Mayank Misra

Stamford Alive@five schedule is out includes Soul Asylum, Marcy Playground: http://tinyurl.com/29ssky8

Can't wait for the summer and Stamford Alive@Five to start. Its a good line up this year. Soul Asylum and Marcy Playground will be in June 24th and July 1st.

Guess I know where our Thursdays are going to be :)
More here: http://tinyurl.com/29ssky8

Forbes.com - How Facebook Ruined My Career

Must read for all FB users who work for the man:

Forbes article: "How Facebook Ruined My Career"

With 400 million registered users, Facebook is a great place to find a job. For more than a few cavalier souls, it's a great place to lose one, too.

By now you'd think folks would know what to let fly on Facebook and what to keep to themselves. Not so.

"Common sense is a good guide here, but people can be so taken by the novelty of these sites that they forget there are consequences to posting the wrong thing," says Kerry Ryan, a litigation attorney with Tarlow, Breed, Hart & Rogers in Boston. Ryan specializes in disputes between companies and former employees--and he's seeing more and more bad situations kindled by poor judgment online.
Video:

Two income, kids and few hrs of family time - why it may not be a good idea

Why we have decided that only one of us will work: "All The Richer For Staying Home"

Great insight into where China Gov Inc is investing. 'Ten Myths on China' a must read.

Forbes.com: "Tracking Where China Invests"

The People's Republic of China will be among the world's largest investors for a long time to come. Its official foreign exchange reserves are closing in on $2.5 trillion and its financial institutions hold hundreds of billions more. The bulk of this investment is in U.S. Treasuries and other U.S. government securities, but those bonds serve more as places to park the money than as valuable assets. To the extent it can, China over the next decade will increasingly seek to divert its horde of dollars and euros to nonbond investments at home and abroad.

ALSO: (See "Ten Myths About China." ) The data are also not useful in evaluating where the money is going: Beijing's statisticians say that two-thirds of Chinese outward investment is into Hong Kong, but most of that money is merely routed through Hong Kong on its way elsewhere.

Tharoor exit: almost certain

There is a reason why good people avoid it like a plague. Still, from time to time, folks like Shashi Tharoor get into the ring with the intent to make a difference. Here is a person who could have easily become a lobbyist in Washington DC and remained a person with global influence. He choose to go back to India however, to do good at the grass roots, to change the body politic from within and be part of an India that he idealizes in his many books.
It seems even a career diplomat like him is no match for the hand to hand combat politics prevalent in India today. I am not sure in the merit of recent allegations. No matter which we you slice the current controversy, in a final assessment its in India and Karnataka favor to have Shashi Tharoor as their representative.
I think Oscar Wilde said it best "we are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars". In a sea of dishonest politicians, Shashi will in the end do more for India.
I hope he survives this.

Tharoor exit: Not if, but when?

via NDTV News - India on 4/17/10

It’s now almost certain that Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor will not survive the Kochi-IPL controversy. Sources have told NDTV that Tharoor’s exit is only a matter of time after allegations that he had misused his authority to help his friend Sunanda Pushkar get 'free' equity worth 70 crores in the Kochi franchise.

Blistering heat in North India with Delhi at 52-year high 43.7 Celsius (110 ºF)

I was in India in March and the heat was already high. It was impossible to get anything done outside between 10am and 6pm. If this is the way it is in spring, I am sure there'll be many causalities this summer. NDTV is reporting temperatures of 110 degrees F now.

North India boils, Delhi temperature at 52-year high

via NDTV News - India on 4/17/10

North India remained in the grip of blistering heat on Saturday with the mercury soaring to a 52-year high for the month of April in the national capital. Shimla too recorded the highest temperature in over a decade. Heat wave threw normal life out of gear in the national capital with the mercury shooting up to 43.7 degree Celsius.

A Better Way To Store Data

A case against tape backup - or more of a case for CDC on HDD ;)

FROM FORBES.COM

"A Better Way To Store Data"

Tape storage has been around for decades and is showing its age. Tape stretches, breaks, unravels, and all of it needs to be loaded by hand. But it's also cheap, and the cost of migrating it to magnetic storage has been prohibitive in the past. So what's changed?

Forbes caught up with Bill Andrews, president and chief executive of ExaGrid, to talk about deduplication of data and why many companies are now swapping tape for low-cost disk drives.

Obama's Data Visionary

In Tufte we trust (at least for data visualization) - Obama taps Edward Tufte to track Recovery Act spend data

FROM FORBES.COM

"Obama's Data Visionary"

Edward Tufte

Before Edward Tufte came along, no one would have suspected that "data visualization rock star" could be a job description.

But Tufte's seminal, self-published 1982 book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information has become the bible for graphic design in every medium from newspapers to corporate reports, focusing on what Tufte calls "intense clarity": displaying as much data as clearly and honestly as possible.

Since then he's traveled the country spreading his graphical gospel, and written three other books, most of which can be found on the shelf of any graphic designer who still consumes words and images on paper. (If you recognize graphs like this and this , thank Tufte for digging them up and popularizing them.)

President Obama, it turns out, is a Tufte fan too. Earlier this month the administration announced that Tufte would join the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, tasked with tracking the distribution of the $787 billion economic stimulus package Congress passed in 2009. Tufte's assignment: to make Recovery.gov an easily readable Web site, even while quantitatively tracking hundreds of individual stimulus projects around the country.

To read more of Andy Greenberg's stories, click here . Contact the writer at .

Check out Forbes' new Security blog, The Firewall .

Why Predictive Analytics Is A Game-Changer

Predictive Analytics taking center stage as more andd more organizations mature in BICC

FROM FORBES.COM

"Why Predictive Analytics Is A Game-Changer"

In a tough global economy, sloppy decision making and "going with your gut" can get you punished--swiftly. That's why leading companies are increasingly turning to a new management discipline called predictive analytics to compete and thrive. Rather than relying on intuition when pricing products, maintaining inventory or hiring talent, managers are using data, analysis and systematic reasoning to improve efficiency, reduce risk and increase profits.

In simple terms analytics means using quantitative methods to derive insights from data, and then drawing on those insights to shape business decisions and, ultimately, improve business performance. Thus predictive analytics is emerging as a game-changer. Instead of looking backward to analyze "what happened?" predictive analytics help executives answer "What's next?" and "What should we do about it?"

Dave Rich is managing director at Accenture Analytics and Jeanne G. Harris is executive research fellow at Accenture Institute for High Performance .

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Stamford Alive@five schedule is out includes Soul Asylum, Marcy Playground: http://tinyurl.com/29ssky8

Forbes.com - How Facebook Ruined My Career

Two income, kids and few hrs of family time - why it may not be a good idea

Great insight into where China Gov Inc is investing. 'Ten Myths on China' a must read.

Tharoor exit: almost certain

Blistering heat in North India with Delhi at 52-year high 43.7 Celsius (110 ºF)

A Better Way To Store Data

Obama's Data Visionary

Why Predictive Analytics Is A Game-Changer