Surviving Mumbai – Information for emergencies in the Bombay area
(added at 11.35 pm IST) Here’s a spreadsheet of injured and deceased.
(added at 7.15pm IST) There are some useful helpline numbers here.
Leave a message if you’re trying to get through to pals in the city.
We all want to do remarkable things, and lead remarkable lives.No one wants to spend the day engaged in mundane productivity in pursuit of a meaningless consumer existence.
Certainly not you, right?So why do we find it so hard to break out of our rut and do truly innovative things?Because it’s hard.
Because it often requires us to significantly alter our perspectives and step outside our comfort zones.It’s almost like becoming another person.
If you want to be a good product manager, consider all aspects related to any add-on features. A product manager is not only responsible for identifying what needs there are in the market. The product manager must also figure out how those needs should be filled by new or existing products.
There are many valid reasons to include something as an add-on to an existing product, including: to utilize an existing platform for lower cost and broader distribution yet still allow for additional revenue; to provide capabilities for one customer segment while not overwhelming another; or to leverage brand recognition while expanding the product portfolio. Usually product development teams spend a lot of time deciding whether or not to include something as part of the standard product, and much less time determining the steps for how someone would obtain that add-on. In fact, how easy it is for the customer to enable the feature or buy the add-on can be a big determinant of how successful it is.
Consider all details of add-on features : How To Be A Good Product Manager: Product management tips
Tags: productmanagement
The Federal Reserve has slashed a key interest rate by half a percentage point as it seeks to revive an economy hit by a long list of maladies stemming from the most severe financial crisis in decades.
The central bank on Wednesday reduced its target for the federal funds rate, the interest banks charge on overnight loans, to 1 percent, a low last seen in 2003-2004.
The funds rate has not been lower since 1958, when Dwight Eisenhower was president.The cut marked the second half-point reduction in the funds rate this month. The Fed slashed the rate by that amount in a coordinated move with foreign central banks on Oct. 8.
Fed cuts key rate by half-point - Stocks & economy- msnbc.com
Tags: FederalReserve
Plow money back into the market. Why throw good money after bad? Because over long swaths of time, stocks always do go up, and now is a good time to start buying, while prices are lower. That means maxing out on your 401(k) contributions and feeding an Individual Retirement Account up to $5,000 in 2008 (plus another $1,000 if you’re at least 50.)
Play the Roth card. This could be an excellent time to take your old tax-deductible IRA and convert it to a tax-free Roth IRA. You’ll pay income taxes on the amount you convert, but that amount is probably a lot lower than it would have been without the recent market rout. And given the astronomical deficits that Washington will have to fix sooner or later, your tax rate may be at an all-time low. Once your money is in a Roth, you’ll be able to reap all the future earnings without paying taxes on them.Invest for income.
High-yield stocks and corporate bonds have been among the hardest hit in recent market sell-offs, but they are exactly what you want in your portfolio as you head into retirement, says Paul Sutherland, a wealth manager with FIM Group in Traverse City, Mich. “Lots of companies that are historically good, consistent dividend payers are selling at very low prices,” he says, pointing to nonfinancial firms like Dow Chemical, AT&T and General Electric.
How to Play Catch-Up On Retirement Investments | Newsweek Business | Newsweek.com
The Azure™ Services Platform (Azure) is an internet-scale cloud services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services that can be used individually or together. Azure’s flexible and interoperable platform can be used to build new applications to run from the cloud or enhance existing applications with cloud-based capabilities. Its open architecture gives developers the choice to build web applications, applications running on connected devices, PCs, servers, or hybrid solutions offering the best of online and on-premises.
Azure reduces the need for up-front technology purchases, and it enables developers to quickly and easily create applications running in the cloud by using their existing skills with the Microsoft Visual Studio development environment and the Microsoft .NET Framework. In addition to managed code languages supported by .NET, Azure will support more programming languages and development environments in the near future. Azure simplifies maintaining and operating applications by providing on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage web and connected applications. Infrastructure management is automated with a platform that is designed for high availability and dynamic scaling to match usage needs with the option of a pay-as-you-go pricing model. Azure provides an open, standards-based and interoperable environment with support for multiple internet protocols, including HTTP, REST, SOAP, and XML.
Microsoft also offers cloud applications ready for consumption by customers such as Windows Live™, Microsoft Dynamics™, and other Microsoft Online Services for business such as Microsoft Exchange Online and SharePoint® Online. The Azure Services Platform lets developers provide their own unique customer offerings by offering the foundational components of compute, storage, and building block services to author and compose applications in the cloud.
About - What is the Azure Services Platform? | Azure Services Platform
The Oracle of Omaha has long preached that the long term is the only view for an investment — even if the investor is beyond retirement age. He’s said before that his ideal holding period is “forever” — and the Mars-Wrigley-Berkshire deal is yet another example of Buffett putting that theory into practice.
Yet most investors have not learned this lesson. Recent NYSE data showed that the average holding period for a stock is now less than one year.
Buffett’s abilities did not develop overnight. It’s been a lifelong process — one that began at age 11.
So while he may be a better investor than us today, we can at least learn from his experiences and — like he did — become superior investors over time. That means:
- Buying for life (or, at least, the long term).
- Buying small (perhaps our lone advantage).
- Buying based on thorough research and due diligence.
Seriously, Warren Buffett Is a Better Investor Than You
Tags: warrenbuffett, fool.com
The U6 in September rose to 11 percent, its highest level since the data series started in 1994 and significantly higher than it was in the last recession, in 2001. The ratio between the U6 and the official unemployment rate has remained relatively steady over the last several years.
But that means that as the unemployment rate has risen, so too has the portion of the population suffering from other types of work deficits. Three years ago, when the unemployment rate was 5.1 percent, an additional 3.9 percent of the labor force fell into one of those other underutilized categories.
Last month, with the unemployment rate at 6.1 percent, an additional 4.9 percent of the labor force was underutilized.
Unemployment: The Bad News About Your Job | Newsweek Voices - Daniel Gross | Newsweek.com
The U6 in September rose to 11 percent, its highest level since the data series started in 1994 and significantly higher than it was in the last recession, in 2001. The ratio between the U6 and the official unemployment rate has remained relatively steady over the last several years.
But that means that as the unemployment rate has risen, so too has the portion of the population suffering from other types of work deficits. Three years ago, when the unemployment rate was 5.1 percent, an additional 3.9 percent of the labor force fell into one of those other underutilized categories.
Last month, with the unemployment rate at 6.1 percent, an additional 4.9 percent of the labor force was underutilized.
Unemployment: The Bad News About Your Job | Newsweek Voices - Daniel Gross | Newsweek.com
But in a posting to Intel’s Chip Shots blog Thursday afternoon, Anand Chandrasekher, the head of Intel’s low-power efforts, threw his fellow executives under the bus in admitting that Intel’s current low-power x86 processors don’t even come close to matching the power consumption numbers–a vital design parameter in smartphones–of those made by ARM’s partners, which are used in smartphones like the iPhone and over 90 percent of all the mobile phones in the world.
The post follows in its entirety.
Anand Chandrasekher issued a correction on comments made by members of his team yesterday at Intel’s Developer Forum in Taiwan. As general manager of the Group responsible for Intel’s ultra-mobility products, he acknowledged that Intel’s low-power Atom processor does not yet match the battery life characteristics of the ARM processor in a phone form factor; and, that while Intel does have plans on the books to get us to be competitive in the ultra low power domain - we are not there as yet. Secondly, Apple’s iPhone offering is an extremely innovative product that enables new and exciting market opportunities. The statements made in Taiwan were inappropriate, and Intel representatives should not have been commenting on specific customer designs.Whoops.
Intel ‘corrects’ executives who slammed iPhone | Apple - CNET News
