Simply brilliant. This picture is probably worth 20 years of experience and at least a thousand pages of evenly spaced  10pt text. Don’t know the original cartoonist, if you know the source, please do let me know.

-Adnan

I think I’m getting hooked to Slideshare.

-Adnan

“The details are not details. They make the product.” – Charles Eames

Charles Eames is a renown designer who’s work had a profound impact in the field of design in general. You can read much more about him on the wiki page.

The quote, though, applies more broadly to any industry, any product, and any service. Coming from a designer, it reminds us of the importance of having robust design thinking, and paying fanatical attention to detail. Design is not just one part of the process, it is an organizational philosophy for success.

What’s my most favorite quote of all time? Stay tuned to find out.

-Wynn

Amazing

Originally uploaded by TRASH : cameraphone

Speaking of purple cows, an artist, Adrian, is spending the summer of 2008 in New York and making people take note. He’s created these colorful trash bags which are made of 100% bio-degradable PVC to make people take note of how much trash there is.

More on the project at Anycoloryoulike.

-Wynn

I first heard This is Miami by Sander Kleinenber in Toronto. My friends there (Bilo, you listening?) shared my uncoolness, and while I would love to say that I rocked to this tune in a slick downtown Toronto club the truth is it was playing on the radio when we were driving around aimlessly, reminiscing DHA days.

What struck me, other than the catchy tune, is that a around the 3rd minute, the DJ goes into a loop of “This is not Dubai…Dubai…Dubai”. The only city to have been granted the privilege of repeated digital denials. Why Dubai? What was Dubai even doing in a track about cool party cities like New York and Ibiza?

The answer, I think, is branding.

More later.

-Adnan

Q: What stops people from transacting online?

A: Trust

We’ve done a few things to engender trust, we’ve introduced the rating system, we follow-up on each transaction, and we offer the cash on pickup functionality. Today, we’ve taken another important step. For transactions in which the buyer sends the money, but does not recieve the item, we will protect the buyer by returning the amount paid to the seller (up to a cap amount). See how Buyer Protection works.

On the business model side, our aim with Buyer Protection is to wean people off cash-on-pickup, in which Lootmaar is an intermediary, to a model where transactions take place directly. For the direct model to work successfully, buyers must have the confidence that if they pay in advance, they will recieve the item. Buyer Protection introduces a comfort factor which (we hope) will help them make the leap to direct transactions.

Happy Lootmaaring!

-Adnan

…this video gives you goosebumps

-Adnan

Considering I live in a city that has hundreds of thousands Afghans, it’s almost ironic that I find insights on Afghanistan in an article written by a young American journalist.

“Emotional survival in Kabul requires the gradual decay of peripheral vision.”

The journalist, a Duke undergrad from last year, scrapped up all this cash to go to Kabul to find the sister of an Afghan who was killed in the London bombing. What a Shakespearean irony, escaping Kabul only to be killed by a terrorist blast in London.

Read about The Ghosts of Kabul.

-Adnan

Geoengineering is the deliberate modification of Earth’s environment on a large scale “to suit human needs and promote habitability”

Source: Wikipedia

How many of you have heard this term before? I have to confess, I just found out about it. I seem to have missed the Time special on it. While the science behind it is intriguing, the idea leaves me quite unsettled.

Read about the top 10 most “controversial” earth-saving ideas here.

-Adnan

Sometime in the Summer of 2007, the engine coolant on my 1996 Saturn started to leak. The poor student in me, drawing on desi wisdom thought, “I’ll just refill the damn thing every week; better than splurging a few hundred dollars to get it fixed.” The only problem was that it was leaking into the passenger compartment, and the substance, unknown to me at the time, is highly toxic. I shared my elegant solution with Wynn, who promptly went ballistic. To conclude our heated debate (fight??) I said, “Environment conservation is only for the rich.” I still don’t know where I stand on that. Does fixing an engine coolant leak take precedence over having enough to eat? Will your next donation go to Green Peace or Edhi Foundation?

I’ve never been able to understand the economics behind green initiatives. But I think  putting the plight of Ethiopian children on the same balance with increased carbon emission is an unfair comparison. It’s unfair for two reasons: conserving resources in daily consumption means there is more left for others and, more dramatically, if there is no earth, then there is nothing. Now I’ll leave it to you to decide if not having a habitable planet is a good thing or not, but from an FMEA analysis, global warming seems to be very very high impact, hence the investment justification.

-Adnan

ps. I managed to fix the Saturn for $40 with some tips from Yahoo Answers, and timely intervention by a desi passerby uncle, who happened to be a moonlighting used car dealer. This was right when Payman (a mechanical engineer friend) and I were pulling hard at the A/C gas tube, thinking it was for the coolant.

Sold the car for $1600, making almost 40% on it.