My BlackBerry turns 1 / Economics of investing on a BlackBerry

Source: http://in.blackberry.com/

It’s been a quickfire 1 year for my BlackBerry. It seems like it was just yesterday that I went in for this purchase after my iPhone 3G fiasco.

My BlackBerry has served me well. Yes, it has not only increased my workload to span weekends (I always seem to be in touch with activities at work even while commuting to/from work) but also had other such advantages.

In addition to these social advantages, it has greatly improved my productivity proving it’s not just a gadget bought for pure frills:

Most critical: You can obviously make/receive calls that are of good audible quality and speakerphone is equally good. Voice quality is also good and depends on the AirTel signal.

Apple Tablet in the works?

Image courtesy: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/aug/23/apple-tablet-steve-jobs-touchscreen

Is this really coming? There has been a lot of press generated around this prospective device for the last few months and especially in last few days when IDC came out with it’s predictions for 2010.

Go Green by going paperless – economic benefit

Earth hour initiative I had participated in 2008 and 2009

Other personal initiatives undertaken by me in past

With the Copenhagen summit on climate change and reducing carbon emissions making front page headlines for the last so many days now, I wanted to shed some impact of this on my personal paperless habits:

The browser toolkit – FireFox, Safari or Chrome for Mac?

Source: http://www.apple.com/safari/

Source: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/personal.html

Source: http://www.google.com/chrome?platform=mac&hl=en

I am a religious user of FireFox for my MacBook browsing based activities.

Rediff shopping online / my experience

I had a terrible time shopping online with Rediff. I placed a fairly decent sized order on the Rediff Shop online about a month ago. I first of all never got a confirmation email of my order itself though the website said it had sent it (luckily I took a screenprint of the order itself and sent it to my email).

I know what you are thinking – I checked the spam folder as well. It was just not there. Ok, this is acceptable since emails could have got misplaced however, my woes did not end there. I never got a proper tracking # for my shipment but did get the ‘consignment number’. It said the courier would be “XYZ” but always said the status was “awaiting dispatch”.

Windows 7 Ultimate – usage review from India

Windows 7

Image courtesy: http://blogs.ft.com/techblog/files/2009/10/windows7.jpg

It’s early days in my usage of Windows 7 Ultimate but it’s way better than anything I have seen with my last 2.5 years of Vista Ultimate usage.

Let’s come back to some basic items that I feel have improved.

My blogging focus/EcoFin and it’s origin – note

“Focus is key; everything else comes later.”

http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/Eco_Fin/

When I started out to form my peer networking group above that bears the same name as my blog – EcoFin, in November 2003, I had three very simple objectives that I believe I achieved with phenomenal success.

1. To leverage on the members’ strong/solid knowledgebase in the segments of economic/financial/accounting/consulting/stock markets/banking.
2. -To enhance the knowledgebase of its members’ using its own members’ intellectual prowess and harnessing on the collective knowledge of its members’ and truly enable free flow of ideas using the various media and in-person meets.
3. -To ensure globalization of group.

Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate / Snow Leopard

Buy Original Microsoft software

The Warren Buffett CEO: Secrets from the Berkshire Hathaway Managers

Source: http://www.amazon.com/Warren-Buffett-CEO-Berkshire-Hathaway/dp/0471430455

How often do you wonder how Warren Buffett manages to be a hands-off manager or how hands-on he really is. His empire is over $37 billion (2009 figures as quoted on Wikipedia) and he is my guru and one of the most enigmatic figures you would find. But, have you wondered how his businesses run? How does he manage such a large empire so efficiently? His annual report mentioned Ajit Jain who is heading several reinsurance businesses for Buffett and his name even found a mention on the 2008 copy of the Berkshire Hathaway annual report  – http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/2008ar/2008ar.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajit_Jain

Last man standing – Jamie Dimon@JPMChase

Source: http://www.amazon.com/Last-Man-Standing-JPMorgan-ebook/dp/B002QJZ9ZY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259222095&sr=1-1

Downloaded this book on the kindle some days back. Yet to start reading it.

I admire the way Jamie Dimon steered JPMChase out of the woods back in 2008 and kept it profitable till date and in the process making some spectacular acqusitions. I had read a FORTUNE article on him back then as well which was really informative so am sure this biography will be enthralling.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/08/29/news/companies/tully_dimon.fortune/