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Lakshmi Mittal stays at #4 on the list with a mere $45 billion as Europe’s richest resident. Mukesh Ambani ($43 Billion), Anil Ambani ($42 Billion) and KP Singh ($30 Billion) round out the Indians in top 20 at positions 5, 6 and 8. The number of billionaires from India are increasing, a very promising sign.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook at age 23 is one of the youngset entrants to the billionaire list. He has been “valued” at approximately $1.5 billion. I wonder what happens if and when Facebook goes public (or bought over?).

Source: Forbes Magazine

On the overall process: All players were divided into categories. These categories were created depending on the base price for every player. The players were bought in an auction style when the appropriate category was introduced. Nowhere will you see players being traded like vegetables. However, the players are making a lot of money so i dont think they would mind being tossed around like that.

Onwards to the good stuff, the teams.

Team Jaipur. Owned by: Emerging Media

World class spinner in Shane Warne: $450k. A player who has played only 20-20 game, Yusuf Pathan: $475k and Mohd. Kaif for $675k, stupid. Other players you selected are not too great, nothing that sizzles. They screwed up and underspent, BCCI required them to spend atleast 3.3million and they spent only 2.9million. Pink bungling idiots.

Current Count: 4 Batsmen, 2 Bowlers, 1 Allrounder, 1 Wicketkeeper.
5 International, 3 Locals
Money Spent: 2.925 Million

Team Chennai aka Chennai Super Kings. Owned by: India Cements.

They paid 1.5 million for MS Dhoni which is a serious commitment making him the most expensive player in the IPL. However Matthew Hayden an awesome top order player who can turn the tide of game in the opening overs went for a paltry $375k, a lucky steal! Comparitively, Glenn McGrath the last player sold went for for $375k. Chennai got a really good deal and it is reflected on the size of their roster. They managed to get Muralitharan and Mike Hussey who went surprisingly late. The other players are quite good as they are 20-20 specialists and have fared well in T20 games.

Current Count: 4 Batsmen, 2 Bowlers, 3 Allrounders 2 Wicketkeepers.
7 International, 4 Locals
Money Spent: 5.95 Million

Team Mumbai. Owned by: Reliance Industries

Mumbai played the IPL draft quite differently. They didn’t get too many players, instead they spent a lot of money on few players. Sachin, Jayasuriya, Harbhajan, Uthappa all went over 800k. They have a total of 8 players like Jaipur but have spent 1 million dollars more. This includes the 1.125 Million they have to pay to Sachin for being their icon player. I am not sure what Mumbai’s logic was in this draft.

Current Count: 3 Batsmen, 3 Bowlers, 2 Allrounders, no wicketkeepers
5 International, 3 Local
Money Spent: 3.85 Million

Team Bangalore aka Royal Challengers owned by: Kingfisher

The name for Bangalore’s team is “Royal Challengers” – named after the whisky “Royal Challenge”, sucky name.

They seemed the more stingy bunch of the IPL which is surprising considering they are owned by Vijay Mallya. Their most expensive player was Kallis (who didn’t play the T20 world cup) at $975k. The next most expensive player was Anil Kumble and Australian spinner Cameron White at 500k. Both players are big “ifs” in the T20 format. Anil Kumble hasn’t played well in ODIs and he hasn’t played a T20 at all. However they have some good bowlers in Zaheer Khan, Dale Steyn and Nathan Bracken.

Current Count: 3 Batsmen, 5 Bowlers, 1 Allrounder, 1 Wicketkeeper
6 International, 4 Local
Money Spent: 4.99 Million

Team Hyderabad owned by: Deccan Chronicle

Their key player VVS Laxman gave up his Icon status for the “sake of the team” and forfeited extra money. Icon players 15% more than the top player and Laxman gave up that. Currently he gets $375k, if he was the icon player he would have gotten 15% more than Andrew Symonds’ 1.35 million. Stupid move VVS. The IPL is a money making franchise not your state Ranji team.

Laxman giving up the icon status means Hyderabad sports an awesome team. They have Adam Gilchrist, Andrew Symonds, Herschelle Gibbs, Shahid Afridi (T20 Man of the Series) and Scott Styris who are all T20 experts and master blasters. They also managed to sneak in India’s best T20 bowler – RP Singh.

Current Count: 4 Batsmen, 3 Bowlers, 3 Allrounders 1 Wicketkeeper
8 International, 3 Local
Money Spent: 5.89 Million

Team Mohali owned by: Preity Zinta and Wadia Group

They were one of they teams that have two players from the same city. Yuvraj Singh and Harbhajan Singh. Yuvraj was the icon player for Mohali. They sprung for a lot of bowlers and have an excellent bowling lineup. Brett Lee, Sreesanth and Irfan Pathan – all excellent in the T20 format. The other choices are not bad. Mohali has also confirmed that Tom Moody will be their coach

Current Count: 4 Batsmen, 4 Bowlers, 1 Allrounder, 1 Wicketkeeper
5 International, 5 Local
Money Spent: 5.68 Million

Team Kolkata owned by: Shah Rukh Khan led Red Chillies Entertainment

This is a very interesting team for several reasons. The icon player is recently dumped Sourav Ganguly who has a massive impact on Kolkata crowds. If he plays well people are going to shout again for his inclusion in the ODI team. Second, his rival captain Ricky Ponting is in the team as well. Third, Ponting’s arch nemesis of late Ishant Sharma (the second most expensive Indian player) has also been roped in. Fourth and the icing on the cake is the ex-Aussie coach John Buchanan. The net sessions and the dressing room is going to have a lot of friction.

The team itself is a very well balanced team although they are a little heavy on the batting side. They managed to grab David Hussey who has been the star of the Australian regional T20s. Umar Gul was an excellent bowler in the T20 world cup and is a steal at $150k. Shoaib Akhtar will be making a comeback after his recent debacles and Tatenda Taibu the lone Zimbabwean and the cheapest player is in the team as well.

Current Count: 3 Batsmen, 5 Bowlers, 1 Allrounder, 2 Wicketkeepers
8 International, 3 Local
Money Spent: 6.07 Million

Team Delhi aka Delhi Daredevils owned by GMR Holdings

This is a mixed bag team. They have two Delhi local players in Sehwag and Gambhir which should bring the crowds. They managed to grab Glenn McGrath as the last player at $375k which is not bad. Paying 675k for Maoj Tiwary, wtf. Dinesh Karthik went for $525k which should give him some motivation to show the board what he can do. They have a lot of all-rounders/batsmen who can bowl; Sehwag, Vettori, Shoaib Malik, Farveez Maharoof, Dilshan. Delhi has already annouced their coach: Victoria’s Greg Shipperd. The third aussie coach in IPL.

Current Count: 5 Batsmen, 3 Bowlers, 2 Allrounders, 1 Wicketkeeper
7 International, 4 Local
Money Spent: 5.68 Million

That’s been one intensive day with its ups(Chennai/Hyderabad) and downs(Jaipur). The draft has surprised quite a few people with some low key players going for a lot of money and other famed players going for nothing. Can’t wait to see the other local players that these IPL teams signup.

People are buying things using credit cards, paying off the minimum monthly and pushing towards next month where they buy even more. This mentality has gone overboard lately. Your credit line is not your savings. Having a bigger credit line just means that you are digging a bigger hole for yourself. In these current times there are a lot of temptations Big Screen TVs, Flashy Phones, Fancy card and this has been reflected in the numbers. Here are some statistics:

• U.S households will receive approximately 5.3 billion offers for new credit cards in 2007.
• In October 2007, credit card debt that was at least 30 days late totaled $17.6 billion
• The current total credit card debt is about 800 Billion

That’s how bad the situation is.

If you have the entire $$ for that HDTV in the bank, then buy it, otherwise don’t. Don’t buy shit with money that you don’t have. However slowly Americans are learning: “We don’t use our credit cards anymore,” said Lisa Merhaut, a professional at a telecommunications company who lives in Leesburg, Va., and whose family last year ran up credit card debt it could not handle.

Today, Ms. Merhaut, 44, manages her money the way her father did. Despite a household income reaching six figures, she uses cash for every purchase. “What we have is what we have,” Ms. Merhaut said. “We have to rely on the money that we’re bringing in.”

What Lisa Merhaut does is absolutely correct, spend money only after it comes in and only if you have enough in the bank to cover your expenses. People don’t like handling wads of cash, but it is much safer than getting in debt. If you don’t like handling cash get a debit card (otherwise known as a check card) it is just like using cash, the money is just taken out of your bank account. College students, this is perfect for you.

For more sob stories read this article from the New York Times.

My favorite quote on the whole DRM Issue:

“DRM ‘manages access’ in the same way that jail ‘manages freedom.’ “

~ Anon.

It seems an underwater cable got cut, (for the third time in 2 years) and internet has taken a big hit . Connection is as slow as 56kbps, while i’m on a 512k DSL connection. During peak hours you can’t access POP/IMAP accounts anywhere and all my SSH sessions timeout. With no SSH I can’t even use other servers to read email, IRC etc.  There’s no MSN/Gmail/AIM access as well. This problem has caused troubles in the entire Middle East region and India as well. There’s been a 50-60% drop in bandwidth. Communications have taken a large hit in the country.

The surprising part in this day and age is that one underwater cable getting cut has such a massive effect, you have effectively cut off the entire middle east region and a country as big as India. With no alternative route the bandwidth is shot to hell. I wish they would reinforce such cables because such incidents even three times in 2 years is too much in this high tech world.

Edit: GigaOm has an excellent article written by Alistair Croll which describes the current situation quite well.

Lets take a look here’s my friend wheel. You can see at the bottom left my friends know each other quite well because the area is quite thick with interconnected green lines. I’ve got about 113 total friends.

Here’s another friend wheel of someone who has a lot of friends. My sister has 400+ friends. The friends on the wheel are more interconnected than my wheel showing that her friends circle is more close knit (benefits of being born into the college facebook generation ?).

Nice representation isn’t it? How would the wheel look like for a person like Robert Scoble who has 4400 friends ? An interesting thought.

The Pownce team consists of Digg’s Kevin Rose & Daniel Burka, Leah Culver and Shawn Allen. Interestingly they have developed Pownce on Django  a python based framework. I haven’t seen any large applications in Django and it would be interesting to see how it scales. Twitter was developed in Ruby on Rails and it ran into some growing pains.

I have about 10 Pownce invites left, leave a comment here if you need one.