Feels Great !!

Thanks to the wonderful guys at AWP, couple of days back I received the "Developing Microsoft Office Solutions : Answers for Office 2003, Office XP, Office 2000, and Office 97" book by Ken Bluttman. This is another book that I reviewed for AWP and it feels great seeing your name in the book. Needless to say, this book upholds the great technical content we all are familiar with coming out of AWP.

The book is very detailed and has very good coverage of Microsoft Office Object Models, Smart Tags and Infopath. The various case studies like, Generating "on-the-fly" Excel charts from imported XML data, Using InfoPath to overcome key XML processing limitations etc makes it even more worthier of a purchase.

I have written a more detailed review (slightly biased..:)) of this book under the Book Reviews section.

E-mail Escalation: Dispute Exacerbating Elements of Electronic Communication

HBS Working Knowledge points to an interesting paper on how E-Mails impact the process of conflict management and how the best way to resolve a dispute is to pick up the phone or just walkover and resolve the dispute face-to-face.

Why is it that e-mail emboldens people to new heights of rudeness, combativeness, and off-the-cuff stupidity? Why do small conflicts escalate into huge problems when e-mail is involved? Those questions are asked and answered in this paper by conflict expert Ray Friedman, a professor at Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University. Friedman says that when we meet face-to-face, disputes are often safely negotiated thanks to our ability to interpret voice intonations, physical mannerisms, and facial expressions. That context is missing as we sit isolated in front of our computer launching pointed digital missives, which no amount of symbols can blunt. The answer? Handle your disputes by walking down the hallway and talking them out.

...India emerged as a great economic power...

Good to know, India is now getting recognised as Great Economic Power. Always On Ten top trends of 2003 places India at no. 3.

3. India emerged as a great economic power -- at last. Which country has the world's second biggest middle class? Not Germany. Not Japan. Not Russia. India.

Among its 1 billion consumers, anywhere from 150 million to 300 million are certifiably middle class and can afford a simple car or motorbike, electric appliances, perhaps a home. Of course, there is huge and desperate poverty, but India is rapidly growing and climbing out of slough.

For years after it gained independence from Britain in 1947, India was a massive pain to the United States, leaning to the left in politics and economics, throwing up trade barriers, severely limiting U.S. investment, and generally acting superior. Much of that has started to change, and India, while still socialist, is moving closer to the middle of the road. It also has been building a famously first-class education system, turning out tens of thousands of technological experts who work in the home country and throughout the world.

Now Indian workers are taking more and more jobs from America, and there could be some confrontations ahead, with U.S. labor demanding some form of protection.

Happy New Year

A Very Happy and Prosperous New Year to all of you !!