so-did-i

Coincidence

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 07:30:00 +0000

Generating a 1024 bit prime number was not easy now and was not easy then when I was in college. But it had to be solved as a part of my thesis work. Being one of the few guys without his own computer, I used to spend late hours all alone at my department lab. On one such night my glance fell on to the clock which showed 00:00 hrs, to the monitor on my right and my heart skipped a few beats. I saw something being typed endlessly on the screen line after line in black on a white background. That probably was the most scariest incident in my life.
A few hours before on the same day, as was the habit those days I had my dinner at 7:00pm and set to down to watch a movie in Vicky's room (or was it Pinku's). It was "The Shining" filed under Horror on IMDB with an 8.5 rating. This was a Stanley Kubrick direction, adapted from a Stephen King novel by the same name. In one particular scene Wendy, the protagonists wife discovers to her horror that her husband who was supposed to be writing a novel, does no such thing. He had been typing endlessly on reams of papers in different fonts only one thing, and it also happened to be the same thing I saw that night on the monitor next to me.

All Work and No Play makes Jack a Dull Boy.

It scared the shit out of me for a few moments. It took me a little time to collect my thoughts, I don't remember what happened next but I can never forget what I went through in those few seconds.

Call it coincidence, call it chance, call it accident or what ever you want, such incidents both pleasant and not so pleasant have been pretty common all my life. I am listing down a few over here:

I read the book Apocalypse Watch and the evening I finished reading it, I saw the movie on one of the TV channels.
I had a very good friend in school in class 6th. I haven't spoken to him for over 18years. And when I spoke with him yesterday, we realize there are so many people in common that we both know, and we never chanced to cross our paths.
One fine day I decide firmly that to run a Marathon, and two days later I met Gul who happened to start Greater Bangalore Hash and played a significant role in me running my first full Marathon.
I met Pavani Diwanji in my short stint at Nirmalabs. She talked about her startup experience and how important the co-founder was. Four years later in Bangalore on a different forum I met Freeman Murray who talked about the same topic. And no points for guessing they were co-founders of Kendara which was acquired by Excite@Home.

These are but just a few random events from my life and there are many more such events which leave me pondering:

Was it just a coincidence or Was it always meant to be so.

Do let me know of any such instances in your life.

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How and When does my daughter know me?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 07:30:00 +0000

A lot happened in my long break from this space. Just before last Christmas Me and Harsha (my wife) were blessed with a baby girl. Of course the kid is sweet, cute, adorable, princess and a host of other adjectives and superlatives. This is post is not about what she is or what I feel she is, this post is about my journey to understand when and how she knows me? This post is mostly to bring out various questions throbbing my mind.

I have never had the chance of observing a new born from close quarters. Any kid that I started observing were over 6 months of age from the time I started interacting with them. So, it is a huge natural setup for me to observe my kid from the time she was born. (I definitely miss being with her daily, more on this in a later post). From the time I first heard her over the phone, one question I have is, How does my daughter know me? I mean how the hell does she know what I am to her?

A child knows her mother through sense of smell, touch and later through sound. There is a strong history of relationship (over 36 weeks) she builds with the mother even before she is out in the world. And it is not surprising that she knows her mother from the word go.The only possible interaction they have with the father is aural when they are still in the womb. Given this, I seriously doubt if the father occupies any space in baby's mind except possibly as a foreign object with which she regularly has an olfactory, tactile, and aural association.

My new born behaves more or less like consequence of Newtons first law.

She will not cry if I am holding her given she was not crying before I took her.
She will continue to cry even after holding her, if she was crying before I took her.
A third observation which is true most of the time, the duration for which she stops crying when I hold her and comfort her seems to be inversely proportional to the distance her mother is at that instant (Given she was crying earlier for non hungry reasons, now God knows what they are!).

If the above behavior is exclusive for me, that would give me a clue that she recognizes me, but it is the same for her grand mother or great grand mother or grand father and to a very small extent a new comer (someone who is holding her for the first time).

Another thing that perplexes me that her attention holds a candle to a rank lifeless object "a ceiling fan", which gives damn to her and not to us. No complaints though.

Coming back to the question I started with, How and When does my daughter know me?

Why is the answer to this question important to me? As of now, it gives me an understanding into my mind (mind you not her mind). I am of the school of thought which believes that Nature has built great capabilities into us which we deliberately and structurally limit and destroy as we grow. It is a great joy and astronomical learning to observe how the new born finds its way in the world. On thinking further the question that jumped out of mind without any thought has a lot more philosophical bearings.

Those of you who are parents, fortunate enough to observe lot of children, How and When did the child know you?

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Bangalore, Leadership and Human Capital

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 08:01:00 +0000

Human capital and leadership are intertwined and our session at SLP Bangalore on Leadership and Human Capital had amazing leaders to share their story and guide us along the way.

In the morning session we had Freeman Murray, Harold D'souza, Jagadish Kini, andVaibhav Tewari. Each of the guests walked us through their experiences of building teams. Some of the key ideas from each of the speakers were:

Vaibhav introduced us to the analogy between a building and a company. The founders form the foundation, the core team-the pillars, the first team-the first floor and so on. One other thing that came across in his talk and stressed by all other guests is the importance of values. Balancing conflicts in the teams, regular communication with advisers/investors/employees were couple of points from Freeman.

Harold introduced us to a "Must", presenting oneself. He talked on importance of being clear about compensation, maintaining a clean image of the company etc. Jagadish Kini talked about 5C's Character, Consistence, Collaboration, Commitment and Communication. He elaborated on each of the 'C's and tied it back to how they all are necessary for companies success.

The following panel discussion brought out many points on:

How to figure out the value system of the person you are hiring?
What kind of questions to put while interviewing to get the best possible person on board.

Post lunch we had Ramanand Mundukur, Muthukrishnan Chinnasamy, Vivek Madappa. Ramanand talked about the three important relationships in a start-up and how to manage them: Employess, Co Founders and Self. Muthukrishnan stressed on unrelenting focus on execution, customer focus and commitment. Vive Madappa was stimulative, his talk was hard hitting and provoked us to think out of the comfort zones. The following statement from his slide stands out:

Your Worth = Demand for what you do * Your ability to do it * the difficulty of replacing it.

We had an extended discussion on various aspects of managing people and self. Over the course of the discussions there were some books referred which I mention here:

Twenty two immutable laws of Marketing: Al Ries, Jack Trout

Blue Ocean Strategy: Chan Kim, Renee Mouborgne

Think and Grow Rich: Napolean Hill

Extraordinary Leadership: Robin Sharma

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SLP Bangalore Class 3

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 18:43:00 +0000

It was Product Development and Customer Day at SLP Bangalore. We met on Saturday 13th of November for what was a very productive day.

"You are not your User", was the gist of the talk by Shyam Narayan from dig designstudio. Shyam walked us through his experience of designing for various customers, he discussed the approach they typically follow at their design studio while designing products. The four stages of Absorb,Ideate,Prototype and Validate set the tone for the rest of the day.

Other key highlights from his talk were:

Check Assumptions
Don't jump for the first solution, try to think of different possible solutions (then come back choose the first ;) ).
Identify at least 20 issues and 5 solutions in your product.
Be an idiot while gathering feedback from users.
Hear what was unsaid, users typically don't say negative things about the product.

Following his talk we had a panel discussion with Shyam (dig Design Studio) and Naveen Krishnaswamy (redbus) moderated by Gautam (SLP Bangalore Fellow). It was a very interesting and insightful discussion on various aspects of Product Development. There were many useful points made by the panelists and other SLP Fellows during the course of the discussion.

We then had a SLP Bangalore fellow John (Duron) present the product they are selling in India. It was interesting to here his story on how, driven by passion to solve the energy problems, he and his batch mates at college started Duron. Theirs is classic story of identifying a pain point and trying to solve it. One of the books that John recommended that everybody should read was Steven Blank's The Four Steps to Ephiphany.

Following John was another SLP Bangalore Fellow Deb(Sparsha). Higher education in India for a majority is learning by rote. Deb and his team set out to remedy this with an innovative approach to teaching, learning and evaluating. If you are in academia recommend you to have a look at their offerings.

We had Mr.Navneeth Bhushan (Crafitti Consulting) speak on "Customer Value The Unknown Fundamental". He started with challenging the existing methods of valuing customer relationship as defined by various tool vendors and went on to introduce us to Customer Value framework, the concept value net etc. A major take away was in today's world "Competitive advantage is collaboration". He also introduced us to the six different truth filters one encounters and why "science" as truth filter is more important to entrepreneurs than others.

It was turn for another panel discussion with Naveneeth, Saumil Majumdar(EduSports), Gaurav (Chakpak) moderated by SLP Bangalore Fellow Milind Naik. The discussion revolved around sales and the strategy associated. Some of the points which I recollect were:

Difficult customers tell you what your product sucks at.
Customers value longevity, build thought leadership.
In the initial stages of the company you need people who can sell concept. Once the product gains traction you need people who can sell the product. Both are different skill sets.
Big customers typically try to squeeze, however keep in mind, the overall value they give your business and not just the transactional value of the deal.

We had an amazing product demo by Narendra (Pebble Talk). Pebble Talk is an awesome awesome enterprise collaboration tool. There was discussion on various concerns that Narendra wanted the fellows to address, and being the ever helping folks that we are, all of us pitched in with a few suggestions and contacts. For your information Pebble Talk was one of the 2010 Red Herring 100 Asia, they also won the India's most promising startup at Proto.in.

At the end of the long day we broke for drinks. Gaurav(Chakpak), was kind enough to drop me and Amit back home and we had some amazing discussion surrounding Mobiles and Indian market.

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What am I doing?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 18:16:00 +0000

In my last post I mentioned that I am working on developing a mobile analytics platform. Here in this post I will give a you a peek into what prompted me to come up with this idea, what my vision for this platform is. Some of you might feel this goes over your head, please do not worry, I will be dissecting all the aspects of this project and my journey in the days to come. The purpose of this post is to capture my thought process and give you a snapshot of how I arrived at working on this idea and why I believe I am one of the guys right for something like this.

I was first introduced to Web Analytics over five years ago, when I started reading Avinash Kaushik's blog and setup Google Analytics on this blog. I was never serious about this new field, but it always fascinated me on how to use all this data for helping the site make more money. This continued on and off for a few years, when I used to drop by Avinash's blog, see if any content is relevant to my blog.

In due course of time, I was involved in a project for a client where I was responsible for developing Algorithms to automatically manage keyword portfolio. Owing to the demands of the project I also developed a page tagging solution as a part of the aforementioned project. This triggered anew my interest in the space of web analytics. Around the same time I came across 6th sense one of the best amalgamation of technologies seen in recent times. By this time smart phones with touch screens became the norm.

It did not take much to figure out that the future of Analytics is not just web analytics but the analytics of connected devices. I wanted to call it Device Analytics, but this term was already coined with a different meaning. What I figured out was, the future will no longer be restricted to "Monitor's" as was the norm then. The future belongs to Touch and the analytics belong to this medium of interaction.

The interaction model in the world of touch is very different from what we are used to with monitor-mouse, laptop-track pad/mouse combinations. Now I noticed that most of the web-analytics vendors (Google Analytics, Omniture, Webtrends et al.) are pushing there own web-analytics solutions onto smart phones/mobiles (the first in line of touch devices). Nothing wrong if smart phones are going to be the only devices we need to worry about, but that is not going to be the case.

This is the problem I am trying to solve. To start off my solution will be only for mobile devices (touch phones to be more specific). However, my vision is to analyse all the connected touch devices. A grand vision for sure, but as Victor Hugo said "Dream no small dreams. They have no power to stir the souls of men".
This blog will be the place where I will unravel the steps to make this dream real.

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jQuery Checkbox with Themeroller Support

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 05:03:00 +0000

I am working on a mobile analytics platform, will talk about this more in the weeks to come. This platform involves a UI which resembles a typical dashboard ala. Google Analytics, Rescuetime etc. Now I am not so good at design, but am taking this opportunity to hone my css and presentation skills.

A few months back, I came across this beautiful component from jQuery called the jQuery UI Themeroller. I was super impressed by their ability to generate images for what ever theme I create and let me download the theme.

For the above project of mine, one of the design goals is to make a complete jQuery UI Themeroller ready template. The idea is one should be able to customize the whole template with just the Themeroller. This work is still in progress, and I will write about it once I am done.

I needed to style the checkboxes/radiobuttons and they also had to be Themeroller compatibile. Google threw some awesome jQuery Plugins to this effect, but the best that fit in the bill was jQuery UI Checkbox plugin on jQuery Plugins site. It did exactly what I wanted, but I discovered that it did not support jQuery UI 1.8.5 the latest version of jQuery UI.

I had two options:

Write my own plugin
Fix the plugin.

I said, let me fix it. Thanks to Jermey Lea (the original author), who had a very good style of coding, it was a breeze to make the modification. Also, this helped me to learn the jQuery widget architecture, something I kept postponing for long time.

I uploaded the source to Google Code. You can find the source here. I don't have any plans to add features to this. However, if you need any do let me know, I will try to add them. Please give it a try and let me know of any bugs, will fix them.

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One week with Android

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 15:38:00 +0000

Last week I got a new Android based phone. It is a Samsung Galaxy 3 - i5801. It was very exciting to finally lay hands on an Android based phone. The key features of the phone are:

Android V2.1 (Eclair)
ThinkFree Office Mobile Support
Intutive Touchwiz 3.0 Interface
Multi Codec Support
Fast GPS Triangulation With Layar Reality Browser
AllShare DLNA Support For Easy Sharing Of Media Amongst Your PC-TV-Mobile
Supports Swype Input For Faster Typing

This is my first brush with Android phone, I had previous experience with iOS( iPod Touch), Nokia Music express, and some Samsung based touch phone.

Build & Form factor: The phone is just a few mm thicker than my regular 1000Rs reliance phone. It is very comfortable to hold and play around. The screen size is too small compared to an the higher end phones, especially if you have used one, otherwise it is fine. The plastic casing at the back is decent and the "with Google" logo adds to sheen. The front has a steel look. Overall the build looks delicate.

Touch Screen: It's a joy to use the touch screen. The sensitivity is good. All gestures associated with a touch phone are without glitch which one typically notices in low cost phones. The screen brightness is good enough even in sunlight (though haven't tested it under mid noon sun). The screen resolution is good and all the icons, text are rendered without any pix-elation. Only complaint I have with the screen is, it tends to get dirty with all the finger print marks.

UX: Being used to iOS, the User experience was not as smooth. Android (or at least the TouchViz skin from Samsung) needs some amount of getting used to. Especially the hardware menu and back buttons are most confusing. However, I have seen many friends who really like it (or hate the lack of it in iPhone).

The phone though has a 567MHz processor, cannot take up some intensive applications like Skype, when executed it typically hangs/ becomes un-responsive for a few seconds. Even accessing Youtube videos seemed to hang the phone. I haven't noticed any other issues till now but can safely predict the phone cannot handle task intensive applications.

The integration with Google Mail, Maps is very good and works out of the box. I especially love the maps search and what with Bus directions being available for Bangalore, it is simply superb. The screen size here is a bit of a limitation, I would have loved to have a larger screen.

I haven't used the phone much, but the battery seems to drain very fast compared to the phones I used till now. Something to keep in mind if this is going to be your primary phone.

Connectivity: The wireless and mobile connectivity work like a charm. Though I should say it took me some figuring out to know how to get the ip address. The GPS is also good, I recommend using the RunKeeper application for all those who are interested in fitness. It is one of the best apps that showcases good uses of GPS.

Text Input: The phone is preloaded with Swype, which is a very fast and easy way to input on a touch phone. This is very useful in a device of this size as the keys are too closely spaced especially in the portrait mode. I wish Swype is available other brands.

Development: I did some basic development and find it to be as simple as working on the emulator. Interfacing the device is a breeze. I still could not figure out how to access the host machines "localhost".

That is one week with Android. I will keep posting more on my experiences/experiments with this phone. Let me know what you think?

The following are the Specifications (reproduced from flipkart.com)

Specifications of Samsung Galaxy3 i5801 (Black)

GENERAL

General Form: Candy Bar

SIZE

Dimensions: 113.5 X 55 X 12.55 Mm

DISPLAY

Type: WVGA

Resolution: 240 X 400 Pixels

Color: 16M

Size: 3.2 Inch

CAMERA

Primary Camera: 3.2 MP (With Auto Focus)

Video Recording: Yes (320x240 @15 Fps)

BATTERY

Type: Li-Ion, 1,500 MAh

Talk Time: 15.20 Hrs2G ; 7.5 Hrs3G (Maximum)

StandBy Time: 625 Hrs2G ; 483 Hrs3G (Maximum)

AUDIO & VIDEO

Music Player: MP3/AAC/AAC+/EAAC+/WMA/AMR/MIDI/SP- MIDI Formats+ 3.5 Mm Audio Jack

Ringtone Formats: Yes(Vibration, MP3 Ringtones)

Speaker: Yes

Radio: Yes

Video Player: DivX, XviD, MPEG4, H.263, H.264, WMV Formats

DATA & CONNECTIVITY

GPRS: Yes

EDGE: Yes

3G: Yes

Wlan: Yes

Bluetooth: Yes (V2.1 With A2DP)

USB: Yes

WAP: Yes

INPUT

Touch Screen: Yes

PLATFORM

OS: Android V2.1 (Eclair)

CPU: Qualcomm (QSC6270), 667 MHz

Operating Frequency: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 ; HSDPA 900/2100

Java: Yes

GSM/CDMA/Dual Sim/Triple Sim: GSM

MEMORY

Internal Memory: 130MB

Cards Slot: Up To 32 GB

OTHER FEATURES

Games: Yes

GPS: Yes, With A-GPS Support

Browser: Android Browser

Messaging: SMS, MMS, Email, Instant Messaging

Miscellaneous: ThinkFree Office Mobile, YouTube And Facebook Apps, Write And Go Support For Fast Copy/Paste Of Texts, Social Hub Preloaded, Google Mobile Services.

WARRANTY

1 Year Samsung India Warranty For The Phone And 6 Months Warranty For Accessories

IN THE BOX

Sales Package: 1 Main Set, 1 Battery, 1 Travel Adapter, 1 Stereo Headset, 1 Data Cable, 2 CD, 1 Leather Case, I Micro SD Card(2GB)

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Food for Thought

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 00:30:00 +0000

A Green Rising: More than indifferent monsoons, this scarcity of water has been caused by over exploitation of groundwater and lack of water conservation measures at the micro level. The answer to this monumental challenge that stares at an otherwise resurgent India comes from Gujarat. The state shows the way in the form of a unique government-people partnership model for water conservation. There results are here to see.

Why is India Poor? What India is today is to a large extent the result of policy choices made by its leaders — especially post India’s independence. Prior to 1947, India’s fortunes were dictated by the British. The British were in India for — not to put too fine a point on it — looting the place. That is totally understandable. Every institution they created was directed towards the final goal of enriching themselves. Colonizers don’t go about colonizing foreign lands out of a sense of altruism. They do it for the moolah.

Cities and Ambition Great cities attract ambitious people. You can sense it when you walk around one. In a hundred subtle ways, the city sends you a message: you could do more; you should try harder

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Words - Picture

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 23:30:00 +0000

What ever culture we come from, which ever geography we hail from, all of us have to agree that a Words can never be substitute to a picture. As the saying goes "A Picture is worth a thousand words". We come across hundreds of such examples every day, every moment of our lives. Pictures play a role in business too. A good example is Ikea which has all it's user manuals in visuals.

Instructions- Simple and Clear

Click on Read More for a few more of them.

When was the last time you saw such a precise and concise menu?

Now one of my favorites

Sources: Yorkblog, shmula, semitough,designboom,marketing.fm

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Folding Three Pin Plug

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 06:32:00 +0000

I have always cared about good design. Also introduced you to some excellent designs in the blog.One of the challenges of a good design is to innovate/improve the existing without effecting existing usage. Not always do we come across designs which fall under this category, and when we do see such a design, we should not lose the opportunity to appreciate that.
You have here the new "The New British Standard, Slimmed Down Three-Pin Plug".

Check this link for more details and a couple of videos.
Sources: A wonder slimmed down three pin plug
HatTip: Leo (aka. Startonomics)

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Alternative to Personal Motor Vehicles

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 16:30:00 +0000

Some time back, I took the resolution "Bus to Work". It was not a hugely successful experiment more for lack of will. It used to take me just about 40min in comfort of an AC Volvo. However, I was too lazy/ mis managed which made it difficult.

I am again considering actively to move away from motor vehicles (mo-bike, car etc). Have been discussing with friends and colleagues on alternates. The summary of discussions is:

Bus
Cycle
Cycle/Bus

I present here my case for / against each in my context. At the end of this exercise, I hope to get some clarity on my course of action.

Bus: My previous office was very well connected. I used to have a lot of choice in the route I could take. Most of the times I would just take a Volvo while going and spend all the time reading. On return any bus would do, and I would be happy looking through the window, or taking a quick nap. It used to take me 40min by bus and about 25min by bike (a worthy trade off). All this changed when I moved to my current company.
There is no direct bus, nor the connecting routes have a Volvo. My main gripe though is that the Buses take a circuitous route, this increases the distance by more than 3km and this translates to a minimum of 20 minutes more than what it would take. This puts the total time of commute onside to about 80min (35-40min by bike). Though I have not ruled out my bus, given the current situation it is not very suited for daily commute.

Cycle: Though haven't cycled since college, this looks like a very good option. On average I should take about an hour one way. I also figured some cycling routes which will keep me away from busy road for most part.Sounds better as a sustainable/implementable option. Though actual realities will come to the fore once I start doing this.

Cycle/Bus: How do you like a fold-able cycle on which you do to the nearest bus terminal, take a bus to a place couple of km from the office and then again cycle the last mile. This is sounds like a good plan. The issue is the cost of a fold-able bike, which at this point is very expensive.

What choice am I left with? Still exploring. Will update you all as I try the options.

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2 steps to Email hosting on your own domain.

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 14:30:00 +0000

Read this post on Email Etiquette for Entrepreneurs on Pluggd.in last week. The first point was Do Not Use Gmail/Yahoo (personal) for official purpose.
This got me thinking how simple it is (2 steps) to have a mail id which reads like this: <mymail><@mydomain>

A lot of people (including many techies) are not aware how simple and inexpensive it is to have a domain and corresponding mail. Here are the two steps:

Register a domain.
Setup Google Apps Standard Edition

Register a domain: In this age and time, I am sure you already have a domain. If you don't please go ahead and register one now.(you can always read this post later). Some sites where you can register your domain are: godaddy.com, whiz.in and a lot many.(Drop a comment/mail if you need some help). The domain will not cost you about 500 INR an year.

Setup Google Apps Standard Edition: Google offers Gmail/Google Documents/ Google Calendar and a lot of it's services as Google Apps for your domain. The standard edition of Google Apps is free for 50users. If you are still using gmail for your official mails, this number is not limiting. And if you need more then 50 users, I am sure you are doing well to switch to a paid offering. The setup process is very simple and intuitive.

That is all and you are set to go with email on your own domain. Now it is a different matter altogether for you to comply to the rest of issues pointed out in that post on email etiquette.

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Before and After

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 18:13:00 +0000

What do you interpret? My interpretation can be seen as caption.

Left: Before Marriage; Right: After Marriage! What do you say?

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Some Incredible Technology Quotes

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 02:47:00 +0000

The previous post was capricious and it was unlike me to post something like that. I am in a typical writers block, where my once prolific keystrokes are reduced to mindless jabbering. To restore the lost nimbleness to my fingers and mind, I will be doing a few posts with no original content but sourced from other sources. These will not have any original contribution from me, but will definitely give some food for thought.

My favorites are the first three.

“We don't need you. You haven't even got through college.” -Hewlett Packard to Steve Jobs, who then founded Apple Computers.

“640K ought to be enough for anybody”- Bill Gates, Microsoft, 1981

“We don't like their sound.Groups of guitars are on the way out.” -Decca Executive, 1962, after turning down the Beatles

“I think there's a world market for maybe five computers.” - Thomas J. Watson, chairman of the board of IBM, 1970s

“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” -Ken Olson, president of Digital Equipment Corp. 1977

“You mean to drill into ground to try and find oil? You're crazy.” -Drillers rejecting Edwin L Drake's oil project, 1859

“There will never be a bigger plane built.” -A Boeing engineer, after the first flight of the 247 ( a twin engine plane that carried ten people)

“Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.” -Marechal Ferdinand, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

“Everything that can be invented has been invented.” -Charles H. Duell, Office of Patents, 1899

“This telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication.” -Western Union, memo, 1876

“No imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?” -1920s. David Sarnoff's associates, about investment in the radio.

“Who wants to hear actors talk? Silent movies are good enough!” -H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927

“Television may be theretically feasible, But commercially and financially it is an impossibility.” -Lee DeForest, inventor

Did Twitter buy Google?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 12 May 2010 07:21:00 +0000

Something totally unexpected happened today. We all know that Google loves to play around with their doodles. But what I saw today is too much even for me.!

Did Twitter buy Google?

What do you have to say?

Ok.. Ok.. I know it is silly even to think of it, but nevertheless fun.
If the above pic looks photoshoped check this. (Now you gotta believe me that my skills in image manipulation are limited to paint!! and not as good at creating all this stuff).

On All three Browsers with Code

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Abusing "Resource" in IT

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 13:37:00 +0000

Typical conversation snippets:

"I need more resources."
"I don't have any good resource."
"We are not getting any good resources these days."
"I want that resource with Hari and not the one with Bala."
"Just add more resources and deliver the project on time."

What are we referring to here by "resource"?

I wouldn't be surprised if you guess it to be a table/ chair/computer/sand/cement / steel/ PVC tube/ concrete mixer/bullock cart, or anything you can think of. Hardly do the above snippets give an indication that, "Resource" here refers to a Human Being. A live Human, who can think, who has an individuality, who has certain unique strengths and weakness, and who like you and me is similar and dissimilar to every other Human.

I digress here.

Did you have a professor who never took attendance, but his classes were always full?

Do you remember that grumpy fellow at the neighborhood store, which you avoided given a choice?

Did your father or mother or any elders in your family spoke of there colleagues or people with whom they work/ do business as a "Resource"?

You must have got a fair idea that people around you, be it be at your school, home, work place were given respect which all of us accord on our fellow human beings. At the same time those with the ability get that additional due for what they are. Well, welcome to the world of "IT", where Human's are nothing more than the table/chair/computer around you. Now,Why do I say this?

Please go read the first five lines of this post again. If that is kind of attitude with which we are treated in "IT" by the management, what more do you expect me to say. Can't these people use people/ person instead of God-Damn Resource. It really gets on my nerves, when I hear such stuff.

The usage of Resource for "Human Resources", can be attributed to the very definition of the word[Wikipedia]:

"A resource is any physical or virtual entity of limited availability, or anything used to help one earn a living."

Going by this definition qualifies Human's as resources in any industry they work. Wikipedia has this to say about resources, specifically Human Resources, our point of discussion in this post.

Human resources
Human beings are also considered to be resources because they have the ability to change raw materials into valuable resources. The term Human resources can also be defined as the skills, energies, talents, abilities and knowledge that are used for the production of goods or the rendering of services. While taking into account human beings as resources, the following things have to be kept in mind:
The size of the population

The capabilities of the individuals in that population.

I don't have any problem when the word resource is employed for humans at a scale and situation where it is applicable i.e. as mentioned in the snippet when considering human beings as resources we have to keep in mind "The Capabilities". Even when we replace tables/ chairs/ computers there is a lot of difference between a good one, an average one and a bad one. And we are talking about Humans here. The problem here is not just the usage of word in letter but the usage in spirit.

Now the next question is, why do people/ management behave the way they do? In my experience with various managers:

They truly believe that people are replaceable resources.

They are in this industry for too long and got accustomed to this terminology (both in word and spirit).

They don't have an opinion for or against the usage and so go with the mass practice.

They do feel (not strongly) against the usage of this word, but go with the masses.

With lot of good managers(very few) it is the last point,for most of the them it is the 2nd and 3rd. There are very few in the 1st category and they are the ones who cause the most damage.

What am I going to do about this?

This issue of Resource has been troubling me for close to two years now. I talked to many of my friends, colleagues, peers about this, but never raised a voice against this nor gave a thought to what I will do?

I am not going to change the world. I am going to make a small change to myself. It is not an easy task, but let me take a small step forward with my first post of the new decade.Through this post, I want to take a stand that, I will not budge to the pressures of using the term Resource:

With any one whom I work with.

With my team or any others who report to me or will report to me.

In any conversation involving people and their work.

How do you solve this problem?

If you really feel this is a problem take stand now. There is an excellent book called The Mythical Man Month, go please read it to get a perspective on people management in projects. Get a perspective on the difference between a person with good ability and one without.

It takes good amount of work to truly understand and implement the spirit of good people management,except for a minuscule percent, the others tend to take the easier route and that's where the problem lies.

I am taking a step in the right direction are YOU?

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Beyond Regular Search

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:26:00 +0000

Search, Google are indispensable part of our lives. A majority of my online time goes with search on Google(80%) and a few others (Bing, Wikipedia, Twitter etc). Little over a decade, in the past no body paid any attention to search and today search stands at the center of our world. Many have said on inadequacy of today's search and I will not venture here into that aspect.

What I will discuss here is how search as it is done today does not meet my current requirements? and what are the things I am looking for as a searcher, as a content provider.

I am someone who can be termed reasonably net savvy user, who tries his best to keep abreast of the developments in the cyber world. I will here discuss some of my search behaviors.

Increasingly, I use search for navigation. If I have to find the url of cricinfo, I probably will do a google search than even bookmarking it.
Even the above is changing, thanks to chrome which pre-fetches the URL most of the times.
Another thing I notice is my search requirements are increasingly becoming more complex. I did not get a good lead even from Google for some of the search terms.
Most of my searches arise out of a complex issue at hand. The search engine fails to understand the intent of the problem. Now, I seriously don't expect today's search engines to excel here.
Sometimes I am pleasantly surprised at the results thrown out. This means the first result is one is that I want to look at!!
Love the new integrated results with images and videos.
But hate the maps in the results. At least here in India many times it's a distraction. I would go to Google Maps and search than want the crappy result in my regular search.
The above I understand is not Google's fault, but it is their problem to solve.
I tend to add wiki to every keyword if it remotely resembles a noun.
I would love to have a random search feature, just like in wikipedia. It will save me the trip to wikipedia and back.
I love tag clouds, anyone heard of Quintura.(wow I got this spelling correct without googling and image search here for google results in an unexpected result).
I would love to continue but, I am too lazy that's it. My 11 search use cases.

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Bus to Work

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 23:04:00 +0000

Finally!! After two weeks of endless postponements, I commuted by bus to work. The story goes like this.

I am big believer of walking to work. For the first two years of my professional life, I walked to work. However, somewhere during that period I had to accept the reality and get myself a bike. Initially for about an year, it was sparsely put to use on working days, I used it mostly on weekends to meet friends and my sister. Now, that was a good three years back.

Over the last three years, I got sucked into picking up my mobike for every and anything. That was when I met Srini, I knew him for about two years in Proteans, but it was only in the last few months that I got to work with him. He is one person who inspired me to commute by bus to work. He does it himself everyday. This inspired me to try the same.

This inspiration was not enough to pull me out of inertia, Sameer(though I never met him), his blog post about Indus (a nice gentleman, whom I met at BCB4) was the trigger. Ever since I was contemplating commuting by bus to work, it finally materialised on Tuesday last and man I am glad I made it.

I figured out that I kept postponing if it was a daily affair, that would be a huge step from the daily comfort. To overcome this mental block, I decided that I will do it twice a week to start with and then see how it goes. The next big question is which days?
Monday and Firday are out of question for obvious reasons. Two days in a row is ruled out as I don't fancy travelling by multiple buses, so that finally left me with Tuesday and Thursday.

Both these days, I took bus to office, and boy what a contrast it was! The first day was joyride, found a bus that left me at BTM just after reaching the bus stop. There was a private service which I took to the HSR BDA junction. Thursday was a two hour wait at the bus stop for the elusive Vajra bus direct to HSR BDA Junction.

There were a few observations I made over the past two trips.

There is nothing in Bangalore either online or otherwise which gives you an accurate description of routes on which the buses ply. I understand that the traffic is problem in Bangalore, but there is no excuse for not being able to get route information.
If you want to travel in comfort, better start before eight.
There are not many buses plying over very long distances(~20km). Most of the buses are medium distance(~10Km). If we have to go from one end of the city to the other, invariably we have to take at least 2-3 buses. Also, the connecting hubs are not many. Again no information available.

Now the Good.

You get to see many areas which you never noticed when on mobike.
You get to know precisely which area is which? I now know where difference between BTM Water Tank, Ragi Guda temple stop and so on. Earlier all of them were BTM!

I will keep writing more about my bus experience every week. Keep tuned in.

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The One To Be!!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 05:42:00 +0000

I am in the process of migrating all my mails from gmail to my google apps account. While going through all the mails, I came across this which I wrote in a fit of inspiration about three years back. It pains me that most of what I said still remains true in my context. But it also gives me the inspiration to face the drudgery and move ahead. As the saying goes everything happens for our own good. This simple piece gives me new hope. Here it goes:

"How do I say what I have seen in the last 24 yrs of my life? What do I envison for the next five - six decades of life left in me. What did I do at this age of mine, that many of the greats have done much before mine.

At the age of 21 when he died, Galois was a mathematical genius. Though probably never given the due recognition during his life time, his contributions to the world of mathematics, and as an extension to computer science is widley accepted. Another great Einstein came up with the photo electric effect when he was just 26 for which he won the Nobel Prize in 1921.It is always debated why he was never awarded a Nobel for Theory of Relativity.

Sachin achieved cult status in his teens, Roger Federer is the same age as me but reins the tennis world today. If I start listing I can go on and on, on how many people have made it big before they reached the age I have now reached.

Now when I see back, what I have acheieved, probably none is remotley even close to what these people have done. Does that mean I am nobody? No, I am someone to all those people to whom I am dear, to all those people who are dear to me. I am someone in the making to be the one to be!!."

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Super Charge Firebug with FireTools

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 19:11:00 +0000

Check out FireTools a must have collection of Firefox extensions to push you to a new level of developing web applications. These set of Firefox extensions work with Firebug and simplify your web application developing/debugging process.

10 Useful Firefox Extensions to Supercharge Firebug is a post by Jacob Gube. The list contained 10 Firefox extensions which go a long way in helping develop Web applications. I find myself evangelizing Firebug and some of the extensions like YSlow to a lot of folks at the company I work and else where. Now the above list got me thinking if there is any way I could just push all these extensions to people without them asking me for names/links. That was when another new feature introduced in Firefox came to my aid.

This new feature I am talking about is Firefox Add-On Collections. This lets you create a collection of Add-Ons and share it with the world. Here's my Ode to all those behind these wonderful tools: FireTools.

FireTools contains the following Firefox Add-Ons:

I am missing the Page Speed Add-On that Jacob mentioned. If any of you can help me add it to the collection it will be great. Please go ahead and add the collection to your favorites. I will keep it updated with the Firebug tools that we cannot do without.

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Harish Hande: The Man who lighter the street

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 05:08:00 +0000

The Man who Lighted the Street

Selco may not strike a chord to most of us, but to lakhs of households and business who brave the realities of life with a simple on the face, across Karnataka and Gujarat, , Selco is literally the light giver.It gives me immense pride to mention that the man behind this wonderful organization is an IIT KGP alumnus. Let me introduce you to Harish Hande(Energy,NH,1990), an entrepreneur, a leader, and a beautiful human being. He was recently awarded the Boldness in Business in award by the Financial Times Group.

Harish started off with his story after IIT, on how the concept of Selco emerged out of his Ph.D, on rural electrification.(Your’s truly was late to the meet and missed out the initial few minutes, so will continue from there).

By the time I reached the meet, Harish was talking about his experience with the street vendors and how Selco solved their problems. A typical street vendor needs 3-4 hrs of lighting in the evening. He spends about 15 INR/day for renting out a kerosene lamp. A solar charged light with which would last about 6hrs can be made available to him at about 10 INR/day. Surely that is a winner.

But the challenge has not yet started. How does Selco make an expensive solar equipment affordable for the street vendor, who has no fixed income, who does not fit on the loan radar of all the banks, who is deemed a high risk? The answer to these questions is the story of Harish, story of Selco.

Early on they realized that great technology which is not affordable is not useful. They had to understand the cash flows of the poor man. Harish provided a little insight into this. The poor don’t have the cash / financing abilities to make an upfront payment or guarantee a high monthly payments. But that does not mean they cannot pay, in fact they pay more for energy than we do. In the above example of the street vendor, he pays 450 INR/month!!.

How do you solve such problems? Understand the customer.

They sit with the customer, understand their problems both technical, social, financial, observe the conditions and come up with a solution. One outcome of this was the creation of entrepreneurs who provided solar technology at an affordable price and in the process profitable. In the street vendor case, one person provided the vendors with solar charged lights on a rental basis, and he was financed by micro finance institutions.

There were numerous other examples of midwives in Gujarat, the salt farmers in Gujarat, the flower plucker’s in Madurai, the street vendors of Bangalore, the farmers in Karantaka. Each of them a different challenge and each a different solution.

Harish says, that one of their philosophies at Selco has been “Not to take, No as an answer”. They strive to come up with practical solutions, than backing away saying technology does not fit in.

Another interesting aspect that Harish addressed is the people in his company. How he insists that all those who join Selco understand the finances of the poor. Narrated an incident where the CFO rejected a hike in salary as the company did not reach the goal.

Harish has a built a great team with him at Selco, most of his technical staff though low on qualifications are among the best when it comes to what they do. Harish makes it a point that everyone in the company grows. This includes the office peon, who is trained in technology and now is an expert technician, the driver who does sales and so on. This itself speaks of the company culture. Though they can earn much higher salaries, the employees are still with Selco because of their passion to what they do.

If I were to write on what Harish shared and my interpretations of it, I can write a book. Here, I will summarize his speech:

Think in terms of a solution, not just a product.
Technology is not useful, if it is not affordable.
Have respect for individual and what they do.
Innovation is finance is a key for creating sustainability.
Develop practical solutions.
Understand the user and develop products for them.
Think long term.
Long term takes lot of hard work, no quick solutions.

The following phrase which Harish mentions sums up Selco, “ Solar is expensive for the rich, affordable for the poor”.

TAA Bangalore chapter organized “Interface with Harish Hande” on 18^th April 2009. We started of at 4:30 and by 5:00 There was a motley crowd of about two dozen people. We ended the evening with the senior most alumni present V Seshmani(1969) presented a memento to Harish on behalf of TAA Bangalore.It was snacks and catching up with the junta. It was 3hrs worth the time spent. We congratulate Harish for all the great stuff and wish him good luck in the all his future efforts. You can find the photos from the event on flickr.

The following are a must read to know more about Harish and Selco.

Interview with Sramana Mitra .
Interview on Live Mint.
SELComment, Selco Blog

Ramjee Ganti (NH, 2003)

Photos: Kimi ( RP,1992)

Cross Posted on: www.iitkgpblr.org, www.iitkgpblr.wordpress.com

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Pyramids: The test of time...

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 08:11:00 +0000

Facebook celebrated it's fifth birthday celebrations last week. Google is about a decade old. Microsoft is a little more than a quarter of a century old. Infy, TCS, Wipro all of these haven't completed there Goldeb jubliee's yet. The transistor itslef is just about 70 years.

To see the creations of Man which are over 4000 years or more was humbling. I leave the post of my experiences for a later date, for now just bask in the stories of mankind that these architectural marvels tell us.

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What two days of blogging can do?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 16:12:00 +0000

A cursory look at the landing page of this blog will tell you that I haven't been blogging for a long time. If you had come here in the past two days you might have noticed my first post after 194 (:)) days. In that post, I had mentioned that three things to be done over a week, fortnight and a month. After three days, where do I stand? In this post, I talk about that, and also about what changes blogging has brought in me over the past two days.

It took me an humongous amount of effort to write the last two posts. Even after that I would not rate them more than 1/10. You see the point, my writing and abiltiy to think has gone down to a very lowly extant. Not only the flow of thoughts, but also my typing speed went down.I averaged about 30 wpm and coupled with the interupted thought flow, it would have been near 20 wpm. This from a high of 60 wpm around an year back.

Over the last two days, my thought train is getting better and typing speed around 40wpm. Thanks to blogging. I also seem to be reading more, and most important of all my grey cells seem to be working, the proof of which you will get to know at the end of this post.

The other two experiments, one of reading every day is progressing well albeit not as what I had initially imagined. I am reading, but I redefine the goal as reading a physical book every day for one hour. I miserably failed at the third stuff. Yesterday, for some reason I had to skip my dinner and the following breakfast. Co-incidentally their was nothing much on offer for lunch, so I had to buckle to my primal carvings.

Wow, I never imagined that short term focus can be so effective. Let me see how it works out in the coming days.Now the proof of my grey cells are the pictures on this blog. I shot them and edited them, and here they are .

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I am a fool !! I am fool!!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 08:49:00 +0000

Ever heard the story of the naked king who was fooled himself by running around naked and showing off to the world that his new dress. If you haven't heard of it, don't worry what we just have much more foolish act by us the citizens of India. I am referring to the egregious stupidity in the much hyped "$10 Laptop". How could someone be so stupid? It beats me. The stupidity is nothing less than running around shouting, "I am fool .. I am fool.. ".

From the very start I had no faith in the "$10 Laptop". Being an electronics engineer and following the travails of OLPC, I very well understand the impossibility of the task. However, the very involvement of three major engineering institues (VIT, IIT Madras, IISc Bangalore), I had a small hope that these folks will come up with a hand-held device(kind of a PDA) in the range of $50. My worry had always been that, I the tax payer have to foot the bill for subsidizing this instrument to $10. This was the line of thought developed after the announcement of the date.

It gives me immense pain at the loss of face(gizmodo, ars, tomshardware, fastcompany) 0f India in the international community. Already the ridicule is pouring in from across the world. It would have been far more better if they had accepted their mistake and dropped the whole idea of unveiling a brick.

It was surprising to me to note that, not many bloggers, nor the media saw through the fallacy of the whole business. Atanu Dey has an irrefutable argument against this concept, to quote him:

'The most compelling reason for totally rejecting this claim of a Rs 500 laptops is this: if the government, together with “students of Vellore Institute of Technology, scientists in Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, IIT-Madras” could pull-off a near-impossible technological miracle, does it not imply that the entire global computer industry is either totally incompetent or else it is a huge big scam which actually produces stuff at very little cost and then sells them at exorbitant prices."

Thankfully, the ISRO was not involved in the project, in which case doubts would have been raised over the veracity of India's achievement in Space. Amulya Gopalakrishnan writes why even a laptop at the price point specified does not mean much to the edcucation.

"The holes in traditional schooling can’t be fixed with a shiny green laptop. This is not to second the HRD ministry’s dark suspicions about OLPC, but a reminder that a laptop is empty and unproductive by itself, and the adoption of a technology must depend on the particular ends being aimed at, in each situation. "

Where do we go from here? Do we have opinion about this? Are we going to do something to stop such things in the future? What options do we have?

Photo Credits: Gizmodo, TomsHardware
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Marvinic Ramblings of a Melancholic Mind

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 05:52:00 +0000

"Funny, how just when you think life can't possibly get any better it suddenly goes worst",
is what Marvin would say if he were to have a brain which is less than a planet. Why I refer to Marvin here, is not clear to me, so don't bother too much about it. I like Marvin a lot and just look for him in times like this. But if you still insist on knowing read on...

Nothing could have been more perfect than the last year, both professionally and personally. But deep inside there was a vacuous feeling. There was this sense of missing something, that something is not right. You see, sometimes you just feel like getting up, going to office, eating, having fun and at the end feel as if nothing that you did since morning makes any sense. While my mood has gone down the dungeons, I went in for some Good will hunting from the past, looking up for some of the bygone good times. And what better time can I think of than drooling over with laughter reading the "Hitchhicker's Guide to Galaxy". If something can make me smile even in sleep, it is this:

"Simple. I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged myself in to its external computer feed. I talked to the computer at great length and explained my view of the Universe to it," said Marvin. "And what happened?" pressed Ford. "It committed suicide," said Marvin and stalked off back to the Heart of Gold. I don't mean this exact line but the the character who delivers those lines Marvin.

Why am I blogging about this? after 194 days of absence from blogosphere, or for that matter any kind of writing except for the thousands of lines of code, that I spewed out in most robotic of fachions and hundreds of lines of documentation, at which I would certainly would not want to read.

I will tell you.

Digressing, Sample some quotes from Marvin:

I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed
Funny, how just when you think life can't possibly get any worse it suddenly does.
Do you want me to sit in the corner and rust, or just fall apart where I'm standing?
Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent anymore of it.
Why stop now just when I'm hating it?
Life, loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it.
I won't enjoy it.
Wearily on I go, pain and misery my only companions. And vast intelligence, of course. And infinite sorrow.
Well I wish you'd just tell me rather than try to engage my enthusiasm.
Pardon me for breathing, which I never do any way so I don't know why I bother to say it, oh God, I'm so depressed.

Put the above in context and visualize how he would say it or how he would make others feel about it! I just love him.

Suddenly, I realised the reason for the melancholy. I haven't been doing anything I like, in the last few months, no runs, no blogging, no meeting friends, no photography, no reading, no learning new stuff, no new habits whoa.. !! I can go on and on.

In fact, I forgot how to do these things. Now to fight these inner demons of Newton's First law, I have come up with a plan, a Grand Simple plan. One thing at a time for a few days. The first step in this plan is right here:

i. I will blog for the next Seven days. One blog post a day.
ii. I will read atleast one hour for the next Fifteen days.
iii. I will be a Vegetarian(eggetarian) for the next Thirty days.

Now, each of those has some chanlenges considering my present geographical status. But, nothing can be more challenging than the third item.

Where do we go from here?? Hear it from Marvin:

"Now the world has gone to bed,
Darkness won't engulf my head,
I can see by infra-red,
How I hate the night."

He paused to gather the artistic and emotional strength to tackle the next verse.

"Now I lay me down to sleep,
Try to count electric sheep,
Sweet dream wishes you can keep,
How I hate the night."

Credits: The images above are from filmtotaal and templates
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