google maps

Direction finding and map search will never be the same again , with the launch of google maps
check it out the technology is just amazing and navigating the map is also very cool
For people who would like to know the what is happening under the hood a very detailed explanation can be found on jgwebber's blog posting : http://jgwebber.blogspot.com/2005/02/mapping-google.html.

Very cool , Hat's off to Google again.

thank god for the Supreme Court!

The Supreme Court has directed banks and credit-card companies to hang up on sales calls.
"The Supreme Court today issued notices to mobile firms and private banks on a public interest petition alleging that they were providing phone numbers of citizens to commercial groups for promotion of sales."

around the world in < 80 days !!

Ellen MacArthur completed her epic journey by sailing around the world in just about 71 days!
what an achievement.
Ellens Route
New York Times report

cricket-VB series

Australia won another series beating Pakistan 2-0 in a best of 3 finals . The awesome Aussies won the game with a characteristic spirit of never giving up , even after the Pakistani bowlers had done a good job of restricting the total to 240 at the SCG.

My personal opinion is that the Australians should stop playing cricket for the next 2 years atleast and be awarded the World-Cup by default; because there is no team in the world 11 which comes close to their standard of play.
Next month Pakistan tour India , India is going to have a tough time playing their bowlers who are in excellent form especially Razzaq , Naved and if Shoaib is fit by then .....They are going to play a match in Bangalore and i look forward to see Shoaib in action. I just hope Inzy and others resolve their internal differences and select Shoaib for the trip he is a great competitor.

convergence

in the current issue of BI Journal David McGoveran talks of difficulties organizations have had in their integration efforts EAI or ETL. He states further in the article :

"It's becoming increasingly clear that thinking of business integrations in terms of making twor or more software applications interoperate is at best myopic and potentially even disastrous"
and "It is the need for businesses to remove the artificial operational and business barriers that impede and enmesh business objectives while respecting necessary businness constraints"

If only a lot more business recognize this truth , because it is not about Application Integration or technology or IT it is about "Business Integration" where IT is the just one of the enabling agents.