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Consulting Majors Towers Perrin and Watson Wyatt to Merge

In an interesting development in the consulting industry, top management consulting firms Towers Perrin (my employer) & Watson Wyatt have decided to merge in an all-stock deal valued at $3.5 billion. The combined entity will be called Towers Watson & Co. with over $3 billion in annual revenues and about 14000 employees. The transaction is expected to be completed in the 4th quarter of this year.

iPhone Apps I Cannot Live Without

iLove iPhone – despite some of its limitations. It is not only the gorgeous interface and the reliable performance I like, but it’s also about the apps which add functionality to the device. The App Store has been a great succeess, with over 25000 apps and over 800 million downloads since its launch in July 2008.

I have about 80 apps on my iPhone. While I use many of these applications on-and-off, there are some which I use daily. These are apps that I love and I would dump the iPhone if these apps were not there!

So, here’s my list:

ReQall: This is my favorite app for setting reminders and getting things done. ReQall trumps in providing a dead-simple way of adding reminders from the phone – voice. It lets you add reminders by voice by recording a message within the app and ReQall transcribes it for you. It sends back reminders in the form of emails and SMS. They even have some great pro features now. And, did I forget to mention that they have a great “Memory Jog” feature.
Evernote: Again, a top-notch app. It is a simple note-taking application which takes notes in the form of text, voice and pictures. The great things is that is supports optical character recognition. So, you can search for text right inside the pictures! The package is complete with all the various access options that Evernote provides – it is easily accessible from the web, desktop app and the iPhone app – all in sync. There are many note-taking apps, but none like evernote.
Nimbuzz: If you are not my grandpa’s grandpa, I would assume you use IM (Gtalk, Yahoo, MSN etc.). Nimbuzz provides an extremely comprehensive IM suite with support for all major IM services, VoIP over wifi and “dial-up VoIP over 3G”.
Shozu: If you are a shutterbug like me, you have the need to click and post. Shozu releases the pictures on the phone and can upload to multiple websites like Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, Twitpic, Smugmug, Photobucket etc.
Facebook: Needless to explain!
Twitterfon: If you are a twit-addict and don’t want to dole out a couple of dollars for a paid app, this is the one for you. Great interface. Great functionality. It supports retweeting, opening of links, follow / unfollow, twitter search, viewing of trending topics and searching of twitter users by location. It also has a great little bookmarklet for the iPhone Safari browser which lets you post links from Safari.
Brightkite: I use this as an “add-on” twitter app. I use this to share interesting places, restaurants, bars or simply my location with my friends. It detects your location and can post a link to your twitter / facebook about your location on a map, with details about the place you are at.
Bloomberg: This is my news app of choice. Despite the fact that I love Google Reader for the iPhone, Bloomberg does a great job with business news. You can customize the news section and also take a look at leading indices, stocks, bonds, currencies etc. The app is slick and fast.
Wikiamo: This simple app lets me search and browse through Wikipedia in a format that’s friendly for the iPhone screen. A must-have.
Zyb Sync: If you are always worried about losing your contacts in case your phone is lost or gets “bricked”, this is the app for you. Zyb is a great app that can backup your contacts on the Zyb website. You can even edit your contacts on their website and sync back. Zyb was bought over by Vodafone and should be a very reliable service.

A lot of these would change with the launch of iPhone OS 3.0 and its various features. I am waiting patiently for a brand new lineup of apps this summer. What are your current favorite iPhone apps?

2 comments March 26, 2009

Grim News from Singapore

Fresh off the press in Singapore, Today has an article with some really grim predictions from economists from Credit Suisse. They forecast an astounding 300000 job losses in 2009 in the island nation. Interestingly, about 200000 of these job cuts are going to be for foreigners, leading even to the total population shrinking by 3.3%. Some top-of-the-mind thoughts on the impact of such an event:

Many of these jobs are held by well-paid expats, who also help, in their own way, consumer spending. With this outflux of people, consumer spending is also likely to take a hit, further fuelling the downturn.
This does not portray Singapore’s policy of attracting and retaining foreign talent. The “make hay while the sun shines” syndrome is not great for building an image as a top-talent destination.
Worst case – even if this happens, can companies look at a “CRM” kind of a solution to manage talent? I think this will be especially relevant for roles which are highly specialized and/or senior level. A nice starting point to think about this can be found at this SystematicHR blog post.

2 comments January 21, 2009

Gibberish Talk: Mumbai Burns and So Does My Soul

I have not stayed in Mumbai during my life. I have been there quite a few times for work and family commitments. In fact, I have never stayed in any one city for more than 7 years. I have lived parts of my life in Kolkata, Nepal, Ranikhet, Noida, New Delhi, Bangalore and now, Singapore. A rolling stone gathers no moss, one would say, and I have no special affinity for any one city. Sure. But, beyond cities, its the sheer tragedy that humanity faces is what hurts me the most. Whether it is Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Kabul, Baghdad or Jaipur that is attacked, ultimately it all leads to tragic losses for so many of us. Mumbai, surely, has a resilient soul. It will bounce back, but sometimes, I just feel that we are just “indifferent”, not resilient. Whatever I have seen in the last few years has affected me a lot. I see a dramatic change in the way my mind has been conditioned, re-conditioned and again re-conditioned over the years. Thankfully, neither I nor any of my loved ones were directly affected in the chaos that has affected so many innocent people in so many places. But, time and again, I feel that my soul has been shot at and torn apart by grenades and bombs. Time and again, I feel an absolute sense of insecurity and disgust.

Mumbai Burns

Today, I live in Singapore, which has a reputation for its safety record. I know that I have nothing to worry about. But, sometimes, it all makes me feel very guilty. Guilty about not being there with my countrymen, guilty about not able to do anything about the problem, guilty about being a mere bystander on the sidelines. But, at the same time, I feel very proud of the people in the thick of it – our security forces personnel who risk everything for us, brave mediamen who bring all the stories to the masses, common men and women who are there to lend a helping hand to people they barely know and a brave new generation of bloggers, photographers, twitterers and other social media activists. Hats off to them!

The scars are deep. Profound. Sometimes I wonder, on my next trip back home, will I need to stay holed up in the safe environs of my house? Will I be able to go out, without fear, for a nature walk in Bangalore or to my favourite eating places in Kolkata or just to see my dad in his clinic in Nepal? I want to and I will. Perhaps, it is easy to bomb humans than it is to mutilate the human spirit. They simply cannot. No matter how many of us they shoot down, they can’t take away our small joys. Our future. Our hopes. Our dreams. For a better, brighter and safer tomorrow.

8 comments November 28, 2008

Coming up: Videos on Flickr

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/16/video-coming-to-flickr-soon-really/

This is really exciting. I have been hoping for Video integration on Flickr for such a long time now. I always felt that Flickr could race further ahead of Picasa by integrating Videos and use its existing (or improved) social features for it. Now, the only thing that is pending from Flickr is a slick desktop client which tops Picasa desktop.

The only worry: Hope they do not increase prices for their “Pro” accounts!

Add comment March 17, 2008