Fire In Princeton Meadows And Hyperlocal Content

Finally got the time to upload this picture I took 3 weeks ago.

A fire broke out in Princeton Meadows, a strip mall in Plainsboro, last month. The fire originated in a bakery, Hot Breads, and completely burnt down 4 stores. Also gone is the popular pizzeria, Al Jons, which had been in the neighborhood for almost 17 years. Like me if you don’t read local community newspapers or websites, where do you go for hyperlocal content? Try Topix.

For those that haven’t heard of Topix, it is to hyperlocal content what Google News is to world news and Techmeme is to technology news.  Topix crawls over 50,000 sources for hyperlocal community news.  More on Topix’s about page here.

I talked to some Topix folks at the Web 2.0 conference in SF and the biggest issue they were facing was the lack of hyperlocal advertising dollars. Topix has some Google ads, but the local pizza shop owner or dentist is less likely to open a Google Adsense account anytime soon. Topix also had a free classifieds section, but then there’s Craigslist.

World’s Most Visited Building

File this in the “Did You Know?” category, or rather “hmm… I never knew that” category. I stumbled upon “1000 places to see before you die” on Discovery Channel this weekend. They were featuring North India.

Apparently, the Bahai Temple in New Delhi is the most visited building in the world. On an average, 10,000 visit the “lotus” temple everyday.

The photo is from my visit to the Lotus temple back in 1997. More on the Bahai House of worship here and the New Delhi Bahai temple architecture here.

Another Indian architecture trivia from the same program – the Qutub Minar is the highest brick minaret in the world. This from the Wikipedia entry – the Qutub Minar is 72.5 metres high (237.8 ft) and requires 399 steps to get to the top. I went to school in New Delhi for 3 years and my school bus used to drive by the Qutub Minar everday.

The tall iron structure next to it has an history of its own. This from the Wikipedia entry – made up of 98% wrought iron of pure quality, it is 7.21m (23 feet 8 inches) high, with 93cm buried below the present floor level, and has a diameter of 41cm (16 inches) at the bottom which tapers down on going up. The pillar was manufactured by forge welding and the temperatures required to form such of pillar by forge welding can be achieved by combustion of coal. The pillar is a testament to the high level of skill achieved by ancient Indian iron smiths in the extraction and processing of iron.

Practical Lesson In Financial Accounting

If you are a small business under 10M in sales revenue, you have the option of either using cash-based or accrual-based accounting. And if you’re in a business that has a high percent of Account Receivables, you’re better off using cash-based accounting. Why? Because you’re paying taxes upfront on income you won’t be receiving for another 90-120 days (depending on the payment terms you’re offering your customer).

My friend Vijyendra is a wholesale importer of stones from India. It is a very high-margin, but slow-growth business. He has been in business for about 3 years and is currently importing 1 container a month, half of which is pre-ordered stones. When he puts an order in for a container, he has pay his supplier within 30 days. However, he doesn’t get paid from his retailer till the stone has been etched and shipped to the end customer (90-120 days). To make matters worse, December is the busiest month (yes, among other good stuff people also buy and upgrade tombstones when they get their annual bonuses). So when it is time to close the books, he is showing zero payables and 25% receivables. Not good if your books are Accrual-based!

What Can Orkut Do For Your Love Life?

When I was India in January 2007, my friend Akshay Chikodi asked me if was on Orkut. Frankly, he said, if you’re not on Orkut you don’t exist! So I created a profile on Orkut.

Couple things I don’t get about Orkut:

• What is it trying to be – a social networking tool? dating site? First thing you create a profile, you see this message - Next steps: Are you single? Tell everyone what you are looking for to get orkut working for you!
• It looks like a developer’s prototype when compared to Facebook.

But obviously, it is definitely doing a few things right. Read Gautam’s post here, Alexa ranks Orkut second in India followed by Yahoo. Orkut on last count had over 57.4M users, 15% = 8.6M Indians on Orkut. Even though it seems a bit on the higher side, it nevertheless is a great tool for people search. People search online is catching on and I don’t think there exists a better database of Indians in India and abroad – profiles with real names, pictures, bios & interests, life/event updates and a listing of every other friend on Orkut.

Some Orkut demographics from here:

• Over 15% of Orkut profiles are Indians (Brazil on top with 55%, followed by US with 19% users).

• 70% users are between ages 18-30.

• less than 20% are either married or committed (42% no answer, 36% single)

• 65% are on Orkut for friends, 18% for dating

The last bit of info is very interesting. Given that a majority of users are between ages 18-30 and single, is Orkut big enough to challenge the hugely successful martrimonial and dating websites? Same for Facebook, can it be the end of Match.com and the likes? Why pay a premium for meeting other singles if you can “poke” or “send teasers” for no charge? Or is that too creepy for some users?

Orkut’s help section on “What can Orkut do for your love life?” here. If you’re on Orkut, I’d love to hear from you.

Majority of NYC sewer manhole covers “Made in India”

For all those proud New Yorkers that claim to know every bit about the city history, I can almost guarantee a good bar conversation. Here’s how it usually goes:

Q: How many years have you lived in the city?

A: Over 5 years

Q: How many miles do you walk each day?

A: About a mile or two

Q: Did you know a majority of NYC sewer manhole covers are imported from India?

A: No way! You’ve gotta be kidding me! Did this just happen?

Most of New York City’s 600,000 manhole covers and the many hundreds of thousands all over the US come from India. And foundries in and around Kolkata claim a big chunk of that business. Indian companies began supplying manhole and sewer access covers to the US almost four decades ago. But in recent times their business has gone up manifold as they charge only a third of what US makers demand for the same work.

Read more here and here.

Thomas Friedman redefines the flat world

I attented the Personal Democracy Forum last month.  New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman, in his keynote announced the addition of 3 new chapters to this popular book “World is Flat” (3rd edition) . 

Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Be the change you want to see in the world”.  That was Gandhi’s message to 250+ million Indians, challenging them to organize and rise up against the British rule.

Thomas Friedman reading out his new chapter announced, “If it’s not happening, it’s because you’re not doing it”.  This is the new form of Citizen Activism in the age of Internet and Technology.  Users have all the necessary tools (read blogs, forums, feeds, widgets) to organize virtual campaigns and put pressure on the big corporations and governments.

Check out the recorded version of Friedman’s keynote here.

More on the flat world and this from the perspective of employers – Back in the days, people wrote and presented their resume as a proxy of who they’re.  Today, companies can go on the internet and gather the information themselves.  The human proxy has been dropped and entities are more transparent.