In school and loving it

I have finished 7 weeks of school (Institute of Design) and so far am loving it...its very different from work :-)
To be fair there have been a few adjustments that I have had to make...things are not as fast moving as in consulting (generally)...the mindset of my fellow students is to discuss and go over lots of ideas before settling on one. I, on the other hand, have a tendency to make quick decisions and start working on the problem. This as you can imagine causes some conflicts but I realize that there is a happy medium that needs to exist..I need to need to spend more time brainstorming before trying to come up with solutions.
Other than that, there has been a lot of learning going on...An interesting project that I am working with my team is to try and identify a technology/ system to reduce the culture shock of immigrants when they move to a new place. How can we make the transition easier - its not about learning the new language but about learning the nuances in a manner that is available to them when they need and prompts them when they dont know they need it...its an interesting problem that we will try to get a solution to in the next 7 weeks...Well thats all for now...cheers

Hi from India

I am loving it in India...

Spitzer Scandal

Spitzer was caught up in a prostitution scandal yesterday and I watched him apologize to the public with his wife at this side. Now the stories on CNN are asking "if" it will doom his career. I am amazed that after a scandal, these questions are asked. Shouldn't the question be when he will resign vs. if this will effect his political ambitions. It seems that now a days with the quality of politicians everywhere, these scandals are considered almost a pre-requisite to be in office :)

As I told my wife, GW Bush has set the bar so low, that now a scandal like this is almost welcome..I rather see this than what has happened in the past 8 years...

to major or not to major

My cousin (who shall be unnamed) sent out an email to the clan asking for advice on which second major to choose...got me thinking...when i got into college for my undergraduate studies, we didn't have a choice...what one did was decided for us by the very fact of which college and which program we got into...Is it better to have a lot of choice or not have a choice at all...perhaps in some cases its better to have a limited choice :-)

This goes for all things in our lives...we have too many choices which results in an inability to make decisions or the wrong decisions because we are fed up of the options...

I wonder how companies are dealing with this...as they come up with new products, are they studying the impact of too many choices on the consumer spending habit? How can they attract consumers when there is so much choice...whats the differentiating factor??

Some links to articles of talking about too many choices that I just googled :-)

http://www.apa.org/monitor/jun04/toomany.html

http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/general/2006-01-16-choice-usat_x.htm

http://columbia.edu/~ss957/media_ref_pages/TooManyChoices.html

Picture courtesty of "The Situationist" @ http://thesituationist.wordpress.com

Links to website that I enjoy!

Check out these links when you have some time...
Cool Tech stuff:
http://www.gizmodo.com
http://www.engadget.com
http://gigaom.com
http://earth2tech.com

Cool Green Stuff:
http://www.treehugger.com
http://metrohippie.terapad.com/

Just interesting:
http://www.mocoloco.com
http://www.instructables.com/home
http://design-milk.com/
http://lifehacker.com/
http://www.designobserver.com/

First Post and I aint got nuthing to say!

Hello World! This is my first blog post and honestly right now I got nuthing to say to you all. I was kinda bored and decided to check out this "blogging" phenomenon. Seems to be something that a lot of people are into and so if I have to keep up with the crowd, I guess I got to do it. Anyways I think I will do this for a bit and see what I can come up with. Cheers for now. Be well.