GMail Evolution

Google has been consistently wowing users by adding new and differentiating features to GMail. The pace of innovation was so rapid that the (distant?) competition has always been caught lagging.

• [GMail] Grouped your mails in the form of conversations.
• Allowed you to chat from within the mailbox.
• Added the mail recipients to your address book automatically.
• Warned if you tried to send an email with an empty subject/body.
• Detected if you forgot the attachment !

Recently, it started suggesting mail recipients. Assume you have been mailing Alice and Bob together often. When you add Alice to the 'To' field, it suggests you add Bob as well! Wow!! That is indeed useful. Will it even suggest when to mail and what to mail too?

What if it greets you like this once you login - Dear Alice, it has been a while since you mailed Bob. Would you want to say 'Hi' to him?. Well, that's not such a bad idea. It could get better - Dear Bob, it has been a week since Alice mailed you and you haven't replied. And time rolls on and it takes the next step ahead - Dear Alice and Bob, it appears that you haven't met since a week. How about coffee at Starbucks/CCD this Saturday? Your favorite table is already blocked and your cappuccino pre-ordered.

And, you can imagine the rest :-) Will Google be V.I.K.I and its applications the NS-5s . Or will Google become the Matrix and GMail the much feared Agent Smith? For all you know, you may be The One (Neo)!

Lions and Lambs

"A pack of sheep led by a lion will defeat a group of lions led by a sheep" - Really like this quote. Underscores the importance of the leader in a team.

Directly applies to the difference in the performances of Pune Warriors and Rajasthan Royals in IPL4 so far. The Warriors are such a great team, lead by a feeble leader in Yuvi. Yuvi is a great match winner. When it comes to captaincy, he appears to be less than average. The Royals are an average side considering the individual players. As a team, Warne has managed to keep the folks play upto, and sometimes beyond, their potential. On the field, he is often seen applauding, encouraging his teammates.

Will the arrival of Dada, one of India's best captains, change fortunes for the Warriors? He has been out of action for quite a while. Wasn't even bought during the auction. Wonder if he will be a non-playing captain. Do they even allow it? Have to wait and see if and how he reverses the losing trend.

A passing thought : May be some are inherently good leaders while some others aren't.

Harsha Bhogle's take on the topic can be read here.

Meetings

[Crib Alert]

Meeting in the Morning,
Meeting in the Lunchtime,
Meeting till the Sun goes down.

What does a mere mortal do when his work-week is filled with day-long meetings? Compose poetry in William Henry Davies' style (Leisure):

What is this life if, full of meeting,
We have no time to do our coding.

No time to sit inside the cube
And code as long as sky is blue
No time to test, when coding we pass,
Where bugs can hide behind the Subclass

A poor life this if, full of meeting,
We have no time to do our coding.

[/Crib Alert]

Cricket World Cup and the IPL

Kids have Vacations

Professionals have Leaves

Dhoni and his boys have None

The BCCI is super-rich. Are they super-stupid too?  A 5-day vacation for our cricketers after a grueling 6-week long world cup. Cricket is BIG money. It sells like nothing else in India. But this is excessive greed I say. Hope the BCCI does not cull the goose that lays the golden egg. The only plausible explanation for this messed up schedule could be that BCCI didn't expect India to reach the final. Sigh!

Yudham Sei

Decent story. Good screenplay. Nice camera-work. Interesting build-up to the climax. No romance. No duet song on exotic locations. No punch-dialog. No namesake comedy-track. Just one kuthu song - which is bearable. In short - no nonsense.

An extra dose of violence, thankfully none of it is covered on camera. Whenever a violent act is about to be committed, the camera neatly pans away.

A thriller that is well ended. Not for the faint hearted. If you are the no-nonsense type that hates the typical commercial masala movies, you would like this.

4 stars out of 5. [As if it mattered :-)]

Freakonomics

Correlation does not imply Causality. If two measurements A and B are correlated, it does NOT imply one causes the other. Both could be caused by some other phenomenon C. If only the CMMI experts knew this simple theory, the lives of millions of Software Engineers would have been a lot simpler.

The general flow of the book is like this - A problem is identified. Data is collected on factors that could possibly influence/cause the problem. Then the authors analyse the data to identify the cause of the problem - not merely a correlated measurement.

Switching the cause and effect could lead to funny conclusions in some situations. For example, the volume of rain-coats, umbrellas sold in a city is HIGHLY correlated to the amount of rainfall it receives. It is easy to see the cause and effect here. In a far more complicated situation, it is easier to get the cause and effect reversed and not know about it at all. For examples - read the book :-)

Another interesting idea presented is the role of genes and parental behavior in a child's success. Even before a child is born, many factors that influence his/her success are already shaping up in the form of the parents' education and more so, the genes! According to the authors' analysis, other environmental factors do play a role, but rarely do they reverse the role played by the genes.

In all, an interesting read.