Today as Wikipedia celebrates its 7th Birthday , it can definitely claim to have come of age. Indeed, from corporate to students, Wikipedia is the gateway to knowledge. Wikipedia's value is considered to be of leading students to citable sources, and though it is not considered an appropriate source for citation itself [ 1 ] - its definitely one of the places millions go to in order to start their research . However, apart from contributing to actual knowledge base - Wikipedia's more important contribution has been in changing (corporate) mindsets towards the new tools information technology offers. Thanks to the success of Wikipedia - so many corporate have started their own Wikis , blogs etc for knowledge management within their firms. Ironically, adoption of new technologies has created new dilemmas for the CIO. Earlier, while knowledge was never recorded, it is now being recorded; but, it is spread between uploaded documents, wikis and blogs. And I am wondering what wil

Hemant tells me that Satyam has a whole blogosphere inside the corporate intranet - which Satyam intends to use as a Knowledge management tool - I think it does the same things as what Prof. McAfee describes as "above the flow wikis" - knowledge management outside the day to day flow of work. Hemant also tells me hat some blogs are immensely popular and act as incentives for others also to blog about their work - indeed Satyam has found some way to overcome " the challenge of getting people to use above-the-flow wikis". Read on - the quote below is interesting ... Source: Why Not Widen the Flow? by Andrew McAfee One of Michael's first posts was about the distinction between using wikis and other social software 'in the flow' of work versus 'above the flow.' As he explains : In-the-Flow wikis enable people do their day-to-day work in the wiki itself. These wikis are typically replacing email, virtual team rooms, and project management syst

NYTimes reports about protests in Italy's Siena Progress cannot be measured only in terms of raising gross domestic product, said Luciano Fiordoni, an economist who spoke at a recent anti-airport rally in Siena. “You have to factor in quality of life,” he said. “We don’t object to growth, but our main intent is to remain human.” Exactly what I was trying to say when I blogged about the political party of the future . Its high time we too in India stopped measuring our progress by GDP and per capita figures (which are simply effects and not causes) and looked at how much the quality of human life has improved. What's good about a rising GDP if our roads are heading towards permanent traffic jams and our lives becoming more and more stressful?

Marshal Kirkpack Says ... Google and Facebook, two companies that hold more user data and do more with it than almost any other consumer service on the market Source : Google and Facebook Join DataPortability.org from Read/WriteWeb Isn't he being too tech-world-centric and ignoring the "old economy" completely? I think companies who "hold more user data" and "do more with it" than others surely would be Banks and other financial institutions (I am counting out governments as they are not "consumer services") than Google or Facebook for 2 reasons: How many people have accounts with these two companies as compared to how many have accounts with Banks? How much important is data like say "my search history" or "my friend list" as compared to "my credit history" ?? Need I say more .... ? While data portability is an important technology issue (new microformats, APML etc) which needs to be discussed - governments, co

Since the 1999 world cup - when I finished my class XII exams and most eagerly awaited the tournament and India's performance - I have lost interest in the game. Match Fixing scandals, continuously erratic performance of the team ... reasons are too many why I no more follow the game with the same fervour as I used to. Yet - being an Indian - cricket comes in one's blood - and the blood shows when the team looses - more so because of no fault of theirs. The crooked cricket that the Australians play - full of frets, abuses and arrogance - takes away all the dignity that the game ever claims to have had. And to top that, when things refuse to go their way - they run like kids to their Momiee - the ICC and its officials. The way the umpires have not just favoured but been ' subservient ' to the Australian Team - the game has gone to new lows. Check out the last part of the 3rd minute. But the most unfortunate part has been the Australian Media's role of bringing up r

"Benazir Bhutto Shot Dead" - as I looked at this headline on 27th December, I was shocked - though not as much as I was when I read "Rajiv Gandhi assassinated" way back in 1991 (I was just 10 years old then). The reduction is shock was not just because I had grown up and that Benazir was not a politician from my own country - but also because after Lal mazjid , terrorism has become more and more mainstream in Pakistan. However, there are some aspects of the assassination which are different from Rajiv Gandhi's assassination which make it much more worrisome than the former. 1. Ubiquity of Terror Agents - and failure of Administration The Pakistani Administration (namely the Army) claims that "[Benazir] herself contributed to the incident by standing [and] that none of the other occupants in the bullet/bomb proof car died." Which effectively means that the assassin was just waiting for Benazir to step out of her bullet proof vehicle. It seems quite unli

I was musing over how popular are India-specific blogging services on Alexa - and here is what I found. The graph below plots RediffBlogs against BlogStreet and BlogPulse. Click on the images to see enlarged versions I have added BlogSteet [in Blue ]and BlogPulse [in Red ] only for comparison because they are pretty unknown services at least in India [BlogStreet is a coranking site cum blog directory (of Indian blogs) while BlogPulse is a blog metrics tracker (not focussed to Indian blogosphere though)] Observe that the traffic of RediffBlogs[in Green ] - is quite comparable to these 'unknown' services. Now I added RediffBlogs competitor O3 [in Cyan ] from Indiatimes.com to the comparison ... Just observe how the scale of the graph changes - BlogStreet, BlogPulse and RediffBlogs , almost vanish when traffic metrics from Indiatimes are plotted. Clearly O3 is way ahead of rediffBlogs - so much so that - if I were to decide the fate of RediffBlogs, I would shut it down! Link to a

I haven't read a more classic piece since days .... Wah Manish - this is a classic post from you .... a sensational serial killer .... Six young girls had been murdered ... with their throats brutally slit open ... the girl had begun to doze in her seat ..... just how naïve and unsuspecting young girls can be..... ... marriage had been transformed into a dead corpse buried deep beneath a pile of painful memories ....  He should have thought of a better reason than that to get rid of me.... GO Read  it  ...

A Very Happy New year to all those who are reading .... 2008 comes along as the stock market soars, the rupee strengthens and people talk all positive about India. It indeed feels good to be in India at times like these, some 3 years after the slogan was raised - India is indeed shining. So in this mood, I allowed myself to fantasize further. We went to the Gateway of India yesterday and I found the place quite clean as compared to my last visit, no pieces of paper thrown away, little dust on the footpath and no horseshit on the streets (due to the Bagghis ). I was surprised - what had happened? I saw a few dustbins around, but people had hardly taken up the habit of using them - they were still throwing stuff on the street. Then what miracle had happened? This was when my eyes fell on the army of cleaners with broomsticks in their hands fervently sweeping the footpath and the roads, and dumping the garbage in dustbins. I immediately recollected that I had found the railway stations

Out of 20 New Year Wish emails that I fired to my former colleagues in the UK (some of whom are now in Australia)- I got "Out of Office" messages from 12 .... the British truly love to be on leave during the festive season .... Something to learn ... to take life easier ... and maintain a work life balance!