Wadiblog

Hi everyone,

I figured its time we start having a bit more fun on Wadiwallah. So starting this month I will be posting a riddle every month. We will be calling this the cranium creaser (and just so you remember it will have this pic of a thinking skeleton ;). The answer shall be provided in the comments section of the post a week from the date of posting.

Here is the first riddle:

“Mountains will crumble and temples will fall, and no man can survive its endless call. What is it?”

I would love to get your help on finding future cranium creasers. Please send me the most mind boggling riddle or brain teaser you can think of by emailing me:

spunkymasala at gmail dot com.

Happy Creasing,

Spunkymasala

I apologise for the hit-and-run post, and though I have great respect for the man, I am not a Gandhian. But following everything over the weekend, I am left with a thought this morning that channels Gandhi; A War on Terror would be a great idea–if either the West or Muslims choose to take up the idea.

We at Wadiwallah would like invite you to Marketing Venture 2008 organized by Pier2 Marketing taking place on September 25, 2008 at the PlugandPlay Tech Center in Sunnyvale, CA.

At this event you will discover the latest trends in marketing and hear the advice from experts and industry leaders on how to stand out in the marketplace, increase your market share, and create truly effective, powerful marketing messages that propel your business to the next level of growth and success.

We have top keynote speakers coming from industry leading companies, such as: LinkedIn, Virgin America, Dell, Nokia, Google, HP, Rocket Fuel, and experts from Stanford University among others.

After the event come and network with other startups and VCs at the Plug and Play Fall EXPO.

Additionally, for the Wadiwallah community, we would like to offer you a special discount of $100 off the registration fee for the event.

Register at: www.venture2008.eventsbot.com
Promotion code: Wadi08

*This is a Wadiwallah sponsored event

Today is day 8 of my detoxing diet that allows my Chinese medical practitioner to open a physical blockage and train me in how to live healthily. It is also my 3^rd day within that period in which I have eaten something not permitted in that diet. It being Ramadan, the month of fasting aka the month of succulent hilal meaty options the question turns into one beyond that of self-control. It is one of what should I eat.

The pure vegetarian diet needed for detox is also problematic for small framed desi woman who grew up on meat. Can I eat tofu without getting too much of an estrogen bump and hence a breakout? Will one meal of chicken really adversely affect my body? Or my personal favorite I am starving—why cant something vegetarian that is not Asian taste good?!

So today when at an award winning Mountain View Taqueria I gave in with a chicken quesadilla.It tasted good and it felt good. But come nightfall I felt guilty. I mentioned it in passing to Siliconstani who in his sweet blunt way said:

Stop kicking yourself in the head [do you think he really wanted to say ass?] If you ate it, you ate it. Live not the asceticism of a monk, nor the excess of a hedonist. Live the middle way. You live in this world as you, not in a cave as a monk. Enjoy the bounties that life has to offer, but also commit to the duties of your current work. What that is may change in the future or you may make it change. But know that in this moment, where you are is where you need to be.

A deep lesson. One that makes life one of lower pressure and greater happiness. Thanks yaara.

Officials in China’s western Xinjiang province have stepped up pressure on the region’s ethnic Uighur population during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan [Al-Jazeera Report]

A question that comes to mind is, what, if anything do Silicon Valley Corporations have to say about this - especially in light of the fact that many of them pride themselves on promoting ‘diversity and inclusion’ amongst their Global employee and customer population?

 Google-Maps has rolled out support for Street View, which allows you to get a  pedestrian’s-eye view of any street Google has cruised down on your mobile device…Continue reading

While everyone has been going bonkers over the One Laptop Per Laptop (OLPC), it would appear like the China based HiVision has truly made the worlds cheapest laptop at $98 using a new cheaper chipset, WiFi, 1GB flash storage, it runs Linux, 3 USB ports, Ethernet, SDHC card reader, audio in and out. Included are Voice-chat, Skype, multi-tabbed Firefox browser support, Abiword for word processing and automatic online software updates.

Their current model is based on a public Chinese low cost case mold design and is running on a MIPS processor, they may soon also support an ARM9 with DSP as the processor and they are showing their own nice looking case design molds. All running smooth on a Linux interface.

The company will ship a MIPs-based Linux mini-notebook for $98. The company is currently offering a similar machine for $120, according to a video blog report from the Internationale Funkausstellunga (IFA) consumer electronics show in Berlin this week.

HiVision’s current offering, the “mini-Note,” appears to use one of the several MIPS-based processors now available from Chinese semiconductor vendors. It may use a Longsoon-2F chip, or perhaps the Ingenic Jz4740 Multimedia Application Processor, which powers Bestlink’s $250 ($180 in volume) Alpha 400 mini-notebook and 3K’s $300 RazorBook 400-Mini-Notebook, two other Linux-based models out of China. Both processors use MIPS-like cores…

One can only wonder what Nicholas Negroponte, founder/Chair OLPC has to say? From the video HiVision’s device appears way more “swankier” than OLPC’s. Not to mention additional functions and features HiVision has over OLPC - from the looks of it HiVision is positioned to eclipse OLPC, no?

Cross posting from a similar post on Twitter by Dr. Awab Alvi

Guy Kawasaki talks about art of raising Venture Capital - great thoughts a MUST WATCH. http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2008/09/the-art-of-rais.html

Haven’t started playing around with it yet, but at least one person I know was gushing over the speed with which it runs. Anyone else have comments, first report, etc.?

I am particularly  curious because when Google announced Knol, most of the discussion about it kept mentioning it as a competitior/equivalent to the Wikipedia–which, to me, showed very little undersanding for what the Wikipedia–or a wiki, generally–is. Apples and Oranges, if you ask me. How is a site that carries articles by individual users a replacement for a site where people collaborate to describe and document things? To me, that showed either that folks, as I said, had no understanding of either product/service, or they were way too eager to just parrot the corporate line they were given. And we make fun of the mainstream media!

But getting back to Chrome. The list of functionality we’re promised is:

• One box for everything
• New Tab page
• Application shortcuts
• Dynamic tabs
• Crash control
• Incognito mode
• Safe browsing
• Instant bookmarks
• Importing settings
• Simpler downloads

It would be interesting to hear from folks on what these functions and capablities mean in real life, and what their implications are.  And by implications I mean implications for where the web and how we use it is going.  Will this make blogging–and reading blogs–easier? How much faster is it? Will it still be faster once all the bells and whistles are up and running? Drop a line here–or send me your comments and we can post them separately, if you want.

Silicon Valley, Monday, September 1st, 2008: Last night at the MCA, the local Muslim community center in Santa Clara Muslims of Silicon Valley ushered in the holy month of fasting (Ramadan or Ramzan) with the recitation of the Holy Quran (Taraweeh). The prayer hall, was jam packed with Muslims from all walks of life standing side by side listening intently to the Imam (clergy) recite verses from the Quran.

The MCA will be hosting community Iftar’s, or banquets every weekend. All are invited to attend.

Hi, folks! Sorry I have been out of touch. Thought I would drop a line and try to start a discussion on Obama and what he said yesterday. Specifically:

• Did I hear him say he’d remove Capital Gains taxes from stock options? What does “eliminat[ing] capital gains taxes for the small businesses and the start-ups that will create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow.” mean?
• And what does it mean to “stop giving tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, and I will start giving them to companies that create good jobs right here in America.“

Anyone care to comment?

S. Joseph Simitian (born February 1, 1953) is a Democratic California State Senator, who was elected to replace the term-limited Byron Sher in the 2004 elections. The 11th Senate District encompasses all or part of 13 cities in San Mateo, Santa Clara, and Santa Cruz counties, including Atherton, East Palo Alto, Menlo Park , Redwood City, California, San Carlos, Campbell, Cupertino, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Palo Alto, San Jose, Capitola, and Santa Cruz, as well as unincorporated areas of those three counties. Continue reading…

Senator Simitian is a Wadiwallah in the true sense - representing cities that fall bang in the center of what is commonly referred to as Silicon Valley. According to Omar Ahmad, who is a well respected friend, and community member “he’s a guy who will likely move to the US Congress in the next few year…”

He has been intrumental in getting the following measures passed:

• Increase school funding for the kids in our low wealth school districts;
• Protect California’s precious coast from off-shore dumping;
• Get low-cost and no-cost drugs to people of modest means;
• Protect older Californians from would-be scammers and swindlers;
• Provide greater transparency in local school funding decisions;
• Increase the use of renewable energy to 20% by 2010;
• Prohibit the purchase and sale of your personal phone records;
• Bring real accountability to our educational decision-making;
• Reverse global warming; and last, but not least,
• Pass my “hands free” cell phone bill, saving untold lives in the years to come.

Learn more about State Senator Simitian here: http://www.joesimitian.com/

I spent the day on John McCain’s website, looking for reasons for me to pay attention to his message. I wasn’t able to find any - if there is one to speak of. I then went looking for Joe Biden’s address to the convention, which wasn’t yet available. So I started going over his older clips, and the address he gave at the Democratic Convention in 2004.

I also listened to Michelle Obama speak, and realized what humble and simple beginnings this Democratic candidate for president is coming from. And then comes Biden’s address to the American electorate. Listening to Biden speak at the Democratic Convention tonight brings to mind the differences that separate him from McCain. The fact that he relates to the intellect, unlike McCain’s “another Bush Term”, is more than merely attractive. [Full speech here.]

I see amazing posts already speaking about what this means for the Middle East, the Muslim world, and the international community at large. Ex-president Jimmy Carter calls this a “Momentous event for the entire world.” Now Carter’s a smart and well-informed, well-travelled individual, and he has been speaking out so loudly against the running-into-the-ground of the once-great American image, that he’s been taken completely off the general media scene. This has become the way of our time. Stephen Colbert courageously conquered the White House Correspondent’s Dinner, (2006), listing numerous fallacies of the time within one speech, and instead of being news that everyone talked about and considered the issues raised, it caused controversy! What is this saying about what we have become as a people? Something has to change - yet who does it?

I have had strangers come and knock at my door to speak to me, young democrats not even old enough to vote yet, asking me if there’s anything I’d like to contribute to the Democratic Message for this year. I have personally heard Howard Dean talk, at the 5th Annual OPEN Conference, about how this time they have started from the ground up; and I am touched. I feel like this is the first time that a mass-movement has arisen out of the land, with the energy and the will of the people pushing it as its driving force, that may forever change our world. And I, for one, am finding myself wondering how, and what, Barack Obama will say tomorrow. Yet it does not surprise my eyes to see these words formed in front of my face: I might already be convinced that Obama is the man for the job. McCain, you’ve followed the tried-and-tested path of nasty politics one too many times, it would seem. I want to see how this world will turn out if, or when, Obama and Biden take to the reigns of power in this great land, and lead it to the greatness it so rightly deserves.

This article address a key issue faced today at many multi-national system design firms. Having design teams situated on two opposite sides of the Pacific is both time consuming and can lead to confusion.

These are challenges that can easily be overcome by putting stringent processes in place, and have a clearly define set of roles and responsibilities. It’s only a matter of time that the Electronic Design Industry catches up, and adopts outsourcing best practices from their counterparts in the Software Design space.

The problem is simple. Architects divorced from actual implementation tend to drift into Never-Never Land. Without drawing unflattering parallels to Frank Lloyd Wright here, these architects tend to create idealisms that are unworkable in the application, or are simply unimplementable. Conversely, implementation management separated from architects tends to lack vital information about the intent of the design—stuff that is very hard to capture in a specification but that would strongly influence how the design was implemented. Continue reading…

The thought of U comes to mind,
and within the mind I find-
a world in my imagination fine,
where abide some lovely friends of mine..

So I envision, and I can see,
beautiful eyes discovering me,
with smiles that glow more visibly -
the closer my friends feel to me.

Composed during a Sultry Summer Sunset in Sunnyvale
(C) Abbas Zaidi, 2008. Silly.com Valley, Californa-yaay

Good to see people catching up with the concept. Apparently the Greens had a point when they suggested that the Administration was dragging its feet on the issue. Its a very timely release of information on their part, passing the buck to the next guy.

CIO is launching their local edition in Pakistan on the 5th of August at the Karachi Sheraton. Featured speakers feature Google Inc, OPEN Silicon Valley, IDC and SATC, along with an interactive panel discussion moderated by President of PASHA.

All those interested in attending can register by calling 0300 2133849 PRIOR to the event!

Cross-posted to OPEN Silicon Valley

Posted by Siliconstani

  Today, Friday August 1st a number of  Calfriends and I met for our weekly TGIF FRIDAY CLUB at STRAITS RESTAURANT (http://straitsrestaurants.com) in Santana Row While looking over the menu,  my eyes fell upon an interesting item: ROTI JOHN.

Roti John, is a sandwich inspired by some legendary guy named John who apparently while in Singapore was over come with nostalgia for a sandwich from back home. Goes out in search of a bistro or deli like place, ends up at one the many street side hawkers and custom orders a sandwich made from Asian bread or Roti, omelet, and vegetables.

The hawker, a Malaysian Muslim had the entrepreneurial savviness to brand this sandwich as ROTI JOHN that apparently became the talk around town.

I couldn’t order ROTI JOHN since it’s only served for lunch, however the name alone inspired me to share this on WadiBlog, not to mention having a mouth watering ring to it.

I wonder how many times we go through life where because of our impulsiveness, urges, desires to do or eat something we, without realizing inspire someone with a great idea.

Entrepreneurship isn’t something you learn in school, or can read up in ENTREPRENEURSHIP FOR DUMMIES.I doubt anyone taught this Muslim Hawker about how to look out for a good idea, or how to market and brand the idea, no?

*WadiBlogging from Blackberry

SEO Optimized by WadiBlog admin

Scientists reported Thursday that there is such a drug

Wouldn’t this be nice?

If you are a churchill group member, these are some of the events they are putting together. If you want to attend and are not a member, you may have to pay a higher price for admission. You can also join the club and attend if you wish to do so:

Wed, July 30: 5th Annual Good Wine and Good Company: Old World Meets New World (San Francisco) (members only)
This event will feature California winemakers who are making tasty wine using Old World methods. Featured speakers include Louis Kapcsándy of Kapcsándy Family Winery, and Michael Brill of Crushpad. Please visit www.churchillclub.org for further details and to RSVP.

Mon, August 4: Hollywood, YouToo? Finding the Money and Eyeballs in Web Video (San Francisco)
Speakers: Nathan Coyle, co-head digital, Creative Artists Agency; Brent Friedman, executive producer and head writer, Electric Farm Entertainment/Gemini Division; Jordan Hoffner, director of content partnerships at YouTube; Ziv Navoth, VP of Marketing and Business Development, Bebo; and Frank Rose, WIRED, moderator. Please visit www.churchillclub.org for further details and to RSVP.

Thu, August 14: Election 2008: Cutting Through the Spin (Location TBA)
Speakers: Paul Jay, CEO and Senior Editor, The Real News Network; Ray McGovern, ex-CIA analyst, advising Ronald Reagan; Matt Furman, ex-CNN SVP and current Google executive, moderator. Please visit www.churchillclub.org for further details

Tue, August 19: Upsizing: Breaking the Billion Dollar Benchmark (Palo Alto)
Speakers: Mark Templeton, CEO, Citrix Systems; Maynard Webb, CEO, LiveOps, former COO, eBay; Dave Thomson, award-winning author, moderator. Please visit www.churchillclub.org for further details and to RSVP.

Thu, September 25: Churchill Club Annual Dinner: An Evening with Steve Ballmer (Santa Clara) (members only)
Please visit www.churchillclub.org for further details and to RSVP.