Pakorakorner | A personal portal with a strong Asian Indian flavor on a whole range of topics.

The Youtube buzz is very reminiscent of the dotcomm days. Lots of free video and lots of traffic. How they will make money no one seems to know (I dare say "care"). Yet, they have boat loads of dough. One investor said to me, "If I had a chance to invest in Youtube, I would simply because Sequoia Capital has invested"This is sooooooo dotcomm!Meanwhile, there are competitors galore. In the same space this company seems to at least have ...

This is quite an anti-climax to the Enron scandal. Given the kind of mental agony he must have been through, it is not surprising that he died of a heart attack. In fact, it is surprising that he didn't have a heart attack sooner given all the stress he must have been under! Considering the loses people faced because of Enron he probably hardly had any sympathisers and understandably so.I dare say that at 64 with a likely huge sentence ...

Check out the record contribution from Warren Buffet to Bill Gates Foundation. Gates' decision to go full time with the Foundation is already starting to show results!

Apple decided to close its center in Bangalore. Just read another piece from Kana's CEO about back-shoring Kana's operations in India back to the US. The big Indian IT guns are cranking out the big bucks quarter to quarter. So these just might be small blips in an ocean of outsourcing rather than a reversal in the trend.

In case you are not aware, there is a very interesting battle brewing between NY Times and GM. In a recent article, Tom Friedman of the NY Times heavily criticized GM for a bunch of things starting with their gas rebate for one of their supposedly gas guzzling vehicles (personally, I think it was nothing more than an excellent marketing ploy).The column went on to say that GM posed a serious threat to America's future! Obviously, the PR guys over ...

Attended TiECon 2006 (Day 1). It was packed. In fact, you realize right at the parking lot!Here is a brief summary of the happenings based on sessions I attended.Shashi Tharoor, Arnie and John Doerr were the big draws of the day.Shashi Tharoor came across as a charming, British-accented, intelligent, sensible speaker. His fine speech blended UN issues such as terrorism, poverty, hunger, etc with the TiECon themes of entrepreneurship, disruption and convergence. Here are a few interesting quotes from ...

Dubai has been in the news lately, mostly for the wrong reasons. I was in Dubai for a couple of days after a long gap of about five years. During this time, Dubai has grown significantly in terms of buildings, traffic, population among other things.Like Vegas, Dubai is permanently under construction. I had the pleasure of seeing the Burj-al-arab Hotel. What a cool design!Traffic seems to have become a complete nightmare. The infrastructure needs to keep pace or else this ...

Immigration is a hot issue today on the US political battlefield particularly because its an election year. Proposals and counter proposals are flooding the capital. In the rush to solve this seemingly perennial crisis most politicians on both sides of the aisle are doing little to try and separate illegal and legal immigration. All the discussions range from extreme protectionist measures to political maneuvering to gain the upper hand on the issue.One the one hand, all and sundry especially in ...

Just when Paul Ottelini has taken over the reins at Intel and embarked on corporate makeover lead by a "leap ahead" campaign the company is starting to fall behind. AMD is kicking Intel's butt especially in PCs and servers. A couple of years back most people wouldn't even entertain the idea of buying an AMD processor based PC. But these days its clearly not the case. AMD opteron based machines are now even available from Sun for pretty attractive ...

It sad to see Bjorn Borg having to dump his trophies. I remember watching this guy on TV win the Wimbledon year after year at ease until one show down with McEnroe. He was an awesome tennis player. Its amazing how some celebrities have it all and then blow everything away.