Long term investing - Comparison of Cisco, Microsoft & Infosys

Have you ever wondered how people gained from the phenomenal growth of companies. We all know the Google story, and more recently the Apple story.

Ofcourse we have our local listed companies like Noble etc offering such growths (Sadly these days these are laggards)

Below is a comparison of three stocks (vested in all but not from IPO days.) and you'd be zealous to miss such an oppty.

See it to believe. So if you invested $100 in microsoft in year1986, you are sitting on 41,700 today. If it is Cisco in year 1990 then you are richer by 32,000. If it is Infosys, then you are a HNWI or UHNWI (High Net-Worth Individual or Ultra HNWI) and you can find banks queuing up infront of your home. Because that's > 16 million.

By the way all this numbers are without dividends :)

• Microsoft

• Cisco Systems

• Infosys 

Skype like application from Facebook ???

Source: eweek / strand consultants

Here is an article referring to Facebook and I must admit the article is well written. But I am not quite optimistic about Facebook VoIP making a big entry in to the VoIP market and becoming 'skype killer'.

Main reason: Privacy..

Skype is a simple VoIP application and most importantly it doesn't offer more than your Skype ID, and optionally your total number of contacts, date of birth. That's it. It doesn't share where were you born or your photographs or how is your friends.

It is simply an extension of your mobile / desk phone and offers an excellent way to reach your family, friends (vice-versa). On the other hand Facebook is a platform which enables you to share the information on your personal activities.

I've seen many people printing their Skype ID on their business cards and in their websites/blogs. But so far I've not seen them doing the same with Facebook. Why ?

If FB thinks that by simply putting a VoIP copy cat application and can get a billion dollars then I'm sure Google, Microsoft, Yahoo & even Cisco (with it's latest WebEx) can share a lesson or two to Facebook :)

Sydney Public Transport

I am in Sydney for a couple of weeks and tried to take the public transport. I don't know why, but whenever I try other public transports my love towards our public transport back home started to go up.

Be it the cleanliness (I know we are not doing great these days), or convenience, or comfort we are way better.  The monthly pass or weekly pass is so damn mixed up you'd end up paying more for this by mixing up the zone system.

The journey time is bad too. Not because of the distance but because of frequency, speed and traffic jams. By the way, understand the Metro bus is 'high frequency' which runs average 15-20 min during peak hours :)

Some tips from my experience is to buy the two way ticket which is relatively cheap. Or they have a pass for tourists for a day with unlimited rides. Get it if you are sure to roam around the city. For longer periods, the myzone ticket is a good bet.

Of course I see the best part of Sydney public transport which is you can get a seat most of the times :)

Singapore - Town Council Charges / S&CC comparison

Curious to find out on our TC charges I did this excel. Seems almost all the TC charges are quite close with little differences between Punggol (supposedly high) vs Hougang (supposedly low). I've this impression while speaking to friends but seems like not really accurate.

By the way, if there is/are any errors let me know. I did a quick capture from TC websites and there may be some copy & paste errors.

Sankata Nasana Ganesha Stotram

ప్రణమ్య శిరసా దేవమ్ గౌరీపుత్రం వినాయకమ్
భక్తావాసం స్మరేన్నిత్యం ఆయు:కామార్థ సిద్ధయే

ప్రధమం వక్రతుండం చ ఏకదంతం ద్వితీయకమ్
తృతీయం క్రిష్ణపిoగాక్షం గజవక్త్రం చతుర్ధకమ్

లంబోదరం పంచమం చ షష్ఠం వికటమేవచ
సప్తమం విఘ్నరాజం చ ధూమ్రవర్ణం తధాష్టమం

నవమం ఫాలచంద్రo చ దశమం తు వినాయకం
ఏకాదశం గణపతిం ద్వాదశం తు గజాననం

ద్వాదశైతాని నామని త్రిసంధ్యం య: పఠేన్నర:
న చ విఘ్నభయం తస్య సర్వసిద్ధికారకం ప్రభో

విద్యార్ధి లభతే విద్యాం ధనార్దీ లభతే ధనం
పుత్రార్థీ లభతే పుత్రాన్ మోక్షార్థీ లభతే గతం

జపేత్ గణపతిస్తోత్రం షడ్భిర్మాసై: ఫలం లభేత్
సంవత్సరేణ సిద్ధిం చ లభతే నాత్ర సంశయ:

అష్టోభ్యో భ్రహ్మణేభ్యశ్చ లిఖిత్వా య: సమర్పయేత్
తస్య విద్వా భవేత్ సర్వా గణేశస్య ప్రసాదత:

==ఇతి శ్రీ నారద పురాణే సంకటనాశన  గణేశ స్తోత్రం సంపూర్ణమ్==

Unresponsive iPhone home button - Easy software fix if you are lucky.

Ok. First the disclaimer, hardware faults can't be solved. So if the button is damaged due to moisture or drop then you may have to make a trip to SingTel or Apple store.

My iPhone-4 started to behave weird, and this is when I started calling SingTel. As usual they wasted half an hour of my time before telling me that this must be routed to iPhone store. While planning the trip (to find the address) I searched and found this excellent trip from osxdaily.

http://osxdaily.com/2011/12/22/iphone-home-button-not-working-or-unresponsive-fix

Details are in the website. Trust me, you'd be surprised :) Atlteast to me, it helped me to avoid (or postpone) a trip to apple store.

Price difference between delivery menu vs dining @ Anjappar

Here is the attached pic showing the price difference between home delivery menu vs in store dining. In this case this is Anjappar. I am not a great fan of it due to the 'service' and the attitude.
You can see how these restaurants can deliver "free of charge" to your home. Simply hide the cost in food items and jack up the price by ~ 30%

1x Vegetable Biryani TAKEAWAY- SGD 6.50
1x Vegetable Biryani DELIVERY -  SGD 8.50

That's a 30% difference and if you are ordering for a family, you may even make a cab trip to near by location. ;)

One thing is the prices displayed are exclusive of GST. This is of an interest to me as this is supposed to be 'illegal'.

Update: About my wording 'illegal', realized that for Food items exclusion of GST is allowed and IRAS gives waiver if service charge is applicable. But I haven't seen service charges with Indian restaurants so the price should be inclusive of GST.

I still prefer Brindas for Indian food delivery.
http://srichakrak.blogspot.sg/2012/05/indian-food-delivery-in-singapore.html

India - Higher education faculty pay, one of the highest in world

Source: insidehighered

As you can see the faculty of higher ed paid approx $6,070 / month in PPP $ in India. Still why only we've a bunch of IIT & IIM as worldclass institutes ?

I bet our primary school teachers (Public sector) are paid outrageously high salaries in comparison with their world wide peers and the value they offer. 

IT Staff on Bench - Why can't INFY, Wipro take them to do something worthwhile?

Source: Economictimes

One would agree that IT firms need to have a good strategy on managing bench, but at the same time what I am surprised is why can't companies like Infosys could use the resources for some creative purposes. Instead of paying them 50% or 70% salaries and let them sit in cafes why can't they be assigned a task?

I am sure they hired the best of minds and these minds can be used to innovate the next Facebook or iTunes. Even they can be used for some out of box ideas to solve the problems faced by common man. Be it the solar power, or simple native language conversion or for that matter even try to 'digitize' the old paper based knowledge..

Roku Player - No more FREE Indian Channels, No more FREE News Channels

Recently the Yupp TV & other free channels were found missing from ROKU channel store. Seems like ROKU is simply ignoring the content part. When they lost the Youtube access I thought that's the end of ROKU.

They survived almost an year thanks to the loyal customer base. But now I believe with Apple TV & Google Nexus coming soon in to the markets at similar price points, ROKU will be facing a tough battle. Unless they start doing some modifications to their content offering I see this is the end for ROKU.

Today most of the LED TV's are coming with smart tv capabilities and they do not need an external player to simply connect to youtube/streaming content. Roku need to do much more. be it entertainment or games or whatever. Prefer not to through this cute little box but I guess no choice if they don't improve their offering