This Week I Learned - Week #83

This Week I Learned:

- A Google Spreadsheet can be used as a JSON backend

- The creator of the open-source Chrome extension, Postman, which is a great tool for testing REST calls,  is Abhinav Asthana of Bangalore, India

Google fields over 100-billion search queries every month, a service which generated most of its $55 billion (Rs 3.3 lakh crore) revenue in 2013. Google Voice Search now supports Hindi.

The Wordament game serves the same word puzzle on Android, Windows Phone, Windows 8. I was under the impression that a different puzzle is served for each platform.

The Indian Railways has 11 different types of quotas for different categories. If the intent of Indian Railways is to make profits like private airlines with the new quota category "Premium Tatkal Quota" and dynamic pricing of tickets, I wonder why this entity shouldn't be privatized and run more professionally.

- Foreign institutional inflows (into India), including debt and equity, are at just under $37 billion so far in 2014. This is the second highest annual inflow on record, barring 2010, when it was $39 billion. Out of the $37 billion, $22.6 billion has come into the debt markets, while the remaining $14 billion-odd has flown into equities. Most of the money has come into government bonds, where institutional investor limits have been nearly exhausted. (The limit for foreign institutional investments in government debt is $30 billion but $5 billion is reserved for long-term investors like sovereign funds.) - Mint

From a story in The Economist about the Indian business climate -
 ~ More than 40% of long-haul journeys from India go via a non-Indian hub, often in the Gulf.
 ~ Indian planes are usually serviced in Dubai, Malaysia and Singapore.
 ~ Dabur, which makes herbal soaps, oils and creams, runs its international arm from Dubai.
 ~ Dodsal, which spans oil exploration in Africa to Pizza Huts in Hyderabad, is based in the emirate.
 ~ Sri Lanka has testy relations with India, but Colombo is a vital port. About 30% of containers bound for India go via intermediate hubs fed by small vessels, either because big shipping lines do not want to deal with India’s customs regime or because their ships are too big for the country’s ports. About half of this trans-shipment business happens in Colombo.
 ~ The largest hub for Indian trade is probably Singapore.
 ~ The global exposure to India of Citigroup and Standard Chartered, the two foreign banks busiest in India, is 1.9 times the size of their regulated Indian bank subsidiaries.
 ~ Cyrus Mistry, the boss of Tata Sons, India’s biggest firm, has an Irish passport.
 ~ The boss of Jet Airways, Naresh Goyal, lives in London.

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