Blog of kaiyen

Google close to buying social news site Digg: report

I didn’t come up with the title myself - one of the Digg respondents to the thread did.

This would be an interesting acquisition since the article I posted earlier, from readwriteweb, about how news is delivered and read on the web, downplayed the ability of these user-generated, centralized sites quite a bit. I wonder if this is the best way for Google to go. Maybe they should go a different route.

Maybe they should figure out how to monetize some of their products first…

The title is a vague link to the movie “Maybe He’s Just Not Into You” for which I’ve seen a few previews lately.

I keep getting these notifications on facebook about how person X has sent me a “super hug” or a “whassup dog” or a “vampire invitation.”  These all look like they’d be fun - the ability to send random shout-outs to people or to engage in a vampire vs. ninja war.

But each and every invitation requires that I install yet another facebook application.  And there are tons of them.  There are probably 10 vampire vs. ninja applications if not more.  I just can’t keep up, and I now have a policy of rejecting any request to install an application I don’t already have.

I wonder if my friends are noticing and are offended, ever…I hope not.

This is the latest of my reviews on the professors I’ve had while an MBA student at Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business. There are lots of sites out there that provide feedback and rates - ratemyprofessor is the most notable. The SantaClaraMBA Yahoo group also has a big database of comments and lots of additional information in its message archive. But only here can I write as much as I want

I review professors from a variety of perspectives.  First, I explain the context(s) under which I took the class.  Time of year, time of day, etc.  Then I talk about the quality of the class and the professor, and finally about the professor as a person.  After all, we are trying to learn about our interactions with people, so knowing that side of a teacher is critical, too.  So these would be interactions outside the classroom, etc.

I’m also reviewing them in reverse order of when I had them for class.  This is mostly so that I am reviewing those whom I remember the best sooner.  This also means that at some point I might skip a few professors I took a year ago or just stop outright out of concern that I will not be able to provide a proper review (the downside of these longer reviews is that I do, after all, have a responsibility to do a good job at them).  I am now back two quarters from my current term.

The facts

I had Professor Chacko for Finance 455 in Winter Quarter, 2008.  It was the 7:05 section (he also taught a 5:30 section the same days) on, I think, Mondays and Wednesdays.  The course is technically titled “Investments” but Professor Chacko outright stated that regardless of what the school decided to call the course he would have taught the same material in the same manner (more on the “material” in a bit, as it is indeed flexible enough to be used in several different style classes).  In fact, he taught a course in the spring that was a “696 experimental” course that was basically just more of the same.

FNCE 455 is the second of two required courses in the discipline.  The first, 451, which I took the previous quarter, is about evaluating cost of capital, net present value analysis, etc.  455 is much more practical in many ways, examining specific cases on topics such as portfolio construction, payoff diagrams, and other financial analysis from the perspectives of a fund manager or a personal investor.

455 is an entirely case-based course.  We covered about 7 or 8 cases through the quarter, from books written by Chacko (and others) while he was at Harvard Business School.  We would do a write-up before each case, really as motivation to read it (I don’t think he actually read or graded them), and then discuss the case during class.  Work was generally done individually.  The final exam was also a case write-up, but much more in-depth and obviously done without a class discussion.

I took 455 when I did both because I needed it as a requirement and because I had heard good things about Chacko.  So my goals were relatively even (as compared to “taking it just because it was available” or something like that).

Them’s the facts. Now read on for the review.

Read the rest of this entry »

First off, let me be up-front.  When it comes to current news, especially business and finance-related, I’m usually a day late and a dollar short.  My grasp on the financial world is not what one would expect of someone in an MBA program (I get it, but could never cut it as an analyst), and by the time I really understand what is going on I’m well behind everyone else.  So I generally stay out of those topic areas.

But this is an interesting one, because it’s psychological as much as it is financial, in my opinion.

The short “facts” are that Washington Mutual Bank or WaMu, as they are now officially known, has been suffering for a while.  A few articles in Business Week, this one as old as April, and again in reference to yesterday’s 35% drop in stock price amid rumors of financial problems just hint at what is going on.  The latter article also hints at why WaMu might not be as bad off as people thought yesterday.

Clearly, I think, the psychological frailty and fragility of the American mindset re: banks is factoring into things.  People think that WaMu isn’t doing as well, and the stocks plumet in the wake of all this news on IndyMac (believe it or not, I couldn’t find a straight article on it, as there has been so much extra press, but this is close), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (BW op-ed/blog articles I and II).  WaMu says they have a bunch of extra capital, and stocks begin to rebound.

What I’m wondering, though, is whether, should WaMu collapse, the Fed will actually step in or not.  A while back, I was reading in Newsweek about how while there are certain financial institutions that the Fed absolutely cannot allow to collapse since they are so crucial to the American economy (Citigroup, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase among them), WaMu was in the “probably not” list.  It’s just not as big of an institution.

However, there are other factors here.  The first is the bailout of Bair Stearns and the collapse of IndyMac.  Then, there is the trouble with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  The thing here with all of these groups is that they are, in my opinon, somewhat removed from the American public.  Does Average American Joe really know what Stearns does?  Or who IndyMac is and why they were so vulnerable due to being such a huge mortgage lender?  Or how exactlyl Fannie & Freddie work, as publicly-traded yet federally sponsored quasi-mortgage lenders (they don’t actually lend - they buy mortgages from banks so that those banks have the money to lend more)?  I question it.  Reading the articles in print papers (or online versions thereof) clearly indicate that writers are having trouble putting all this stuff in “layman’s” terms.

But WaMu.  You see a branch on the corner.  I know of…maybe 10 within 5-7 miles of me.  They have a logo that the public knows.  People carry WaMu ATM cards in their wallets.  I have a friend that has worked at WaMu - from teller to loan officer to assistant manager to manager to regional director - for the last nine years.

So, here’s my question.  Even if WaMu is not critical to the American economy and is “expendable” in the way that IndyMac was, is there a psychological difference since people think of WaMu as a “neighborhood” bank?

I wonder.

GMAT Scandal Has MBA Students Sweating

Whoa - this is scary. With all the test prep material out there - Kaplan, Princeton Review, and even mba.com, this is pretty nuts. I’m glad I took my GMAT a while ago and didn’t use this prep course…

23 Flowergirls…mission accomplished! Thanks! - Photo.net Wedding and social event photography Forum

I think my next major photographic goal, for weddings, is to improve the group shots I do after the ceremony. Admittedly, I don’t always have a lot of time so they tend to be as they are, but I need to have more fun. Check out what Casey did with a whopping 23 flower girls. Wow.

How Do You approach the Procession ? - Photo.net Wedding and social event photography Forum

Photographing the processional is one of the hardest things to do, especially as a solo shooter. There are some great examples in here, though, of what can be done if you have a second person who can do things a bit more creatively…

How Reddit is Flirting With The Future of Social News - ReadWriteWeb

I don’t know the editorial system at ReadWriteWeb, but it’s pretty darn good. This is an excellent article examining the different mechanisms out there for “browsing” the web. By browsing, I mean in some kind of controlled manner, kind of like how one would browse a print newspaper. It is easy to think that a print paper is old and dead. And it probably is. But the method, the experience, of browsing through it, the framework and sense that is inherent in the process, is quite compelling when one thinks about how to get news on the web.

Of course, going to traditional newspaper web sites isn’t going to get to the cutting edge of stuff. It doesn’t get to some kind of social, web-based news browsing system. This article on RRW is great because it not only examines what’s out there - digg, mixx, StumbleUpon and reddit, but even does a business-model analysis on StumbleUpon. This is some solid analysis here.

This is the fourth of my reviews on the professors I’ve had while an MBA student at Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business. There are lots of sites out there that provide feedback and rates - ratemyprofessor is the most notable. The SantaClaraMBA Yahoo group also has a big database of comments and lots of additional information in its message archive. But only here can I write as much as I want

I review professors from a variety of perspectives.  First, I explain the context(s) under which I took the class.  Time of year, time of day, etc.  Then I talk about the quality of the class and the professor, and finally about the professor as a person.  After all, we are trying to learn about our interactions with people, so knowing that side of a teacher is critical, too.  So these would be interactions outside the classroom, etc.

The facts

I took Professor Shaver’s class in Winter Quarter, 2008.  It was the 5:30 section, Tuesday and Thursdays, I think.  Already Winter seems like a long ways away.  The course, Management 512, is titled the “Social Psychology of Leadership” but is best described generically as a leadership course.  Professor Shavers does go over the material out there, but it’s not research-based.  The book introduces some of the research concepts out there, but essentially Shavers challenges each student on how to handle certain situations.  She poses problems and asks us what to do.  The course is pretty loose, mechanically.  A bit of reading, some questionnaires, and each group has to do a presentation on a particular case.  There is also a final individual paper.  But the course is otherwise discussion-based.

My motivation for taking the course was two-fold - one practical, the other programmatic.  First, it was an requirement for the leadership concentration at the school.  So I intended to take it at some point.  Second, it was available that quarter, plain and simple.  So I took it.  However, many of the students in the class are taking it just as they are finishing up their time at Leavey, and you’ll often have students taking Capstone (the final class in the program) sitting next to you.  It’s actually a nice mix of students, though, and really breaks one free from the first year or so of requirements and core courses.

Them’s the facts. Now read on for the review.

Read the rest of this entry »

In a previous post about my “strategic” plan through my MBA program, deciding what classes to take, etc, I was debating my overall approach.  The question was whether to take the more challenging professors so that I’d ostensibly (important word) learn more and get more out of those classes, or to try and take some easier ones to keep my load more level.  The opinion among my fellow classmates is pretty split, to be honest.

At the time, my inclination was to take the harder classes, so that I’d get the most out of things.  Since then, however, I have learned a few things.

First, just because a professor is “interesting” and “challenging” doesn’t mean he or she is good.  One professor I had supposed really made you think more, but he also didn’t cover any of the course material.  He also challenged students to think critically and voice their opinions.  However, that just devolved into actual arguments with him over semantics and meaning.  It was ridiculous.  All of this would have been fine, except that we were still quizzed on the course material, I seemed to be the only person taking the reading seriously, and I wanted to go over the course material.  So a professor that is “interesting” isn’t good enough.

Second, some professors that are tenured - and this goes for any school/discipline/etc - are just riding out the wave.  They lose track of why they are teaching.  And sometimes they lose sight of how to structure a course.  There is one professor, in economics, who, depending on whom you ask, is either really challenging and makes you learn a lot at a fast pace or is just mean and difficult for the heck of it.  While I would love to take the class twice - once with someone else and once with him - to find out which of those two is his actual approach, I have no interest (nor much respect) in taking a class where the professor is difficult just for the heck of it.  So, again, need to read between the lines.

Finally, there are some disciplines in which I am simply weak.  I am not good at Finance.  The complexities of portfolio construction, cost of capital - that’s just hard for me.  I get the basic tools but the harder ones just fly by me and I have to work really hard.  Does that mean I take the easy professors?  Actually, no.  But I do take the ones where it’s a bit more open and loosely-structured of a course, where I can absorb information without being overloaded with assignments.

Fortunately, for Econ, I found a professor that was a good middle ground between one who is known for being relatively easy and the one who is extremely difficult.  And in general, I still do seek professors who will challenge me.  But I am now a lot more careful about what “challenge” means and think about how I learn, how I want to interact with teachers, etc.

My reviews, over time, will illustrate the lessons I’ve learned in choosing professors.