Globonomics!

He’s a German. He’s as hard as a rock. He’s strategic. He’s fast. He flies. He can turn races around. He can create history.

He is Sebastian Vettel!

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

http://www.sebastianvettel.de/

He is the youngest F1 driver in the history of the sport to have earned himself a pole position in qualifying at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza and went on to win the race to create history. Guess what – this is the same car that the Red Bull boss purchased from the erstwhile Minardi! Can you imagine that it is a Minardi soul somewhere in that car that won the race! Fantastic!

Read the rest of this entry »

Source: http://www.hondacarindia.com

Well, its official. The Honda City 5th generation has officially been launched in India yesterday. It looks astounding. I will take a test drive in this car as soon as possible given I was a past owner of its predecessor which still rules the hearts of millions of Indians – both in India and abroad. Read the rest of this entry »

This single video has received more than 10000 hits in less than 1 year alone on YouTube and tops the charts on a search for videos for the keywords “Bangalore Volvo service”!

http://ecofin.wordpress.com/2007/04/01/economic-analysis-of-the-volvo-service-introduced-by-the-bmtc-at-bangalore/ Read the rest of this entry »

It appears every season, Formula 1 just gets more safer. While it is still a very risky sport (given the speeds involved), McLaren driver Heikki Kovalainen managed to suffer just a minor headache and a stiff neck after what appears to be a McLaren confirmed 140 kmph impact with the tyre wall. He lost consciousness as soon as he hit as you would expect (given he experienced a 29G – 29 times his own body weight impact). The HANS device also played its part. HANS is acronym for Head and neck support device that became mandatory in 2006 for all F1 cars.

But the carbon fiber monocoque of the F1 car stood true to its testimony as track medical team and marshals quickly and safely removed him from the car, shifted him to the track medical center and to the waiting helicopter as Heikki gave a thumbs up sign to indicate he was ok. It brings grim memories of what we saw on 1st May 1994 during the infamous Ayrton Senna death in a Williams car at Imola, Italy.

The F1 car of 2008 is probably the most safest vehicle to drive on the road with the stringent FIA safety standards laid down. Robert Kubica should know better. He escaped a near fatal crash in 2007 June at Montreal, Canada when hardly anything remained on his BMW.

I salute the safety of the modern F1 car!

I was chancing to look upon my blog’s readership and it has skyrocketed in last few months. To give you an idea of how much the readership for http://www.ecofin.wordpress.com has gone up by, Alexa rating has shown a consistent rise in my webpage ranking (it currently stands at 755139 worldwide and its India ranking is better at 58137. Furthermore, my year old blog stats shows my blog to have averaged 9999 hits way in May 2007. The current count stands at 77791.

Above means nothing if people don’t read posts. Simple page views/hits serve no value absolutely. The most important indicator that indicates the health status of a blog is its post:comment ratio. My blog’s average post:comment ratio is at about 1:2. This means, for every post I put up, I get double the # of comments. This ratio was about 2:1 last year at about the same time and it had not even reached breakeven. So, it is a satisfaction that my blog is a success in terms of these critical metrics.

Thank you, all for making this blog readable! Its only my readers who can turnaround this blog and I hope to keep you as repeat readers so the value of this blog is enhanced further!

Keep visiting back – you know where to look for me: http://www.ecofinglobe.com!

I travel 75 kms to work daily. This also involves something like 2 hours one-way travel in a crowded unplanned urban expansion prone city such as Bangalore. The former metric does not sound like much to anyone living outside India (say the United States, Europe, Australia etc.) but the latter figure when correlated to the former does sound alarming. Read the rest of this entry »

What are the important factors one needs to consider before one begins to blog:

1. First, get over this obsession of Google adsense. 99/100 bloggers I meet first think of making a quick buck on adsense rather than focus on quality of their blogs and its relevance towards the topic(s) chosen! This is really very disturbing statistics. Read the rest of this entry »

http://www.gulpanag.net/formula1_france.php

http://www.gulpanag.net/news.php

http://www.gulpanag.net/gulspace/25-11-2007/driving-a-f1-car.html

She is one of my favorite actors. I like her roles because they show strength of character – especially in Dor. Nice to know she has nerves of steel to steer a Renault F1 car and send it screaming down the straits!

It looks like cars are not new to her when I realized she had featured on a rare Toyota commercial a few years back and I was struck with awe even then: http://www.gulpanag.net/tv/toyota.php 

Way to go, Gul!

Source: CNN-IBN photo gallery (http://www.ibnlive.com/photogallery/633-14.html#view_start)

Here are the base specifications of this marvel that has drawn the attention of the 1 billion+ Indian population as also the global CEO’s of automotive companies to emulate this model of low cost production of people’s cars. Remember what Volkswagen (people’s car in German or Folkswagen – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen) did to Germany early in the 1900’s? The Tata’s might just as well repeat that feat multiplied by several factors in the Indian context – given India’s burgeoning population, growing disposable income and more and more looking for an affordable car that serves their needs!

Ratan’s Tata’s dream has become a reality today and almost all global have been full of commendation for this feat by TATA Motors for their latest innovation that currently does not have competitors since it is right now uncontested market space though this segment will hot up in the years to come but till then the Tata’s can count their volume sales in millions!

Best of all, this car has 21% more space than a conventional Maruthi 800!

http://ecofin.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/the-tatas-1-lac-car-the-nano-officially-lauched/

Courtesy/source: http://www.rediff.com

Ratan Tata has made his dream a reality today! Here are some pictures of this machine that is quipped to change the entire Indian automotive landscape in the years to come!

Official production of this car will start later this year but it is to be seen as to whether the Tata’s will stick to their Sticker price or MSRP of Rs. 1 lacs (excluding taxes etc.) for this car.

Congratulations, Ratan Tata, you have made India proud!

A link to an older post on the same topic can be got here: http://ecofin.wordpress.com/2007/07/29/tatas-1-lac-car/