I tweet from 5 different twitter accounts, and to help reduce the confusion and allow people to figure out which ones to follow, here is the "Ultimate Guide to Navin Kabra's Twitter Accounts" (soon to be made into a major motion picture):
@ngkabra: This account is used for general interesting information from around the web. Often it is about psychology, economy, funny stuff, India, etc. Most non-techies should follow this one. @_navin: This is for technology tweets. Programming. Computer Science. Python. Maths and Statistics. Only geeks may venture here. @ngkx: This is for general conversation. Restaurants I liked. What my kids are up to. Silly remarks. IM replacement. Only likely to be interesting for people who know me personally (and sometimes not interesting to even them!) @punetech: This is the "official" twitter handle of http://punetech.com. All about technology in Pune – and nothing else. All techies in Pune are required by law to follow this. @punetechlive: This is for live-tweeting tech events in Pune. During an event we often tweet 20 to 50 times in an hour, and that is too much stuff to foist on to regular readers of @punetech who might not be interested in the event. Live-tweeting of any event from this account is _always_ preceded with a tweet on the main @punetech account announcing that live-tweeting is going to commence. So, particularly discerning readers can start following @punetechlive just for events that they find interesting and unfollow when they are not interested in that event. Why? Why all this segregation and complexity? Basically, because I believe that twittering is not about what I want to say – rather it is about what my followers want to hear. I doubt that the seven hundred people who follow @ngkabra for interesting articles around the web, e.g. the people in Atlanta, or Portland, would really be interested my review of the @grubshup restaurant on Canal Road, Pune. Nor do the doctors and accountants following me have any interest in python debugging techniques. And, the evidence appears to show that this segregation is working well. A quick analysis of the followers of these different accounts shows that the overlap between the various accounts is rather low, indicating that people are selectively following only some of my accounts. But maybe I should find out the list of people following all my accounts and give them a prize of some sort!Category: Uncategorized
India’s biotech industry emerging as world innovator, collaborator, competitor
A Canadian research paper submitted a few days back is reporting that India’s biotech industry is all set to emerge as a major global player buiding on cost efficiencies, innovation, and collaboration according to this interesting article.
The research points out standard stuff you would expect: for example, how Shantha Biotechnics of Hyderabad uses innovative and efficient manufacturing processes to produce a Hep-B vaccine at $0.50. This used to cost $15 earlier.
But it also points out other aspects that are more interesting. For example, the existence Indian “contract research organizations” which do specific research for and under the guidance of major western companies. Or that the Serum Institute of India in Pune supplies products to 138 different countries and claims to immunize half of the world’s children against several diseases.
But the paper also points out the danger that the Indian companies will focus too much on the lucrative western markets and neglect local illnesses and issues for which there is a pressing need to develop effective drugs locally. Historically, Indian companies have been the principal providers of vaccines and medicines for the major local killers like malaria and tuberculosis. And if these companies start producing Viagra, who will cater to the TB patients?
Read full article.