BusinessWeek profiles Emerson Spartz, a 20-year-old who makes a “six-figure income” annually by running the Harry Potter fan site mugglenet.com.

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One of the more interesting applications of Google Trends is to compare the search volumes of two or more search terms over the past several months (or years). So we were winding down work yesterday at Convonix, and fooling around with Google trends, when, on a whim, I compared “valentine” and “lingerie”. And well - there is a correlation. See for yourself.

Vishal Sampat, a 2003 alumnus from my alma mater, K. J. Somaiya College of Engineering, has just been voted Rank 4 among Asia’s Best Entrepreneurs under 25, by BusinessWeek. He is the founder of Convonix, a Search Engine Optimization and Marketing firm, operating out of Bombay.

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Here are the results of a search on the Indian Express’ website for the columnist Saubhik Chakrabarti. Google returns Results 1 to 7 of. errr, just 5. Umm..

India’s biggest problem today…
… is an interventionist State. Despite a brief start at reforms between 1991-93, the Government continues to be in the business of running businesses. Inevitably, when it is also the policy-maker, protectionist policies are bound to arise, and private players are bound to be put at a perennial disadvantage. Consider the Government’s decision on the 30th of November to deny private operators use of BSNL’s and MTNL’s “last mile” copper wire infrastructure. From the Economic Times: Read more

I’ve been trying to get Beagle up and running on my computer for a while now. There’s so much information on my hard disk, I’d love something like Google Desktop Search for Linux, and Beagle seems to be just what I need - and more.

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I moved to a new Internet provider today. These guys provide Internet connectivity via PPP over Ethernet. The same old story repeated itself:

Location: Dingy, cramped cableguy’s office. 6:30 PM.

Me: …so this connection of yours requires a connection tool?

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My IBM Thinkpad R50 has arrived:

Here are the specs:
1.) ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 64MB 128-bit DDR Video Ram Operating at 210 MHz.
2.) 14.1″ TFT Screen
3.) Trackpoint
4.) Touchpad
5.) ThinkLight at the top of the screen illuminates the screen in low light conditions.
6.) System and power status indicators:
Wireless status,
Bluetooth status,
Numeric lock,
Caps lock,
Drive in use,
Power on,
Battery status, and
Standby status.
7.) Function keys for screen brightness, full screen functionality, web browser forward and back buttons, (these are all hard-wired key functions, so their usage is not OS-dependent. However, a nice project called the TPB (ThinkPad Buttons) enables an on-screen display on Linux.
8.) Built-in microphone
9.) Volume increase/decrease/mute buttons.
10.) Centrino Mobile technology - wireless support built-in via”integrated dual diversity antenna built into the display”.
11.) 40 GB HDD
12.) DVD-ROM - no CD/RW!
13.) 2 USB ports
14.) Video-out connector
15.) Agere systems AC’97 Modem
16.) PC card slot - to attach modem, data storage, network, and SCSI connector cards.
17.) Built-in Infrared port.

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