Olympic Gold, Chinese Officials and PlayBoy Archives

This was a short week for me as I was out of town for a part of it, and hence didn’t get to read much. As part of my short vacation I met a cousin of mine, and he introduced me to a friend who had read OneMint.

She is a PhD from Stanford, so I was over the moon when she said she liked the site and enjoyed and appreciated the simplicity! It’s obvious to anyone who reads the comments that this site attracts quite an intelligent audience, so it’s always good to see some proof of that in real life! We spoke about the site for less than a minute, but that was one of the highlights of the trip for me.

Now, on to a few links from this week.

First, a story about an Indian literacy program that may be fastest in the world from the WSJ. The program is called Tara Akshar and teaches to read and write in 35 days!

A backhoe operator looks at 80 @ Random Roger: Next up a very inspiring story about an 80 year old man which teaches the values of thrift, hard work, and doing the right things in life.

Indian investors seek Olympic gold @ Beyond Brics: Beyond BRICS on a group of private individuals coming together and pooling some funds to help athletes compete in Olympics and improve India’s chances of winning Olympic gold

First Day IPO Pops @ Big Picture: The Linked In IPO was big news this week as it scorched during listing. Here is a list of other IPOs that did great on listing.

How else are you supposed to take it? @ Seth Godin: A good post on getting people to not take things too much to heart, especially useful for people whose job exposes them to public criticism.

Bhutan’s King Jigme tells parliament he is to marry @ Riding the Elephant: Great post and excellent picture!

A few links that I shared on Twitter this week.

Eight out of China’s Top 9 Government Officials are Scientists

PlayBoy Archives coming to iPad tomorrow

Please wait 10 months for your aluminum

Market Research Agency Speak Asia’s shady ownership unearthed

Enjoy your weekend!

6 thoughts on “Olympic Gold, Chinese Officials and PlayBoy Archives”

  1. Manshu – appreciate your reply, please dont applogize for anything..as there was nothing wrong done here… i was actually surprised to see your response though coz i have seen you have handled other such comments / situations by politely side stepping.. and more over my intent was a kind of hint/request for you to stay focussed on the acutal intent of the blog. may be the blog has grown bigger than “one mint” but i still feel ( looking at the comments/suggest a topic ) people flock to this website coz they feel/think that you would know better about the latest on indian personal finance or atleast you would make an honest attempt at finding more about it… hence was my question.. but i understand its your blog and you are free to write on topics which interest you..
    i infact did share your sachin story on my FB page and liked your onemint, there after posts from one mint figure on my FB page, note that i have not liked any other fan page other than one mint, coz i felt what ever comes up on onemint wud be by default worth sharing from a personal finance perspective… i actually didnt want to have “playboy” on my wall .. for obvious reasons …
    i infact have been writing notes with label “manshu” so i can post them on suggest a topic, like i did for superannuation..
    though on your request i have unsubscribed.. but i wud keep checking as there might be something useful on personal finance… ( See i too am an iphone / ipad enthusiast, i own an iphone 3gs and ipad 1, but there are many tech blogs which i and others do visit, and the point on porn on iphone is interesting.. but its just me coz i felt it was out of place for onemint, ) though i may be wrong its your blog…

    take care
    and keep writing..
    Sorabh

    1. I’m honored to read your comment and find that OM is the only FB page you’ve liked. I’d like to observe that the links from OM will appear on your feed, but not on your wall until you share them. So, your friends didn’t actually see the title of the page.

      However, I appreciate what you have to say, and will stay away from linking to such articles in the future; you’re right – it’s probably straying away too far from the theme of the blog.

      Thanks again for explaining this and bothering to respond to me politely even when I was curt – I now get a much better understanding of the situation and how it affects you and possibly others as well.

  2. Manshu – there is nothing for me to get offended on ? i wanted to know the connection… but it seems you got offended for no reason.. you could have completed the statement at other topics as well… but not sure why you added the last bit… if i am to unsubscribe i would.. but you not keeping focussed on a particular area is atypical of most indian bloggers..

    anyways.. thanks for everything
    regards
    sorabh

    1. Sorabh – I apologize for my comment, you correctly observe that I got offended for no reason.

      I looked at the comment and thought why didn’t you ask if the literacy program, China’s politicians, Bhutan’s King’s wedding or Godin’s post had anything to do with finance, and used PlayBoy as an example because it offended your sensibility. You obviously just used it as an example, and I got carried away thinking it hurt your sensibility – I’m sorry about jumping at that conclusion, and wrongly interpreting your comment.

      Specifically, about PlayBoy – I found the news interesting because Apple has this strict policy about not allowing this type of thing in their store, and a few months ago there was a huge uproar when they said they’re going to take a 30% cut of all in app subscription and content revenues.

      What PlayBoy did was overcome these two rules by first making it a web app so that they don’t have to depend on the app store for permissions etc. and they don’t have to pay a cut to Apple as well. Second, the website content can’t be accessed directly on the web without an iPad, which effectively just makes it an iPad app.
      I thought this was very clever and they one-upped Apple in their own game. I don’t know of another company that did this, maybe there are more that I’m not aware of, but this is the first time I’ve found something like that and I thought well played guys!

      Generally, I write about diverse topics because I’m interested in a lot of stuff other than finance, and I feel that the same is true of typical readers as well. When writing about anything other than Indian personal finance I consider if the article will increase the knowledge of the reader, or will it entertain them? The answer to the first question is obvious, so when I write about something like FISN – it’s fairly easy to see how people’s knowledge about finance in general will increase, or when I write about how you can set a reply to all as Gmail default setting I can see how people can use that knowledge to immediately change that setting and benefit from it.

      However, it’s hard (at least for me) to immediately discern whether or not something is entertaining. When I wrote about Sachin’s centuries – that was just entertainment, and that worked well, but a long time ago I used to write these thought experiment posts presenting a hypothetical situation and asking reader questions. The last post of that kind was titled “Will you lend me money?” I enjoy these type of thought experiments, and talk about them to close friends even now, but feel that readers don’t find value in it, or sometimes just get plain confused and think that I’m really asking them to lend me money 🙂 so I stopped those type of posts. Then I don’t write about movie reviews, or novel reviews because although I’m interested in them there is not much I’ll be able to add beyond what’s already out there on the web.

      Those are my reasons, sorry for my initial comment, thank you for being the bigger person and not getting irked on it, and sorry for this long reply!

  3. Manshu – how is the “playboy archives coming to ipad” a relevant piece of news for a personal financial planning website ?

    regards
    Sorabh

    1. This is not “just” a personal finance website – I write about technology and other topics as well. If you’re offended then I suggest you unsubscribe.

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