Rajat Garg's blog

Its sad to see how once a very prosperous country now has 40% (400 million) of the population under poverty line (less than <$1 per day of earnings)

ATT1974789

At least according to Google :-)

Who-will-become-the-president

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I am writing this post as I had done this research myself few months back and it was harder for me to find this information. Hope this is helpful and saves some time in doing all the research.

Goal: Acquire international domains to establish and protect our brand.

Building domain portfolio:

First step in this process is to find a domain registrar that can help us in acquiring domains. These companies can be evaluated based on many factors:

1. Cost of domains
2. International domain coverage
3. Local registration support, knowledge of local trademark registration and various other requirements.
4. Infrastructure to take care of international domain transfer and renewal
5. Brand protection services and domain retrieval services. 

Based on above, domain registration companies can be classified as follows (as on mid September - 2007):

Good solution: To acquire 58 domains

1. Buy all domains with no restriction from cheapest providers or directly:
1. 13 ccTLDs that have no restriction and local requirements should be bought through Godaddy & enom. Cost ~ $600
2. Buy domains with restrictions through cheaper registrar:
1. 16 ccTLDs with restriction that are available through registries like AsiaRegistry & EuroDNS. Cost ~ $1500.
2. 25 ccTLDs with restriction that are only available through 101Domain or MarkMoniker. Cost ~ $3500.

Total expense = $5K per year. (1^st year ~ 8.5K as some ccTLDs require minimum of 2 year registration)

Also, in terms of prioritizing - 25 international domains that have 98% of online traffic (only cc TLDs  listed in no particular order):

1. .com.ar
2. .ca
3. .dk
4. .com.mx
5. .com.tw
6. .at
7. .cc
8. .fr
9. .nl
10. .co.uk
11. .com.au
12. .ch
13. .it
14. .no
15. .org.uk
16. .be
17. .cn
18. .jp
19. .co.nz
20. .us
21. .com.br
22. .de
23. .co.kr
24. .tv
25. .ws
    

I have set up few pages tonight for the website. It will be 180 degree different from real one but its a start. Idea is to collect useful articles and other useful information on the website and get some page rankings.

Check out http://www.pilotoutlook.com - a resource on aviation, aircraft, pilots, training, instructor and flying clubs

Alright, you know you get excited when you talk about flying, look at planes taking off and landing and always wondered what goes on in the electrifying cockpits ....

Now, you want to find out about how you can learn flying. How much will it cost? What do you need to do to flying a Jet?

Types of licenses and approximate costs:

1. Private pilot - $6-8K
2. Instrument pilot - $10K
3. Commercial pilot - $12K

Along the way, you will need additional ratings in complex, high performance, high altitude and multi-engine planes. Above approximate costs include these ratings.

Requirements for Private pilot license:

FAA requirements:

Age - 17+ years old
Education requirements - Able to read, write, and speak English fluently. 
Flying time requirement - Minimum of 40 hours of flight training. This must include: Conversely, if you fly twice a week, it will probably take fewer total hours to get your license.  This training must include a minimum of:

20 hours of dual instruction including:
3 hours of cross-country to airports more than 50 miles away
3 hours of instruments
3 hours of night including a 100 nautical mile round trip and 10 night takeoffs and landings
3 hours of  instruction within 60 days prior to your practical test

10 hours of solo flight including:
5 hours of cross-country  including a 150 nautical mile round trip
3 takeoffs and landing at an airfield with a control tower

Examinations:

1. Private pilot knowledge test with a score of 70% or better. There are 60 multiple choice questions.

2. Practical flight test with an FAA-designated examiner. Nationwide, the pass rate is about 90% for students on their first try! The exam contents is defined by the FAA's Practical Test Standard (PTS), and it includes both an oral exam and a flight test.

Average time to get private pilot license in US: 55 hrs
Recommended way to train: Fly 2 hrs / week in the start. This is the optimal way of training to get your license in a cost and time effective way.


Reference:
1. Look at FAA's databank of about 700 questions for examination questions.
2. Check out online version of the PTS for Practical flight test.

Coming soon ...http://www.pilotoutlook.com
Next ... Getting your instruments ...

I have started my work with SecondSpace et al after over 2 years with Amazon.com Associate program. Since, the company is in stealth mode, I can't speak much on what they do. However, I am pretty excited about the industry as well as the people in the team.

In 2 years of Amazon, I worked on very exciting projects like aStore, datafeeds etc. I loved aStore where we were able to identify a market niche and go after it. However, the whole thing about determining the market opportunity and coming up with the strategy was pretty ridiculous. At the same time, aStore was ridiculously successful too silencing lot of critics of this product. Another thing was that we were able to launch the product internationally on the date that was committed on first day of starting the project. It was due to a very energetic and passionate team.

Anyway, now that I am in a new role, I am looking forward to be a part of something very exciting.

Rajat Garg

Also coming up: Pilot related services - http://www.pilotoutlook.com

I am always very eager in understanding what's going on and how I can improve the system. The outcome is tens of business plans that are sitting on my hard drive. The only problem is my laziness to follow it through. Although, not to discredit myself completely, some of them were shelved when I realized that optimistic opportunity is few hundred thousand dollars (which is not bad given my current net worth, but what the hell).

So, recently I decided that I am going to follow through on some of the good ideas.

First one was trading account and doing active day trading. So, after reading 2 books - Mastering the Trade (from John Carter), How to make money in Stocks (from William O 'Neil) and approximately hundred articles on various strategies, I dived in.

From January till March, my highest peak was 20%+ equity and lowest was -40% equity. I absolutely loved it even though I have stopped doing it now.

I learnt about the markets and now, I understand what market is doing and what various terms mean. It gives an interesting perspective on how to do a top down evaluation of companies as well as get some high level idea on what moves the market, what are the forces behind the move.

It was a great learning experience as well as a realization, that its not for me.

The reason it is not suited for amateur trader like me:

1. It requires that you have a great risk appetite, which I don't have.
2. Active trading is all about speculation, no value creation. If you are successful, you cam make a whole lot of money but still you are not creating any value for anyone around you.
3. I had to spend 2-3 hr in morning and 1 hr in evening. With a day job, it can become daunting.
4. You are competing with professional traders (it is a zero sum game), who do it day after day and make a living off it. By simply sitting behind a computer and learning few gimmicks, you can't make money in long term. You need to go to the *well* and understand how parties interact with each other. What demand generates what kind of tick movement, pit noise etc and vice versa. If you don't understand various dynamics, you WILL loose money. Even though I was spending 3-4 hr/day, it requires much more to save equity from being eaten away by professionals.
5. I hate sitting behind computer for 10 hrs a day. I want to go out and meet customers, understand whats going on and why its going on. Thats why, I moved from engineering to product management and I don't see it becoming my full time profession.
6. I am interested in investing my energy in a long term venture where it creates a lot of value. Trading was started as a side thing and spending 4 hrs a day along with a day job does not leave any time for either doing 110% on job front or pursuing any other passion. To make it clear, I couldn't go for flying at all for 2 month period during trading. If you have a girl friend or wife, things can turn south really fast too.

Although, I quit at the lowest point of equity levels, I was still happy with the very expensive 2 month crash course. Why? Two reasons -

1. I moved off my butt and did something instead of another plan sitting on my hard drive
2. I have started flying again :-)

Take care,

Rajat Garg

Instructions on starting fire without a match  -

http://www.fieldandstream.com/fieldstream/outdoorskills/photogallery/article/0,13355,1546757,00.htm

Checkout planes junk yard (graveyard) at -

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=35.058034,-118.168001&ie=UTF8&z=15&ll=35.063602,-118.158474&spn=0.017037,0.042915&t=k&om=1

Check out http://www.msdewey.com/

Interesting animated search engine tool :-)