American Apparel's Virtual Clothes

American Apparel's Virtual Clothes: "You won't need a VIP invitation to attend the forthcoming grand opening party for the newest American Apparel store—you just need a virtual avatar. The Los Angeles-based maker of trendy T-shirts is currently organizing a late-July soiree at its latest location: a computer-generated boutique within the parallel online universe of Second Life." Whether or not this is a publicity stunt doesn't matter to me, it tells me Second life has just reached new high in terms of market power. Second life is a really cool place if you have a lot of time to spare, but it's also a virtual world full of possiblities if one wants to take the time to think about it. Some people are already making money from it, whether selling goods like outfits or exchanging money from the virtual world to the real world. Now a company like American apparel either think this is a good marketing stunt to have their store their, or there is a real way to sell more of their products in the v-world. What products really? Electronic outfits for my avatar. Someone within AA has looked the demographics of their customers in the real stores, and figures they can make more money from them in Second life, or that they can introduce their brands to an audience they want to target. Cool!

Want a salary hike? India's your place- The Economic Times

Want a salary hike? India's your place- The Economic Times: "ndia reported the highest average salary increase at 13.9 per cent, and employees in the Indian IT-enabled industry received the highest increase at 17.9 per cent, according to the India Salary Guide 2006 released by Kelly Services, a global provider of staffing services and solutions, on Monday. " AS they mention later in the article "india is the most cost-effective and high quality manpower". This is fairly new messaging, they used to play the cost-effective card much more heavily. There is no other way to work it to keep the success going - play the quality card, the non commodity angle. In a few years only India will be costing more money per hour, and will not ba as attractive pricing wise, their expertise and ability to dleiver is what they have to be known for then. This is what we're starting to see.

blog outsourcing!

Workbench: This Weblog is Being Sent Overseas: "This Weblog is Being Sent Overseas" Kewl idea ain't it!

So misleading

Out of Control: "Infosys Technologies Ltd., a leading Indian software provider, will spend $100 million over the next year to hire and train 25,000 workers and college graduates culled from around the world, including from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University." By the headline you think it's a revolution. Reading the whole thing you realize tata is just doing what it needs to do to penetrate the global markets better, especially the US for now: Have locals selling for them, then adding some staff locally as well.

This is not an article from the USA today

Power up your Windows Media Center PC- The Economic Times This is not from the Globe and Mail, this is from a paper in India. What's is striking about it - if they are taking the time to talk about gadgets that goes well with Media Center, that means there must be readers interested in this kind of stuff. India is a country where a large chunk of the population lives with less than one US dollar a day. It's also a country where more and more people are making money, enough to have disposable income to spend on Media Center gadgets. This is an early sign that emerging markets will buy goods if they have the money.

How could he get away with it

From Slashdot - Jason Stamper's Blog: Schwartz replaces McNealy: A tough comedy act to follow? At then end of the article there are a bunch of quotes. Scott McNealy wasn't afraid to speak his mind. My favourite of the bunch "Ballmer and butthead" meaning Ballmer and you-know-how. This is pretty brutal but still I'm laughing out loud. Then the last one ".Not, .Not Yet and .Nut!" about MS .Net strategy. Well we know .Net is doing very well, but still it's just so funny.

Product Development Outsourcing - India connection

THE CYBERABAD TIMES: "The company's Vice-President, Sanjay Khendry, said that apart from established players, many smaller companies and start-ups, which are funded by venture capital companies, are looking to India-centric operations to bring in efficiencies in their product development cycles." India is the BRAND in outsourcing. The minute somone thinks about outsourcing something, they think which company in India can I ship this too. No names comes to mind second question - who do I know from India!!! Nonetheless I disagree with the statement from M. Khendry, companies don't go to india for efficiencies. They go to india still because there is the perception it is cheaper on hourly basis, and there is capacity. I stick to my line Innovation is not a capacity play. I wish CGI would wake up to the PDO market, because they would make Canada a Gorilla overnight, afterall they are still a 2B company. As one has said - they know people. At that point the american VCs and american companies would start looking north much more than now, options/choice, comparing is always good, and may the best win!

nice video - diet coke and mentos

Mentos and Diet Coke, taken to extremes - Slashfood 200 liters of diet coke later and something like 500mentos and you have a show like in front of the bellagio, pretty cool!

Kitchen myths and old wives' tales exposed! - Slashfood

Who would have thought baking soda didn't cut down the smell in the fridge Well this myth and more are exposed in this nice little post from slashfood. BTW this post and several of the myths refer to On Food and Cooking I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to know more about the food we eat, what, how and why. It's a great reference, a dictionary. Have you ever wondered why beans give us gas? well you will find the answer in Mr McGee's book. It's not the kind of book you read from cover to cover, anyway I didn't, I'm not even finished yet, but when I have a question I pick it up from the shelves. The other day I was cooking fiddleheads, and I knew there was something to be aware of about them - like cooking them long enough because if I didn't want to poison myself - well the book didn't let me down.

Security in Web App

SQL Injection Attacks by Example I just thought this article was well written and well worth the read. It's still amazes me that after several years of knowing about sql injections, we still see code out there subject to SQL injections. Using prepared statements go a long way to resolve the issue. I see two reasons why still don't use them 1) we don't know, in which case conferences like the software security summit, and articles like this are good to sensibilize more and more people 2) we're lazy, and we think we will not be attacked, in which case no matter how many times someone repeats it, things will not change until the app is attacked.

the web spirit -

We were evil, Google's Sergey Brin admits on 6/6/06 Don't expect substance or any opinions about Sergey and Google. I just thought it was funny someone made the link between "we were evil" the statement and the date it was made.

script Kiddies - crack the exploiters

Techdirt: When Security Exploits Have Exploits Techdirt is running a story about some people taking over data from one's hard disk, locking it, and will release it in exchange of money. Get this - now some people are coming up with unlocking keys to the exploit, so the exploit is itself exploitable! It's good that the power of connecting the internet works against the script kiddies as well.

Cheap price - not so fast

Techdirt: Worrying About Offshoring Has Been Offshored To India Interesteting way to look at the Offshoring movement. Some people in India are worried about their jobs. It just makes sense, just like no-body has a lock on innovation, no country will have the cheapest price forever. So even in countries like India, goods/processses/services do get commodotized.