My Bschool Diary

Business Ethics: The case of Manjunath Shanmugham

2009-01-27T11:26:00.000-08:00

Manjunath Shamugham(27) was an IIM Lucknow alumni and an employee of the Indian Oil Corporation. He was killed in Lakhimpur Khiri on 19^th November 2005. He was on a drive preventing the adulteration of petrol in Uttar Pradesh.

The murder of Manjunath Shamugham or Machaan as he was popularly known in his friend circles provokes a serious introspection on our society where the anyone who tries to meddle with the system and become a threat for the “dadas” of the society who can afford to bend the law as and when they require is eliminated. Pre independence India had land lords and kings who exploited common people for their benefits. Post independence the country became democratic and the the landlords and influential lot slowly transformed themselves as businessmen who do not work on the classical theory but exploit their influence in the government and the loopholes in the system to generate huge profits. A nexus exists between politicians and these goons, and anyone who tries to raise his voice is either bought at the right price by them or murdered.

Oil is the lifeline of our economy and hence the people who distribute oil exert incredible control in their geographical domain. We have two powerful groups in the country. One has created economic power through knowledge, skill and enterprise and the other commands the political system and subverts the enforcement agency to prolong their control over the shrinking domain. Clearly the power today is shifting from the latter to the former and the latter cant take it. We the educated youth of the country represent the new order and posing a serious threat to the old order. Lets face this that we are the future of this country and we will fight to replace the old order. Incidents like Machaan should not dampen our spirits and neither should we compromise our ethics and values.

GDrive from Google

2009-01-27T05:34:00.000-08:00

The launch of Google GDrive is going to take cloud computing to a new level. It would be serving as an online hard disk on which you can store any data and will be accessible from anywhere in the world. Only an internet connection is required by a user to view his data. Already we are using a service close to this in the way of picasa, google docs and other such services where our data is stored online, but its highly specific. GDrive is going to end that and an unlimited amount of data storage on the network would be possible. This Hard Drive will also auto sync. your files with the files with the files on your computer and update the changed ones. The expected launch date is sometime this year.

Google is already working on convincing the people about the benefits of cloud computing in which the information is stored on the web rather than your hard drive. Another advantage which Google already has is the wide range of services it offers. Users generally will prefer to access service of a single provider which will have integration with other services. For example, I use Picasa, Gmail, blogger, adsense, google docs and logging in just one tab can open all other services in other tabs without asking for username and password. Also there are benefits of interoperability.
But there are downsides to this also. This means that the world will be trusting Google with large amount of personal data and it might breach that trust. There are already some allegations floating on Gmail scanning private mail accounts to generate targeted advertisements.

Google Adsense: Can you cheat them?

2009-01-24T13:47:00.000-08:00

Thinking to cheat AdSense? Stop that. It will never bring you anywhere. You might pull it off with smaller ads network, but definitely not with Google. Here are some detection methods they might use. At the very least, they have the resources to do so.

IP Address
If the AdSense click is originated from the same IP Address as the one used for accessing your AdSense account, your account is flagged.

Cookies
Most home users do not use static IP Address for Internet connection. In most cases just disconnect and reconnect will give you a new IP Address. But don’t forget, Google has set cookies on your computer.

Other Google Services
Thinking that you are safe just because you do not access your AdSense account? Think again. This time, consider these: GMail, Google Earth, Google Calendar, Google Search, Google Toolbar, Google Talk, Google Sitemap, Google Desktop, Blogger, and so on, and so on. With the wide range of services they provide, Google can trace the originator of most (or probably almost all) clicks.

Click Pattern 1
Oh, why this computer / IP address / person is so trigger-click-happy on this particular website but never click on the ads on other sites?

Click Pattern 2
And why is it that people accessing these sites direct (type-in URL or from bookmark) tend to be very active ad-clickers compared with those referred from search engine or other sites?

Click Pattern 3
And why the ad-clickers like to hit and run, compared with non ad-clickers that surf a few pages before leaving?

Click-Through-Rate (CTR)
Your CTR may range from 0.5% to 10%, but if it exceeds a certain point (probably around 10%), you are flagged.

Geo-Location
Used Urchin (Google Analytics) before? Then you should know that Google can trace traffics origin down to the small town. Different IP doesn’t mean much. Unless you site is really targetted to one small geo-point, a high number of clicks from nearby location will get you banned quickly.

Hardware address?
MAC address of the LAN card, modem, and router works almost like a fingerprint. I’m not sure if Google can track this, but probably they do. They have rocket scientist, remember?

Advertisers conversion rate
Ad click is one thing. But does it bring value to the advertisers? If none of the clicks on your site translate to conversion to the advertiser, you are in trouble. First the Smart-Pricing hits, then your AdSense account disabled.

Search Engine Ranking
Your website is not indexed on any search engine, not linked by any prominent website, but get consistently high traffic? That sounds like something is in play. Regardless of whether it is an adware-embedded software, spam, trojan clickbot, or intentionally installed click-exchange network, it doesn’t sound right.

Webpage design
How about the “click here” or “support us”? Google has the best search engine in the world. Is it really that hard to find those words?

Combo
Each of these detection methods might seem rather weak. But combine them together, and not many click-fraud can pass-through these filters. Even the smartest clickbot will have a hard time. In short, it is almost impossible to cheat AdSense in the long term. Instead of spending time, money, and effort trying to outsmart Google, try these tips to improve your AdSense earning.

Disclaimer: The contents of the above post are not entirely mine but have been compiled from the internet. It was just that I found it useful to warn the user of the possible adsense misuse.

Progress in Life: What to do during your MBA

2009-01-24T03:21:00.000-08:00

Progress in Life: What to do during your MBA: "?"

The best advice I ever got

2009-01-23T23:17:00.000-08:00

Recently India’s leading business magazine “BUSINESS TODAY” came out with its 17th anniversary issue (yes you heard me right , 17th ). I did not knew before this that this magazine is 17 years old. The cover story was “The best advice I ever got” compiled from 70 different personalities in India. I thought of putting up some of the ones I liked.
Reach the stars but keep one foot on the ground. – L. N. Mittal
Whichever decision that will give you peace of mind and help you to go to sleep peacefully in the night, is the right decision. – R. Seshasayee, MD, Ashok Leyland
Its better to go wrong with your instincts than somebody else’s. -- Amir Khan
Be better than the best. – Naresh Goyal
When you risk everything, you get the courage to succeed. – Dilip Chabbria
Save more, spend less. – R. Agarwal, Founder Vishal Megamart

Top Management

2009-01-23T22:25:00.000-08:00

A crow and rabbit were friends. The rabbit used to work very hard during the day in searching for food and for his survival. Opposite to that the crow sat on the top of the tree. The crow was very shrewd and cunning. It used to sit on the tree and sometimes go for hunting and quickly comeback. It was idle most of the time. So the rabbit asked the crow what you do. The crow said nothing; I just keep sitting on the tree and go sometime to hunt for my food. Well most of the time I just roam around. So the rabbit decided to do the same. He just kept sitting, and was eventually eaten by a wolf. Moral of the story is that inorder to be sitting and doing nothing, you should be sitting very high.

The same is true for the top management. Their job is not very well defined and consequently they are also not involved into day to day operational activities. They need to give vision to the organization. The basically deal with carving out long term strategies and being very high up in the hierarchy are instrumental in the success of the organization.

Summer Placement Process in a B School

2009-01-22T10:34:00.000-08:00

You have secured admission to a good B School, now what. Well, the first challenge for the students of a B School in India is the summer placement. A lot is written in the media and magazines about the final placements but the summer placement process remains untouched. So I thought why not put some of my insights on this issue, since I have experienced the process now.
Summer Internship is a part of your MBA program and is mandatory for getting a degree. Companies hire recruits for two reasons. One is that they get to see candidates for a two month time to identify the potential candidates for recruitment. And the second is that it is a part of their Corporate Social Responsibility. For the candidates, it is a hand on experience to see how an organization works and apply the theoretical concepts studied in class to the real life. Students are given challenging and sometime live projects to work upon. Sometimes it is actually implemented by the companies also. At the end of the summer training you might end up with a PPO which is pre placement offer to join the company, or a PPI which is a pre placement interview.
The process followed by the companies for recruiting candidates for summers is quite similar to the final placements. The typical rounds in the process are aptitude test, group discussions, case study, group task and personal interview. The process begins generally by the short listing of resumes. Remember, the companies have very less time to go through them. So make sure that your highlight your USPs carefully. e.g Marketing Coordinator in tech-fest GENESIS should be replaced by Marketing Coordinator in tech-fest Genesis. This is because the term Marketing Coordinator is more important than the tech-fest name which might not be known to company HR. Another point is that find out what the company expects from you. Highlight those aspects of your CV which make you look fit for the job. e.g do not tell the a company which has come for Marketing Profile that you are interested in Finance. He will never hire you. The group discussion skills are the same as followed in the B School entrance process, with a slight difference. After you have joined the B School you are a team with your batch mates so show unity.
The personal interview is based generally on your CV. The company knows that you are new to the B School and just expects you to be clear on the basics taught to you in the first few days. For engineers, the respite is that technical concepts are generally not asked lest you are sitting for a very specific profile. So that’s in short the summer placement process. I will be writing more about this in the coming posts.

Organization Culture

2009-01-21T12:14:00.000-08:00

As the introduction is now over let me start sharing one of the HR lectures of my class. Although I do not want to make it my specialization, still I find it interesting. I wont be hyperbolic to say that my choice of specialization in MBA program will be influenced by the pay packet, although it will play a minor role and the major factor would be my interest.
So getting ahead with the culture of an organization. The simplest definition could by "The way things are done around here". While talking about the culture in organization the professor decided to present one of his own observation about IIT kanpur.
In IIT Kanpur, there is a story floating of a boy from the Computer Sc. Dept. He applied to M.I.T department of Mathematics for P.G program. Now the Computer Sc. Guys at M.I.T stole his application form and asked him to come and visit their dept. and then decide finally if he wanted to join. The boy said that he did not want to join a college in which a dept. steals the application form, from another dept. The point stressed in the story was that a student of IIT Kanpur could refuse an institution like M.I.T. This story for reiterated over and over again to every oncoming batch with the name of the boy changed and the date for incident incremented one year every year. So this was the culture, the new batch was put forward, that you are the best. And you have to uphold that tradition.
Another part of the culture was dressing shabbily. Lots of students there used to be from metropolitan cities and used to dress well, but within a week they were also seen sporting bathroom slippers and uncombed hair at the classes. The underlying principle here was that outward appearance was not important and all that mattered was your knowledge and talent. There is a culture in every organization, however small it be. It is that sometime even we don’t realize that we are a part of it. That is what organization culture is explained simply.

The blog content

2009-01-20T11:32:00.000-08:00

As a first year student here at DMS IIT Delhi, I have the opportunity to study from one of the finest faculty in management in the country. The credentials which the faculty associates with themselves really deserve complements. The vast amount of industry and academic experience they bring, makes their classes a fun to attend and also a great learning experience. I was just sitting today, and the idea struck me that I can share this knowledge with the internet community which is also fun with value addition. So I have started this blog B school diary, which will include anecdotes from the interesting lectures out here as well as my experiences in this college. Keep visiting.....
Anvay....