you need a business manager, not a technologist, to realize a business potential and create the concept of a product. Of course, they could be one and the same person, but we are talking roles here.

Back to the bus - the bus driver should have ideally realized the concept of mass-moving people from one location to another. The engine would then just be the technology chosen to fulfill that need.

This is not rocket science. However, the ideal is far from the reality. So the roles of business management and technology are perhaps more parallel than sequential, especially in cutting-edge fast-paced technological fields like the internet.

How to Make Wealth - very interesting article

Kintan Brambhatt (http://www.kintya.com/) brought this well-written Paul Graham article to my attention. It talks about how start-ups are most apt to create "wealth". A brief summary:

• Wealth is what people want - car, a peaceful countryside vacation, house, anything. Money is just what they use as a medium of exchange to move wealth around. There is a relatively fixed amount of Money in the world, but limitless wealth to be created. Hence money is not wealth.
  
• To get rich (wealth-wise), you need to be in a situation with two things: measurement (your performance should be measurable) and leverage (your abilities and actions have a big impact). Any job where you feel safe probably is missing one or the other (or both).
• A small company enables Measurability, and cutting-edge technology enables Leverage. Hence start-ups self-select motivated top performers who want to work hard, as their efforts have distinctly visible impact.
  

A couple comments on the article:

• Wealth vs Money: I'm not completely on board with the statement that wealth is on average created, because there is no way to clearly measure it. For example, how do you measure the increase in wealth due to cell phones versus the decrease in wealth due to increasing cases of life-threatening deceases like cancer (which may be attributable to wireless communication)? How about industrialization and its environmental repercussions? Paul addresses it, but not to my satisfaction - immeasurability is not the same as 'different kind of wealth'. I agree though that Money is just one way to measure Wealth. In fact, Money is the measure of the perception of wealth, and it should be respected in just that capacity. So, if something is worth less money, there's a good chance that its implied wealth creation capability is less - but it is by no means the only factor to consider, as several people could have that 'wealth', which reduces its premium but not necessarily its value. A particular cell phone is just as useful regardless of whether it costs $400 or $100, and regardless of whether there are only 100 such models or 10 million. "Premium", IMHO, is not Wealth but simply a manufactured concept to increase the perception of Wealth. As such, its 'value' is fickle and non-dependable unless delicately managed - which makes this 'value' depend on the individuals managing it rather than on the product itself. Case in point: the iPod?
  
• Measurement and leverage: This is very key: "If you're in a job that feels safe, you are not going to get rich, because if there is no danger there is almost certainly no leverage"
• Uninterruptability: The best technical brains *hate* being interrupted, because they are creating 500hp value that interruptions tend to put a handbrake on. This is easy to forget in management, where you are the one interrupting these folks for reports and metrics. You need to keep in mind that when you do that, "inside their heads a giant house of cards is tottering."
  

We are what we are exposed to

Heads-up: This promises to be a confusing post :)

We are what we read, hear and experience - basically what we are exposed to. We (can) fundamentally change over the course of these experiences. I'm not breaking any new ground by stating this here.

What I wonder is whether we have control over the change that these 'mental impingements' bring in us. We may know what our reaction would be to a news story about children dying of hunger in a small country, but do we know how it will change our way of life? We may have an opinion about the role of individuality in life, but do we know what a particular 3-hour conversation with someone will do to that opinion?

The simple answer: No. The more interesting answer: Mayyyyybe.

What if we had control over this change? What factors influence this process?

Factors in our personal space:

1. Mood - happy, melancholic, ?
   
2. State of mind - peaceful, stressed, ?
3. State of life - stable, in transition, ? (maybe this rolls up into #2)

There's no "right" value to these factors btw. The effect would be different when you are happy vs. brooding and melancholic, but it would still be an effect.

Factors not in our direct control:

1. Style of impingement - book, discussion, experience, ?
   
2. Quality of impingement - Well-written and emotionally rich poetry? Passionate discussion partner? Well-written and connected book? Intense and pure (or uniquely mixed) emotion?

However, is there something in our indirect control, which I for one have not realized yet (similar to the Zeroth law of robotics in a sense)?

Can we control what type of literature we read, people we speak to and experiences we have with the conscious intent of gaining a specific insight into ourselves? I'm not talking about engaging a specific person for a specific reason, or reading a particular book. I'm also not talking about the serendipitous discovery of blogs or chance discourses on topics, that happen seemingly at random. I'm talking about "can I control what I imbibe (not just read) or what I listen to (not just who I talk to), based on what I want to gain from the experience?" Perhaps this is a cyclical dependency: if I could do this, I would already know where I want to go, which is the whole point of the experience.

The simple answer: Yes. I choose to read a particular type of literature and interact with a particular type of people.

The more interesting answer: Sometimes, you may need to not read, not meet, not experience something. Is it important to choose what you do not want to have impinge upon you, as it may change you in ways you don't want? Some criteria for this 'impingement exclusion':

1. You need a deep insight into who you are and what you want to do or be going forward
2. You are relatively easily swayed by others' opinions and thoughts, and have admitted this to yourself.
   
3. You need to be looking for contentment and a path to stable state.
4. "there is something called too much information", where "too much" is highly subjective, based on insights developed in #1.

If these conditions hold, then you are in a position to be swayed from your path to contentment by the passions and dreams of other - your parents, friend, peers, etc. In which case, is it better to consciously follow the "ignorance is bliss" maxim? Is it even possible if you know yourself well?

Btw, this is not an autobiographical analysis ;). I was reading an article on melancholy, and got to thinking about which sort of people would be comfortable with having fits of melancholy if they engender fits of innovation. We've all seen people struggle for peace of mind while continue to do things that put more pressure on them to perform, leading to a vicious cycle. I wonder if ignorance is indeed bliss in the long term for these folks, or whether everyone should strive for melancholy (as defined in that article). I guess I'm wondering if there's an invisible and indiscernible "meritocracy of the melancholy". I don't want to believe there is, and it is perhaps impractical to even discover it (never say never though ;)) - but I wonder.

I said it would be confusing.