Does IT really matter?

NOT when ...

*You are stuck behind a stack of slow moving cars - aided by an arm waving policeman, standing underneath a dysfunctional traffic signal

*Waiting patiently near a bank of elevators when they are not synchronized

*Not when you are told to analyze whether five people on the job is cheaper from a TCO basis, compared to putting an automated system in place

*You take 7 minutes on the IVR to get to the option that allows you - "an esteemed customer of the credit card company" to speak to a human voice

*And then being told that "while your call is valuable to us, your estimated hold time is 17 minutes and 34 seconds"

*Finally on finishing the call, you are automatically routed to a service rating module that takes you through 10 questions, even though you have given the lowest possible ratings for each question thrown at you by the humano-tronic voice

*Finding out that your electricity company has printed the bill in the vernacular, and that its website is also equally intractable

*Your friendly travel agent comes up with cheap fares that exist nowhere on your equally friendly much-hawked travel website - and hence makes your trudge to the agent worth the while

*Your route to the office takes 25 minutes more since you take the download friendly, data black-hole free route from home

* You carry two cell phones since number portability is not exactly the mannah from heaven that was promised, especially for folks who chalk up around 150 talk hours a month

Identifying a STROKE

I deemed this important enough to post in even a tech-oriented blog.

STROKE:Remember the 1st Three Letters....S.T.R. My nurse friend sent this and encouraged me to post it and spread the word.
I agree.If everyone can remember something this simple, we could save some folks.

NARRATION OF A STROKE IDENTIFICATION INCIDENT:

During a BBQ, a friend stumbled and took a little fall - she assured everyone that she was fine (they offered to call paramedics) .she said she had just tripped over a brick because of her new shoes. They got her cleaned up and got her a new plate of food. While she appeared a bit shaken up, Ingrid went about enjoying herself the rest of the evening

Ingrid's husband called later telling everyone that his wife had been taken to the hospital - (at 6:00 pm Ingrid passed away.) She had suffered a stroke at the BBQ. Had they known how to identify the signs of a stroke, perhaps Ingrid would be with us today. Some don't die. they end up in a helpless, hopeless condition instead.

A neurologist says that if he can get to a stroke victim within 3 hours he can totally reverse the effects of a stroke...totally. He said the trick was getting a stroke recognized, diagnosed, and then getting the patient medically cared for within 3 hours, which is tough.

RECOGNIZING A STROKE

Thank God for the sense to remember the '3' steps, STR . Read and Learn!

Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify. Unfortunately, the lack of awareness spells disaster. The stroke victim may suffer severe brain damage when people nearby fail to recognize the symptoms of a stroke.

Now doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple questions:

S *Ask the individual to SMILE.

T *Ask the person to TALK and SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE (Coherently)
(i.e. It is sunny out today)

R *Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS.

If he or she has trouble with ANY ONE of these tasks, call emergency number immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher.

New Sign of a Stroke -------- Stick out Your Tongue

NOTE: Another 'sign' of a stroke is this: Ask the person to 'stick' out his tongue.. If the tongue is 'crooked', if it goes to one side or the other,that is also an indication of a stroke.

Search - new dimensions on the web

Computational search, semantic search, clustered search etc. - new paradigms to create hypothetical scenarios to find everything from lost keys to mathematically arrive at patterns between 2 words. Its a brave new world out there with veterans such as Google and Yahoo, as well as relatively new kids on the block such as Clusty and Wolfram Alpha.

Getting a "different way to look at the web" is what Google and other companies are trying to push as an agenda. Innovation leading to thought-computing is where a lot of companies are trying to push the envelope. Which, directly leads us to the marketing reality of uncontested or poorly contested segment spaces - blue sky effect. Workable strategy, a la Google, seems to be - design an elegant solution, that creates a want or addresses a need - undeniable value proposition.

"2008 is the year that search got competitive," said Bill Gates according to the news.bbc.co.uk website. 2009 could be the year that search, gets to mean much more than a query on google or yahoo. Companies that will contribute to this advancement would be companies that perpetually are seen to move forward with advances in technology, deployment and usability. The WOW factor can only help. Gimmicks may on the other hand recoil to hurt not just the initiative but also the organization responsible for them. Cashback search from Microsoft - hmmm, wait and watch boys and girls.

Mainframe humour post-ante

Did you think that Mainframes were a dry, humourless topic? Think again...at least in death the mainframe has given us a chance to laugh out ... LOUD, than ks to this video from Youtube - source, UoM. The video outlines an entire burial ritual, complete with tomb, priest, hymns and eulogy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEFPPeUJPEA&feature=player_embedded

Indian Building Industry - Lack of Automation

Ask anyone who has occupied a new flat in Mumbai, about the level of satisfaction with quality of fittings and monitoring of quality of delivery and probably the response would be uniform - NOT SATISFIED. Right from taps exploding in faces once they are turned on, to incorrect installation of equipment - the woes would complete the veritable dictionary.

A lack of comprehensive focus on quality at the top management level percolates through to operational levels and results in air-brushing of the entire issue. An over reliance on manual labour in the industry, drags into the equation cases of individual interpretation over-riding corporate standards for various.

Lack of widespread usage of power tools and electronic aids leads to gaps in estimation and communication leading to inaccurate dissemination of information and loss of client satisfaction. The devil is in the details and the devil could very well be holidaying in Vegas if the builders' attention to detail is anything to base a premise upon.

I have recently moved into a new flat finished by an established name in the industry - and I am scared of actually opening a tap or closing too roughly a door too hard - for fear of the item losing its relevance and ending up in my hand in a non-servicable state.

Educating operational level staff about the importance of quality and how a delta improvement in quality leads to a butterfly effect realization of benefits at the customer end, is an important improvement area for the industry. This coupled with transparency and a slight flexibility at the builders' end as well as a focus on exploiting technology for creating open channels of communication can help the industry meet the expectations of a generation that is otherwise slowly getting used to being pampered by half hour turn-around times for requirements in various aspects of life.

Open Source Possibilities

Frankly, its been a revelation to me. Long have I been an advocate of enterprise systems and have been pretty slow in appreciating the capability and penetration of systems that built on open source. These systems, shorn of blinkered enterprise development requirements, has me and I am now a fan. In areas such as IT security, web-conferencing solutions, document management, collaboration, social networking, operating systems and CRM, customers are now willing to actually evaluate the possibility of deploying open source tools and technologies, even though they may have already invested in formal enterprise systems of a similar nature. The business driver for such implementation being unrealized business benefits or complex and incomplete installation of enterprise applications.

Open Source is here to stay. Consultants will ignore open source at their peril, especially because of the lean economic scenario that we are enmeshed in now. As the tribe of open source proponents increases, so is the breadth of their imagination. I am waiting for the day, when a client actually asks me to scout for an ERP - built on the principles of open software, because they want to avoid license costs as well as the real killer - AMC.

Implementation costs on open source framework as well as support capabilities of vendors are the two concerns that consultants who prospect such solutions will have to factor in, during their due diligence. Currently, there is no metric to judge cost of development or maintenance for deployment on open architecture. Assurance of performance is another area that needs addressal as is a framework for risk assessment of projects that are using open frameworks. Once a rationale for this is crystallized, development and maintenance of complex enterprise systems will emerge into a new paradigm.

Tech Terror

The incidents of November 26 have left Mumbai shaken, more due to the impunity with which the attacks were orchestrated out and to a lesser extent due to our failure to link theresources at our disposal in a manner that might have prevented this series of unfortunate incidents at the onset. What came across strongly through the fervent news broadcasts were images of satcom phones, news of mobile intercepts linking multiple geographical locations and GPS locators - technology being put to nefarious use by the perpetrators of the crime. Then on the night of the attack, the anxious public was informed that those trapped inside various target locations were not veritable hostagtes - there were messages being relayed through Blackberry messenger, email, SMS, and web 2.0 devices such as Twitter.com - trying to provide the loved ones at home some solace from the gruesome video feeds being displayed on national TV.

This entire Mumbai terror that was played out as a prime-time tragedy across millions of Indian households has made clear, that the perpetrators of terror have kept pace with advances in technology. Using this as a foundation, if we are to scour other international hotspots - we see similar misuse of technology. Websites are used to spread disinformation and to serve as the mouthpieces of terrorist organizations, broadcasting their ideologies to the world. Subverting common digital interfaces to further terrorist agenda, has the world's security agencies constantly playing catch-up. To cite one method commonly, not actually sending email communication but saving them in draft mode - prevents the digital signature from leaving its mark across closely monitored global routers and gateways.

"Know your technology" - secure it and ensure that digital security is a by-word amongst all the people you know. Secure your email, your web-cam, your mobile phone and personal computing devices - lest they be subverted and put to ill-use by people who have nothing more at heart than the next morning's gory news headlines. Embrace web2.0 but also remember that the smallest slip-up can manifest with ramification of butterfly effect proportions in some other part of the world.