The Flywheel

Winter Break

My daughter's winter break started today. So I guess posting would be intermittent at best! See you all next week.

More Filangy-ness

Got 4 more invites of Filangy in my inbox today. Drop a comment here and I will set you up.
In case you would like to know more about Filangy, go here and here.

Update: Only 2 more invites left.

Filangy, Furl, Spurl, del.ici.ous, Pluck...Who's the cat?

I have an account in all the above tools. Of them all, I really like two: furl and Filangy. Furl, as many of you already know is a web-based bookmarks manager that is shareable. Nice. I do not like del.ici.ous because those tags can really grow like weeds. But, Filangy, in the past couple of weeks I was trying out, really hits the sweetspot for me. There have been countless times in the past when I used to bust my gut trying to remember websites where I saw some information that was very interesting but not immediately relevant and hence not bookmarked; as it usually happens with such events, a few weeks later, you really need that info and you cannot remember the url of the webpage for the life of you. This is where Filangy comes in. It works quietly in the background and indexes every page you visit that is publicly available (it does not index all the pages which have restricted access like your bank statements, email accounts etc.). If I had Filangy 3–4 months back, this post would have been far more easier to publish. I just could not remember where I saw the new product diffusion rate variations across EU countries. I had to search the wbe for a couple of hours to get some information that could do. With Filangy, it would have been a cinch!

As the filangy blurb says:

Using Filangy is simple -- you don't have to do anything for it to be of use to you. Just use the web as you normally would and let the Filangy toolbar do the rest. Filangy automatically indexes the pages you visit or WebMark and stores your previous searches for ready reference.

Oh by the way, I have a couple of invites to Filangy in case any of you are interested. Drop me a comment here and I will set you up.

Update: I am all out folks.

Google's soft launch of Gmail: 50 Gmail invites available!

I am sure most of you have seen the news somewhere else; it appears that Google is getting ready to make public their Gmail service. A lot of Gmail users (including me) have received 50 invites to give away. If any of you would like to test this service, please drop me a comment or email and I will set you up.

Social Networking Websites - Do they work? (An update)

I use LinkedIn as a networking website of choice. Sometime back, I posted a rant against networking websites primarily because I got burnt by accepting an invitation from a stranger just to increase my connections base. That post generated some thoughtful responses from some of you out there. This, combined with my own experience for the past few weeks made me reconsider the value and role that I can now expect LinkedIn to play in my life.

My first mistake is to expect that LinkedIn will make me a much better networker than I am in real life (or, in physical world). It is obvious now that this can never happen. LinkedIn is a tool; it can make me more efficient certainly, but not more effective. Obviously, as a tool, LinkedIn should remain in the background and help me make my work easier; it can and more importantly, should never do my work for me.

Social networking websites are just tools designed to make my networking more efficient. Probably they can make managing relationships with my existing network more effective, but they can never replace or subvert the rules that apply in the physical world. What I mean is, if in real world you will never refer or give your personal details to a stranger, why will you do that online?

Secondly, the size of network you can build is never an issue. Now, I am not an expert on social networking or the science of networks. In fact apart from a general interest in how networks function, I do not profess to any experience or knowledge on this topic. However, as an individual, I find it hard to accept there is a natural or universal limit on the number of connections I can effectively manage. If I have a lot of contacts in real world, there is nothing wrong with having them online too. In fact, my suspicion is most of us have bigger and higher quality networks offline than online.
For example, I studied in 3 universities and worked in 4 companies in the past 15 years. This in turn gives me a contact base of at least 300 people I know quite well. However, I have only 17 connections on LinkedIn, mostly because I am not sure if I want to invite all my contacts (since some them will not find it especially useful) and secondly, some of them are just not interested in networking or sites such as these. However, when it comes to accepting connections on LinkedIn, both my offline and online networks will have a role to play. From all my 300 connections, perhaps 30 could constitute my Inner Circle. It will be this Inner Circle which will determine if I will pass on a reference. But what if I want to build my network online?

For me, the ability to build an online network is defined by your profile/activities in real world. Now, I work in a country and industry, where technology does not play a significant role. So, the chances of me networking in real world with someone who is on LinkedIn or would be interested in joining LinkedIn are quite remote. So, as my offline network grows, my online network languishes.
Assuming I want to see a healthy, growing online network, what are the options I have? As Bren argued sometime back, the answer is blogs. Because of the specific character of my blog, I will attract interest only from people who are interested in the topics I find fascinating. LinkedIn, in spite of the endorsements feature, cannot provide this kind of filter. In addition, a blog gives sufficiently deep insight into my character without being intrusive or intimidating. Any visitor who wishes to make contact can do so through a variety of options, need not be under pressure to make something out of it and as the dialog progresses, both of us can decide whether it makes sense to connect or not.

Thirdly, Jeff explains it best. Do not connect with someone you do not know or is not referred by your trusted Inner Circle.

Personally, I got the best value from LinkedIn when I was able to find friends who dropped out of contact in the past 5 years. This alone is worth putting my profile out there on the website.

5 Gmail invites

I have 5 gmail invites to give away. If you want or need one, drop a comment here and the first 5 comments will get my autographed gmail invite. :)

What do vampires, terrorists and UPS have in common?

Reality bites. (Sub required)
It turns out, they are all urban myths that rage across countries in a matter of weeks and vanish! These legends or myths arise spontaneously and can rarely be attributed to a single source. Also, these myths have been in existence even before email, internet or telephones.

The million dollar question is: how do these myths spread? is there a generic process by which urban myths are created, disseminated and retired? Think about the business applications for such a process!

Gmail accounts

Thanks to Bren, I got my gmail id a few days back. Sweet. Now the folks at Google gave me a few invites. If any one wants an invite, please drop a comment and I will send one right over.

Maxed out credit cards? Blame it on your limbic system!

Economist.com has an interesting article on the emerging field of neuroeconomics. This emerging science is another step to include the non-rational, impulsive and at times suicidal behavior of humans into the rational, selfish worldview of economics.
Using cutting edge medical imaging technology, researchers place test subjects in functional  MRI environments and ask them to perform economic tasks and activities.
Using neuroeconomics, economists are trying to figure out why people prefer short term rewards over long term ones (we used to call this tendency the "bird in hand versus birds in bush syndrome"; but what do we know?). Their experiments suggest that our response to short term rewards occurs in brain's limbic system, which also governs the emotions. In contrast, long term rewards are evaluated by prefrontal cortex, which is the seat of reason and calculation. Another conclusion that one can draw is that people who get into credit card debt or who do not save enough even when they "know" better, are governed by their emotions and thusly by their limbic system.
Hmmm, I always thought maxed out credit cards show clear headed reasoning and pragmatism!

New ways to spend your new money

I was reading some days back that the airline industry is courting trouble because of the amount of frequent flyer miles accumulated by passengers. According to The Economist, the total value of frequent flyer miles still to be redeemed exceeds the total amount of money in circulation in US & Europe!

By the end of 2004 almost 14 trillion frequent-flyer miles had, by our estimate (updating figures from webflyer.com), been accumulated worldwide. But what is a mile worth? Airlines sell them to credit-card firms at an average of just under 2 cents a mile; their value when used to buy a ticket or to upgrade to business class can be anywhere between 1 cent and over 10 cents per mile. Using the mid-point of this range means that the global stock of frequent-flyer miles is now worth over $700 billion, more than all the dollar notes and coins at large. Pedants will complain that we have ignored dollars sitting in bank accounts, but after a couple of free in-flight gin-and-tonics, most frequent-flyers care little about the difference between M0 (the narrowest measure of the supply of miles, or rather, money) and M3.

Sounds like another disaster in waiting for airlines right? Not if this new business system takes off (pun unintended).

Evan Demestihas, a physician who runs a medical company in Atlanta, had always wanted to slip the surly bonds of earth and get out into space, but it looked for a long time as if his abundant business travels on commercial airliners would be the closest he would come. Then came an unexpected opportunity — thanks to those very trips.

In July, he traveled to Star City,   Russia, just outside Moscow, for a ride on a MIG fighter to an altitude of 80,000 feet, about 15 miles up. Looking down from a black sky at the curve of the earth, he marveled at how thin the atmosphere, a band of hazy blue, really looked. He was up there with the pilots who travel higher above the planet than anyone but astronauts.

"That day was all mine," he said.

And instead of paying the full fare of $18,995, he spent $8,000 — and 275,000 frequent-flier miles.

Do the math. By offering this kind of adventure trips, the outstanding stock of unredeemed miles can easily be handled.

Well maybe not so easily (given airlines tendency to attract trouble)…but nevertheless possible.