Fast forward to the 40 second marker for the actual interview.

Of course, since it was meant to be only a segment in the 30 minute program, the entire half an hour long interview could not be included, but was used as a build-up for the story.

Next goal – Me on CNN Business!

The point of this post is to mull over how age and experience really play a role in how you look at these things. For example, I saw this site today. It belongs to a passionate 18 year old open source software developer who is most probably a college student. From a technical standpoint, he is definitely more than qualified to do the jobs of some very experienced people I have met. He is on the cutting edge of his technical spectrum, so to speak. When I was growing up and in college, I was like that, too. I used to work on websites as a hobby, write interesting C programs in my summers, and just generally mess around with a lot of software code. With the rise of the Internet, though, it has become all too easy, and sometimes expected of you, to showcase your passion and talent for the rest of the world. This is an example of the raised threshold/baseline I mentioned earlier. So, is the kid exceptional? In comparison to some other peers in college, sure, but being on the cutting edge and passionate is expected from you. When you are grown up, this is how you look at it.

When you’re 18 years old, you just want to do things because they’re fun, and not because you realize that being passionate is ultimately going to help your overall perception of your future career. Youngsters these days have this wonderful opportunity to be taken seriously, to be able to start open source projects that have the potential to be used by a lot of people, to be able to contribute in the same vein as other more experienced people, thanks to the Internet. So, for someone like me, while it was considered exceptional to just be passionate about programming languages or writing hobby programs, I think the bar has been raised quite a bit in the last two decades.

So, do you compete with these youngsters? Feel threatened? No.

These are just signs that the technology landscape is changing so quickly, and that is very good. What we could do, though, is align our passion with theirs and create synergies that would ultimately advance future technologies.

इतना अासान होगा कभी सोचा न था!

- सौरभ

1. Lakshmi Mittal
2. Mukesh Ambani
3. Anil Ambani
4. KP Singh

Read the list and the article here.

1. India got her first female President.
2. Television got some really great new shows.
3. The US still tried to force-feed its way of life and governance to countries worldwide, only at the cost of national pride, credibility, and the economy.
4. Lots of school shootings, including one in India.
5. The resurgence of Apple Inc. as a dominant force in the computing industry.
6. The year of the iPhone. (This needed special mention)
7. India got some leeway from the insurgency efforts of neighboring Pakistan, who was busy trying to clean its own mess.
8. The job market actually improved a lot.
9. USCIS messed up and people got their GCs in record time for a month.
10. The year it started being really cool to be an Indian.

And then:

1. The year I changed my attitude towards people and ideas.
2. The year I realized I could do anything I wanted.
3. The year that actually made me a whole lot wiser.
4. The year I got rid of the mildew on my friends list.
5. The year I added a tame 19,000 miles to my car’s odometer.

I am sure there’s more I could think of, but this is all my sleep-deprived-shindig-stricken mind could come up with this early Tuesday morning.

Have a Wonderful New Year ‘08 !

Google Goes to India

Money quote – “Those who work at Google speak of a halo effect. Landing a job at Google is said to increase marriage prospects in a culture where title and income are critical to the practice of arranged matchmaking.”

10 years ago:

1. I was trying to get in a good college.
2. My primary computer was a desktop PC running Windows 95. The processor was 66Mhz Pentium.
3. I was experimenting with Linux in a big way.
4. I did not have an Internet connection at home.
5. I used to dial in to a few BBS’ across the world.
6. I was excited about being able to finally have a cable TV connection at home.
7. I was a computer “whiz-kid”.
8. I couldn’t cook to save my life.
9. I wanted to grow up to be an engineer working for the Indian Government.
10. I never thought I would move to a distant country.

Now, things that have remained unchanged:

1. The Simpsons is still the longest running prime-time animated series.
2. Human cloning is still banned.
3. Tony Blair is still the Prime Minister of Britain (although he’s retiring on June 27th).
4. India’s President is still from the minorities.
5. Toyota Prius is still quite a buzzword.
6. The middle east is still strife-torn.
7. The space race is still on, albeit between the West and the rest of the world.

There’s the usual reporting of live precincts, live interviews, the usual anxiety, and the usual rejoicing by the winners. I am a big fan of the statistics and graphical analysis, and it seems that not much is different in the way newscasters and reporters function in India and the US.

Now, if only I could vote in this country…

giving away 60 minutes of talk time to any phone line in India. This special will last from Oct 20 – 11:30AM PST to Oct 21 – 8:59PST. Even the regular rates to India are 4.9¢/min! This is probably the cheapest rate anywhere on the Internet. I see that Yahoo! is making full use of its Dialpad Communications, Inc. purchase.