Short Sellers - a different tribe altogether

  The past week was a tumultuous one in the Global Financial Markets.  Financial Tsunami must have been the most used word this week.  One after the other, the so-called icons of Wall Street started collapsing like nine pins.  First, it was Bear Stearns followed by Freddie Mac, Fanny Mae, Lehmann Brothers, Merrill Lynch and then AIG.  For once, the Americans were caught with their pants down.

  Everybody, from the person on the street to office colleagues, friends etc were totally engrossed with the events that took place in the USA. I was also following the developments closely on TV.  The happenings at Wall Street was being telecast by the minute.  The day before the FED came out with a bail out package, the stocks of some of the financial companies were getting thrashed down by the Short Sellers.  As a panic reaction, the SEC banned Naked Short Selling.  This took the wind out of the sails of the short sellers and they were forced to cover up.  The Short Sellers, as a tribe are one with a view quite opposite to the one held by the majority of the investors.  I get fascinated by the way Shankar Sharma, considered to be one of India's leading Bears, comes out with his opinion during such demoralising times.  He just goes on and on about all that is bad about the markets and this just sends shivers down one's spine.  If anybody gets a chance to hear him, please listen to him, it is amazing.

  In these times of utter dispair, one famous quote by John Templeton, which was shown on one News channel should act as a soothing balm to all troubled minds.  It goes like this

"  Bull Markets are born in utter dispair

    They rise with skepticism

    They mature with optimism

    Then end in mania".

Chennai's MRTS

   Ever since, the Mass Rapid Transit System (MTRS) was introduced a few years back in Chennai, I was really fascinated by the Railway Stations.  I have travelled probably 10 times.  Every time there is a match at Chepauk, I travel by MRTS.  Even though the route is quite a eyesore (it rises just above the Cooum river, passes through the nearby slums),  it is indeed a pleasure travelling right on top of everything, literally.  

Google's Knol

  Google's Knol launched very recently, is quite similar to wikipedia.  I do think there is a fundamental difference between the two.  In wikipedia, I think, there would be only one page on any article and that can be edited by any person apart from the originator.  Whereas, when I tried searching in Knol, I found several articles on the same subject written by different authors.

  Recently, when I was searching for information about a particular item, I found the one in wikipedia to be the most accurate and the most updated one.  The feature of allowing anyone to edit any wikipedia page is the main reason behind wikipedia's success.  The contents of wikipedia would therefore most probably be the latest one on any subject.

  On the other hand, on searching Knol, one gets the feeling that the contents are individual-centric and can be edited / updated only by the individual concerned.   There is however a feature wherein any individual with a google account can edit any article, which would be sent to the owner of the piece for acceptance by him.  

  Let us wait and see how Knol can rival wikipedia. My feeling is that wikipedia is well established and it would rather be very difficult for knol to overcome wikipedia.  Wikipedia's success stems from the feature of allowing pages to be edited by anyone, which would invariably result in the pages getting updated immediately.  Just like, when Abhinav Bindra won the Gold at the Beijing Olympics,  I was rather anxious to find more details about him in the net.  To my surprise, I found that wikipedia had already updated the fact that he had won a Gold medal.

  Knol, can be successful, if the contributions come from experts, thereby enabling Knol to be become a truely reliable source of information.  But, that is a long way to go. By the way, wikipedia has already got Scholarpedia, which appears to be more or less similar to Google's Knol rather knol is similar to scholarpedia, since it was started much earlier than Knol.  

  Anyway, for people like us, it is boon that we have so many reference material available for free on the net.

my experience with Orkut

Even though I knew about Orkut and various other social networking sites, I refrained from joining one.  One, I do not socialize much, two, the image about social networking sites is also not too good considering the kind of stuff that is available in these sites.  The other thing is I am not used to the kind of language used in social networking sites, chatting sites etc.  Sometimes, I just can't understand what the hell they are saying.  Clear signs that I do not belong to the new Y generation.

    However, I gave it a try.  I was surprised to find the amount of people who are using Orkut. Quite a few relatives of mine are using Orkut.  I did not know that our community is so advanced.  May be I have become too old to realise that this is the in-thing now.  I also found out that there was an exclusive website for our community, which is amazing.  Thanks to Orkut, I am getting to know my Community better.

     

Google Chrome - clutterless browser

  The first thing I did today morning when I heard about Google's new browser - Google Chrome, while reading the newspaper, was to immediately switch on the computer and download the brower.  I was eagerly anticipating this feature knowing Google's caliber.  One thing that sets Google aside from rest of its competitors in all fields is that it is clutterless, simple, easy to use and faster than others.

Google chrome is without doubt the fastest browser I have handled till date.  It loads much faster than Internet Explorer , Firefox and Opera.  This day reminds me of the day when I first used Google's search engine, which was refreshingly different from the rest of the search engines, which were existing at that time.  

Thank god, I will now stop using Microsoft IE and Firefox for browsing.  What a pain it was to use Microsoft IE.  At times, without any reasons, the pages stopped loading and imagine the amount of clutter that existed on the screen.  Removing them is a painful job.  Unless a person is tech savvy, it is impossible to handle such browsers.

Let us wait and see how Google Chrome will change the way Internet Browsers are designed, knowing Google's ability for springing surprises.  Google delivers everytime.