Moving Ahead

Joe Wilcox on IPhone

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Mishra) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:19:00 +0000

Websites like TechCrunch, GigaOm offer the latest happenings on the web. But at times, I like in-depth analysis -- the kind provided by Gartner blogs, and independent analysts like those on ZDnet and Joe Wilcox.

I had an e-mail conversation with him about the state of mobile market in India and why the Apple IPhone hasn't emulated its success in North America and Europe here. Some portions of that conversation were quoted by him yesterday in one of his posts in Betanews on the fortune of IPhone.

I am quoting the part where I am quoted:

But iPhone is different. "You cannot [swap] SIM cards," he emphasized, "because it is locked onto [the] operator you bought the device from. An iPhone bought from Airtel will not work on Vodafone and visa versa. Phone is not subsidized as well in India."

The perspective is about the same there in India as viewed from afar by the Gartner analyst. "Apple bungled up big time with the iPhone in India," said Rohit Mishra, a student studying mobile technologies at VIT University in Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India. "It still has a solid brand and created the touchscreen crave that has resulted in the success of Nokia [XpressMusic] 5800 and Samsung Star." Nokia is India's market leader, with 56.1 percent unit marketshare in second quarter, according to IDC. Samsung was No. 2 and Apple No. 22.

Rohit continued: "By pricing iPhone at Rs 31,000 ($600 approximately), Apple turned away a huge bunch of people who were waiting for the iPhone. There is another issue here -- we don't have 3G here. It's been launched by the state carrier in select cities, but that doesn't count for much now."

What do you think about the future of smartphones in markets like India? Discuss it with me here or on Twitter -- movingahead

Need for English

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Mishra) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:18:00 +0000

If you have not seen TED talks, you are missing one of the best resources that the web gives you. Its just brilliant.

This TED talk by Jay Walker explores the worldwide mania for English. Walker has got it completely right. In India's remotest villages, the concept of English being a tool to success is crystal clear. Although localization is itself important, there si no doubt that the language of global business and problem-solving is now English. I sincerely hope that like China, we are able to evolve a consensus where every child has a right to quality English education.

Figuring out the health labyrinth

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Mishra) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 09:56:00 +0000

Two things figured prominently in all the recession articles that I read -- the housing bust and the steep health care costs. Health care is a prime necessity -- starts right at the birth, even before it - and I wondered how something so basic could become one of the causes of the whole economy cracking up.

Today I came across a great post on the New Yorker where the author Atul Gawande investigates in depth what is actually making this necessity service so capital-intensive. Atul takes the example of the city of McAllen in Texas where the average outgo per Medicare expense per person is a whopping USD 15,000. [INR 750,000]

Atul makes great observations about the reasons behind this scenario which I am commenting on in the Indian context. India faces a very uphill task in building its health care system which to say the very least is in complete shambles. As we might think, the problem is not only in the rural areas. Barring a few exceptions, no government hospital attracts the confidence of middle-class India. The rut that characterizes most of the Indian government sector is most evident in the hospitals and district health centers. The options for the people who are not able to subscribe to medical insurance are depressingly limited. The big-wig private names may be huge commercial successes but their steep costs in Indian context make any treatment in these places a very tough decision. Add to it, the recent Wockhardt incident shows how high-handed these high quality centers can be.

Being the entrepreneurial hard core fan, I always thought that widespread private participation is a potential cure for this problem. But after reading Atul's post, I am a bit shaken in my views.

He knew of doctors who owned strip malls, orange groves, apartment complexes—or imaging centers, surgery centers, or another part of the hospital they directed patients to. They had “entrepreneurial spirit,” he said. They were innovative and aggressive in finding ways to increase revenues from patient care.

For the first instance, I am seeing entrepreneurship as a negative aspect. He sees doctors intention to maximize revenue by conducting more and more tests - many a times in facilities where they have an ownership stake. Down here, no one even notices this -- it is so common. If not, then why doctors insist that we get tested from some particular facility itself? I will another dimension to it. I have noticed that many times even the medicines that the doctors prescribe are only available at certain recommended stores. Doctors' dependence on the quantity of referrals skews up the system badly.

The only thing that inspires hope is the concept adopted by The Mayo Clinic I only knew Mayo Clinic as the health source often cited by Reader's Digest. What I didn't know is that Mayo is famous for its low-cost, tech-intensive and high quality health care. Mayo has fixed salaries for its doctors so there is no reason to bruce up quantity.

Atul also presents a wonderful metaphor on the need of an integrated approach towards medical-care.

Providing health care is like building a house. The task requires experts, expensive equipment and materials, and a huge amount of coordination. Imagine that, instead of paying a contractor to pull a team together and keep them on track, you paid an electrician for every outlet he recommends, a plumber for every faucet, and a carpenter for every cabinet. Would you be surprised if you got a house with a thousand outlets, faucets, and cabinets, at three times the cost you expected, and the whole thing fell apart a couple of years later? Getting the country’s best electrician on the job (he trained at Harvard, somebody tells you) isn’t going to solve this problem. Nor will changing the person who writes him the check.

Rather than trying to catch up with specialists individually who treat all our medical issues in isolation, we should have an integrated approach towards medical care. I don't see how the multiple levels between a physician and the specialist helps anyone.

There is also one big bottleneck in the Indian system. There is just not enough admission seats for medical aspirants. Government colleges have very few seats and the private colleges are content with their existing capacities. They might be making enough dough from the millions of capitation fee that they collect every year, but it is of no use when the money is not used to open new medical colleges and facilities. The sheer desperation that the medical aspirants face with their rejection is steadily reducing the number of medical aspirants For a country which hugely lacks doctors, this is pure hara-kiri. This issue can only be resolved if our well-to-do business sector goes on and creates strong medical institutions not-for-profit.

Wockhardt Hospital Front by Flickr/Wockhardt Hospitals
Ladakh Medical Center by Flickr/avalochi

Firefox in times of Chrome and Safari

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Mishra) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:17:00 +0000

Mozilla Firefox has had a roller-coaster ride in the past couple of years. From being the symbol of geeks a couple of years back, it has now come to represent a old, sluggish warlord. There was a time when if someone didn't use Firefox, we would scoff at them (Opera users, the very rare ones that one met were spared.)
In those years, Opera seemed a good competitor. I leaned more towards Opera attracted by its fast speed. But as the open-source movement hit me hard, Firefox grew big. In those years, Google backed Firefox strongly. Firefox was the browser in Google's very famous Google Pack of software. As Internet Explorer kept lagging behind on features (they didn't had tabbed browsing for God's sake) and failing massively in security tests, Firefox was just everywhere.
Firefox users love the huge extensions and add-ons that the open-source browser comes with. The Firefox add-ons site is still the poster-boy of open-source world. But then things changed. Apple Safari came for Windows in 2007 and Google came up with its own web browser - Chrome in 2008. I still wonder what magic potion Apple has. God!!! The web looks so beautiful on the Safari. If ever I can understand how.

Recently Google was in news for the way design elements have been alienated by the search major. I am not a great fan of Google's design but if ever they will get the design right, they got it with Chrome. Chrome just revolutionized browser-design. The minimalist look with the integrated search and address bar and the 'most-visited' start page is brilliant. Chrome also made each tab a separate process taking browser-stability to a new level.

On the other hand, the same Firefox has lost all traces of stability. The past few months have been tough on Firefox with my browser crashing too many times. I have a tendency to keep many tabs open and that doesn't help at all. There was a difference of 6 days between versions 3.0.9 and 3.0.10!! Firefox usually comes out with an upgrade every month. 6 days just shows you the mess within.

I am not a web-developer and the few friends who are now swear by Chrome. So what keeps the clock ticking? I think its the add-ons and extensions. That keeps growing. Some of the extensions like Delicious, Ghostery, Power Twitter, Tree Style Tabs are just marvelous. Mozilla Labs have come out with some great add-ons themselves lately. Ubiquity - a command based UI , Personas - easy skin manager and Prism -- to make web applications run independently are the Mozilla add-ons that run on my machine now. It won't be far before these start being available on Chrome too. To survive beyond that point, Mozilla needs to do one thing well -- get good, fast browsing back.

I shifted to the 3.5 Beta 4 Firefox version today. Among other things, it allows in-tab private browsing. But the more important thing now is that it is faster -- much more than the public 3.0.11 Thats important for Firefox's survival.

Tuition Mania

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Mishra) — Sat, 09 May 2009 15:14:00 +0000

So what you and I always knew has now been verified by the Assocham -- the Indian industry association. Private Tuition is rampant and costly all over the country. The Assocham report says :

"Private tuitions have witnessed a steep increase of about 40-45 per cent in the last few years as middle class parents have been spending nearly one-third of their monthly incomes on them."

The problem with tuition is that it makes you dependent. Its like a cigarette -- once you have started with it, you think you can't do without it.
So people go on from having tuition at school, then tuition for IIT and even then for IIM. The problem is that it undermines your regular education (though that itself is a farce Now parents are spending one-third of their incomes on these private tutors. Whats wrong folks!! Go and look for some creative thing for your child. Mugging up that chemistry table or that physics equation won't make him/her the next Einstein. If you really care so much about your child, work hard and break up from this self-supporting myth of tuition.
There is a lot that can be learnt today. More than your money-sucker tutor can ever teach.

Photo courtesy blurasis

Moving Ahead from Turbo C

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Mishra) — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 21:43:00 +0000

Ankur Sethi has done a brilliant blog post on the differences between compiler, C++, Turbo C, IDE (and if you are sane enough to be interested) GCC and Dev C++. Ankur has explained all of it very clearly, so I won't reinvent the wheel. I strongly recommend that you go through his post.

A couple of weeks back, I was talking with my Programming Fundamentals teacher here at VIT about the possibility of completely migrating to Dev C++ at least or dump our Windows 2000 systems in favor of Red Hat/Open Suse running GCC. This will really help in fostering a climate of open-source in the college. For God's sake, Turbo C was developed in 1992 and is completely out of sync with the new standards of C/C++. Other schools might need to use some proprietary software but computing sciences can surely take the first step.

The Story Behind Neoforma.com

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Mishra) — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 09:01:00 +0000

Browsing through the "World Trade" section of VIT library, I was looking for C.K.Prahalad's famous "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid". To my despair, someone had misplaced that book. Disappointed, I glanced over the adjacent Entrepreneurship section - a permanent favorite. I found "Starting Something" by Wayne McVicker-- a strange name. I thought it will be a 'how-to' book on starting a company. It turned out to be a biography of the founder of a Silicon Valley 'dotcom' company -- Neoforma.com I had read a lot about dotcom companies and their bust, so I picked it up to know something more about it.

As I started reading it, one thing instantly became clear. This book was not about Wayne McVicker; it was about Neoforma.com - a company that he had co-founded with his friend Jeff. The book showed how two people passionate about a business opportunity went on to make a company worth $ 3 billion in 4 years battling against the mightiest Venture Capital firm -- Kliener Perkins. Starting Something has all characters -- good, bad and nasty, but all of them come across as very real. It gives us an unflinching look into both the drak and bright sides of corporate culture -- where dreams are fulfilled and the best of friendships are broken. Denis Coleman -- founder of Symantec Corporation (the makers of the very popular Norton Antivirus sums up the book

A must read for aspiring entrepreneurs. It took me years in the trenches building Symantec to learn the people-side lessons so freely elucidated by McVicker - and unfortunately not yet taught in business schools.

-- that is how deep the book goes in exploring the importance of people in the success of a business.

The book is divided into numerous small chapters of 4 to 5 pages generally. That gives fluidity to the story -- the events register their presence, but it becomes clear that no single event can become the center-piece of the narrative.

Wayne McVicker and his friend Jekk Kleck weren't the typical Silicon Valley entrepreneurs -- both were in their late thirties with a family to care for. Like most other founder pairs, Wayne and Jeff weren't the best of friends from the outset. But, both strongly believed in the concept of better flow of information to buyers -- in this case hospitals. They wanted to provide all possible information about the large medical equipments as well as numerous small products that occupy hospital rooms. As their belief in the usability and importance of the idea grew with time, they ran into confrontation with their bosses at Varian -- their present company. As Varian resisted, Jeff and Wayne proposed to carve out a spin-off from Varian. Though successful , they were taken aback to see the bickering and hateful corporate environment under which they left the company they had been working for years.

The book moves on to show how Neoforma discovered internet and realized the immense potential of the medium. As the company grew, Wayne explains his dilemma in hiring new people- which continues even as Neoforma transformed into a behemoth. He concludes that the single most important factor is the actual fit between the company and the employee.

Starting Something is not only about the business part of it. As Wayne and his wife Anni put every piece of their asset on mortgage for Neoforma with 2 young children to care for, Wayne describes the emotional tug-of-war he went through while eliminating their complete security putting their entire lives on the fate of Neoforma.

The book is also about people -- from Jack (their warm attorney) to Wally and Shawn (their angel investors) To Alexander, JP and Bret (their VCs) Wayne explicitly highlights his ambivalence about venture capitalists -- the people who care only about one single thing - making money and making it fast.

Throughout the book, Wayne never makes an attempt to cover-up his emotions. How he felt uncomfortable from being a founder to donning the role of an investor in the company that he had made himself. He also discusses his insecurity as Neoforma changes from CDROMs to a complex website - a technology he was unfamiliar with.

The book's richness comes from the part where Wayne analyzes his own actions - why he pursued a particular deal, why he was adamant to hire a particular man to why he considered himself completely unsuitable in running Neoforma in the long run.

You will fell that the narrative becomes similar to a movie as the nook proceeds -- not flashy in t he same way but with similar ulterior motives and huge drama at play.

After a successful IPO and a severe crash in share prices, Wayne realized that Neoforma had outgrown him. He moves on to found Attania -- but not with the same intensity as Neoforma. That intensity is now for his family.

Overall a higly recommended read. You will love the truth and reality of the story.

Locking us in -- Present Sir!!

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Mishra) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 23:49:00 +0000

Photo courtesy orange42 through Flickr
Teachers have been a great part of my life -- often encouraging, loving and caring throughout my school life. They really made you want to come to school. You felt good, right!!

But coming to college, I have seen the other side of teachers. For me college was supposed to be "freedom". But even in India where we pride ourselves for our democratic freedom, the word "freedom" has been made to carry negative annotations in our colleges.

Apart from the ultra-conservative practice of keeping boys and girls as separated as possible and locking us inside our hostel blocks at 9, the biggest restriction is the minimum attendance requirement of 75%. The biggest pain in my life now is the compulsion to go & waste my 5 hours in class everyday. Waste because I neither like nor understand most of the things that are taught in classes. (And I am not alone. Go to any class and you will find most in a state of delusion -- chatting, messaging, aimlessly taking down notes and gazing at their watches or cell phones to keep tracking how much more they have to take for the day. There will always be some who are listening very attentively -- why they would even listen attentively to Bush talking about world peace. Thankfully, there are some classes which are good, but generally classes are a pain.

I wanted to go deeper and find some sense in this madness. Why colleges need a minimum attendance? Colleges provide us degrees after testing us on a minimum set of requirements -- subjects and syllabus that they agree upon. For passing these subjects, why do they make attending classes necessary? Let the student do what he wants to -- go to library, sit in lab or just play Counter-Strike in his room. The best thing will be that the college accepts the work that students want to do. All but a very few have some interest which they want to pursue, but drop because it will hurt their GPA. About attending classes -- if I like the subject and if the teacher is good, I will attend the class. Otherwise, I will bunk it.

The college should be cool with it. The whole world is moving to a more personalized approach in life -- and thats the way it should be with teaching too. College shouldn't only be restricted to attending 'x' number of classes for 'y' number of days. I should have complete autonomy on choosing what I want to learn and how I want to go about it.

Colleges and teachers must be brave enough to take this leap of faith. They may face only very few students in a classroom but at least all of them are there with a passion to learn. Let others choose or pursue their own passion. Ultimately, the aim is to help everyone achieve his/her best. Minimum restrictions will only help everyone do their best. The fear of misuse is present and is also valid, but smart techniques can easily correct most of them.

Start with something simple. Instead of giving assignments, where people just print-out the corresponding Wikipedia page or worse print and copy the content.A free way is the best and fastest approach to your destination, ain't it?

Lack of Entrepreneurship in India -- Whats wrong?

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Mishra) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 18:58:00 +0000

Abhijit Nadgouda has written a great post on what is ailing entrepreneurship to really catch-up in Indian colleges. What started as a comment to his post became a full-fledged post of my own.

Being in a college, I can really identify with his views. Outsourcing and thus the not-so-difficult placement has killed all initiative in Indian engineering colleges. TCS took more than 1000 freshers from my college VIT, Vellore last year. The focus on placements and jobs is really depressing. The only thing that people bother about is the package that company XYZ offered at college ABC. Plus, it is not that these companies offer great packages. My college's average package was about Rs. 300,000, which is not what one should think of as their ultimate goal in life.Also, the only route that people think of doing good in life is by having an MBA. Wished they can focus more on engineering (not on the outdated curriculum, but the newer technologies).

I am a member of the Entrepreneurship Cell at my college. We encourage entrepreneurial activities at our college -- and our most successful initiative has been organizing an Open Coffee Club chapter at Vellore. The two meets of OCC Vellore drew people out of their shells and they came out to express ideas openly. I am personally averse to the traditional business plan competitions because of two reasons:
1. I am from the Steve Wozniak school of thought that says that no one but the market can decide whether a product is viable or not. (and he has personal experience to back this)
2. A business plan competition creates 3 or 10 heroes but leaves the rest disappointed. They get nothing but a feeling that their idea lacks something. Can anyone of you quote a number that how many business plan winners have gone out to have successful ventures? I haven't seen many. We need to come out with a better model of business plan, where we don't judge ideas but just give them all possible support. This doesn't sound convincing, but this is something that all ECells have to work on. This view also came up at the Global Conference of ECells at IIT Bombay that I attended a couple of weeks back where Manik Singh, TiE Charter Member of Bombay raised it.

I have my own entrepreneurial plans but promoting entrepreneurship among my peers is also very close to my heart. Maybe, my success can help people realize that taking risk and initiative even in the first year of your engineering can pay off!!

If any of you have any suggestions or want to help us here at VIT in promoting entrepreneurship, do drop a comment or a tweet. Not all entrepreneurs will come from IITs.

(I got the link of this post from ET's Power of Ideas, and this post has been itself written as a comment to Sramana Mitra's very popular post on the same topic.)

The Nokia decade

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Mishra) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 13:05:00 +0000

I went to this post hoping to read about digital convergence but what it essentially is a look at Nokia's way to the top and an analysis of how high it stands!
(Click here to go the post)
Strangely, the post didn't take comments so I put mine's here.

What an article. I had always been wondering that how this giant never shows a slowness in their methods. I live in India - a country that swears by the name of Nokia. From its ruggedness (there are tales about it)to its sleek phones, in every range Nokia rules. After the advent of touch UI, Although, we hated our Nokia phones when Apple IPhone launched but Apple blew it by pricing it at $600. Again Nokia will rule because the much better N97 will come below $300.

Vacation, Ranchi and accident

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Mishra) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 19:07:00 +0000

Like every other holiday, a lot was planned in the winter vacation (that was just 12 days anyway. I had been merrily postponing a lot of things to this period after the semesters finished in December 1st week. The journey to home was fun with Rahul, Samridhi and Richa couldn't get a link to u Richa!!to company. I being the fool I am sat in the sleeper class coach where we had to shift in the morning in a T-Shirt. Sami and Richa told me to get a jacket, but I thought who would bother with opening up a packed up bag!

Home food showed its effect the following day and my stomach gave me a hard time for the next couple of days. My mausaji, mausimas and cousins came up to Ranchi, but my stomach gave way to fever which took another 2-3 days. All the time, I kept setting records in watching Star Movies and HBO.Sami and Richa have a huge clan of relatives in Ranchi and the cruel ladies spared no time for this poor friend-less chap. Animesh my friend from DPS Patnacame in and I had a welcome break. That night I went on as a comedian in my home making fun of everyone present there and especially some archaic words of my mother-tongue Maithili till people dropped off to sleep. I didn't know I had such good comic talent too :)

But despite my hartal they left on 28th leaving me with not much to do. The new year was quite dull as first Mom and then Dad got ill. Dad had sustained stomach-ache on January 1 which kept us quite worried.

On 2nd morning, I went for a ride on Dad's Unicorn. I hadn't got a chance to explore the area near my house so I went looking for a famous spot called "Tagore Hill". I crossed it and missed it but didn't know at that time and kept moving ahead. I was riding at a steady speed of 40 kmph when something went wrong and the bike skidded. My hands and leg was isbadly scratched and bruised. The bike had heavy damage with the visor cracking up. Some electric connection went wrong which prevented the bike from getting started. Dad says that looking at the damage to the bike, I am lucky to have escaped with less injury. Maybe!! But my hands won't agree.

I had to leave the next day on 3rd and there was constant talk on whether I should cancel the trip or not. But, I didn't want one wrong thing to create another -- attendance issue over here in VIT. So I made the journey. The pain is there and spikes up sometimes. Hopefully it will get checked soon.

Maybe I didn't get enough new year wishes this time!

Dorai Thodla in VIT

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Mishra) — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 19:37:00 +0000

On Monday, Dorai Thodla -- the founder of IMorph Inc. came to VIT. (I have wondered how VIT manages to get some good people here considering their bureaucratic working style!! As a part of E-Cell, (its a club to promote entrepreneurship here I am actively involved in the club and so played a part in organizing the meet. I googled Dorai and found out about him, IMorph and InfoMinder. I was a bit skeptical about how useful his flagship product InfoMinder will be, which is basically a tool to track changes throughout your chosen pages on the web. I thought that RSS feeds serve basically the same purpose. In the first session, Dorai talked about his life for our "Life as an Entrepreneur" lecture series. The man had already impressed me because of his accounts on Twitter, Friendfeed etc. -- as he seemed to be in touch with the latest trends. As he spoke about his urge to constantly remain on top of all the technology news, I could easily identify with him. Dorai understood how boring abig moral talk can get and kept it simple, easy and interactive. The way successful people talk easily about their failures easily. Dorai told us about a presentation that he had to abruptly step into at the last moment unprepared and how his shaking hands sent the old-style presentation into a spin.
I was happy to find equal angst and support from him about the lack of consumer software work taken by the Indian IT biggies. He encouraged people to take risks and start making useful apps -- and I was silently feeling proud about my life goals of being an entrepreneur and about the mobile "noticeboard" software that I am working on.
Dorai had another session post-lunch (not for me though. IEEE, ECell, poor mess have made me miss lunch repeatedly The second session was more technical, and I loved the importance on trends that he spoke of. As he took names like Digg, StumbleUpon, semantic web... I felt whether this would inspire people to wake up from their movie downloads and explore the wider web. But, I am not very positive.

I wanted to discuss with Dorai my idea about the mobile "noticeboard" project that I call DNS and get his views on the idea. But he was going to Bangalore for the TiE Entrepreneurial Summit. I wanted to be there desperately. A lot of my work would be derived from this person now for sure.

Ray Ozzie's Microsoft

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Mishra) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 23:19:00 +0000

Microsoft for the better part of the last decade has been everyone’s favourite whipping boy. While Google came to symbolise everything quick and efficient, and Apple got famous for its sleek IPods and IPhones, Microsoft only got mocked with the debacle called Windows Vista. Tech-analysts were quick to say that MS has gone past its peak and will soon wither out. But, it hasn’t gone so. People irritated with the radically new Office interface gradually realized how simpler it was and MS used its financial muscles to put Vista on almost all new computers. The Redmond-based giant is known for its ability to rise from adversity. It has destroyed Borland, Real and Netscape after trailing them for a long distance where everyone predicted its fall.
But times have changed. After a 25 month long transition period, Bill Gates has quitted from day-to-day responsibilities and moved on. Gates has passed on his role of Chief Software Architect to Ray Ozzie while Steve Ballmer keeps looking after the business side of MS as CEO and Craig Mundie handles the role of Chief Research and Strategy Officer. Ozzie came to MS in 2005 and took on the role of CSA the next year.
Once hailed by Gates as one of the 5 best programmers of the century, the media shy Ozzie has a very impressive record. He is the maker of Symphony and Lotus Notes – very dominant software for collaborative work in businesses. Ozzie has a very clear idea about Microsoft’s future. He wants to transform Microsoft from the traditional model – making a software, packaging it and selling it and then coming out with another version after a couple of years to the cloud-computing based software-plus-services model where the company and the customers are always in direct contact.
Cloud computing is the buzz nowadays and Ozzie is determined that he is not left following the tail-lights of others as has happened in search with Google. Microsoft has been traditionally wary of the cloud concept because it encroaches on its heavily dominated desktop market share. So turning the 90,000 employees strong software behemoth with an annual revenue of $60 billion into an internet company is not going to be an easy task. Ozzie is pushing for a hybrid-model of Cloud computing, where most of the work gets done on the cloud but the desktop is important for offline processing and data storage. His plan is more like Apple ITunes where the desktop application controls music on the disk while the internet based application earns revenue by selling songs on the music store.

Ozzie is taking Microsoft into cloud territory with 3 products:

Windows Azure: Microsoft Windows’ version for the cloud. The software developed under the code name “Red Dog” will take on Google’s App Engine and Amazon’s EC2 when it launches early next year. Considering Microsoft’s deep pockets and huge existing network servers, even Google CEO Eric Schimdt admits that MS will inevitably be a major player in the space.
Live Mesh: Ozzie’s favourite project Live Mesh looks to synchronise all your files across different devices – PC, laptop, Mac, cell phones, digital cameras etc. at different places. As people start demanding more and more of their data at any time they wish, this sphere will see hectic activity. Already rivals Apple have launched MobileMe platform, but MobileMe failed to handle the vast array of device and file support that is expected from it. Ozzie is looking to lose all fancy bell and whistles and just make Live Mesh work.
Office Online: The next version of Office might not be installed on our system. At Microsoft’s developers conference – TechReady 2008 , Ozzie showed how he could use and collaborate directly on a MS Excel sheet. One thing Ozzie is particularly keen about is to raise the level of reliability and make all cloud MS products hassfle-free.
Ray Ozzie has gone about transforming the work-culture at Microsoft too. Rather than working in huge groups, Ozzie has hand-picked small teams of 150 who work on a particular project and then they are scaled up to the levels that Microsoft needs. During Gates’ time, the emphasis was that every new product must fit-in with the larger MS family. But Ozzie realized that it was stifling competition, and did away with the system.
The offices at Redmond no longer look like a bunch of isolated cabins, Ozzie got it redesigned so that people have eye-contact and can easily talk. Snack rooms and whiteboards have been liberally allocated to foster discussion. As the year comes to an end, Ozzie’s plans have gradually started taking shape. Microsoft has announced that applications like Windows Movie Maker, Paint etc. – the none-core part of an Operating System will ship together under a Live Products name. 2009 will be a critical year for both Ozzie and his products, no matter who finally wins the race.

I am in a rich college

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Mishra) — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 18:07:00 +0000

Anyone who has been following me here or on twitter (@movingahead) will know the fact that Wifi is coming to VIT. Unlike other colleges, even the most minuscule ones VIT till now thought internet access to be a taboo, so the only way to access net was to use a proxy in the labs or use a low speed, high cost . access like the one I am using now -- the Plug2surf types.

Finally heeding to popular demand, Wifi is being introduced. So, I am happy. I should be, right!! The only problem is that I hadn't thought that I will have to pay Rs. 900 per month for this happiness. The Wifi is a paid one bandwidth from Reliance, device from Motorola and services by Vellore Online Systems. Hey!!! But what from VIT??

The plans offered start from Rs. 500 for a 256 Kbps 2 GB download limit connection. Another one is at Rs. 700 per month which is same speed but 3.5 GB limit. Now that much bandwidth is very less for a net addict like me -- No I don't waste my time on porn!! There can be other more productive uses. The only plan that suits me is an unlimited plan for 900 at 384 Kbps. I think it would have been better if I also had a few oil wells in Kuwait to finance this education.

I am taking the 900 plan because Dad as always knows how much I am dependent on net for my updates. Proud to have such a father. But, still something lingers in my mind. A fear that I don't misuse this facility and an anguish that couldn't my university provide this wifi at subsidised rates.

When I came to VIT, it was famous for being one of the cheapest private engineering college in India. The truth is that colleges like Manipal and Jaypee rob you once. VIT with its media-savvy people robs you slowly in installments.

If this is the way private education will work in this country, wonder whether my posts on allowing international institutes in India were really correct!

Can you fight others by breaking yourself up?

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Mishra) — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 13:57:00 +0000

This is the question I will like to ask Mr. Balbir Punj – BJP MP and journalist. As all of you, I too have been deeply shocked by the simple manner in which our most beloved city, our favourite icon and a lot of common men have become the victim of terror. Almost every country has faced terror at one time or another. But none can match the regularity and scale of attacks in India. Having said that these attacks on Mumbai have been different, because terrorists didn’t strike and left but they stayed there and killed people for three continuous days.

Much of the blame of what is happening in this country goes to the politicians because they are our leaders. Even in corporate sector when the company makes some mistake, the CEO takes the blame and most often goes. Unfortunately our politics is one big scoop of power without any responsibility. Today as I was seeing people encouraging others in Delhi to go and vote, I wondered if I was in Delhi who would have I voted for?

The problem is that our multi-party system fed by caste and regional concerns is too fragmented to ever produce an inspiring leadership. I respect former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee and have even greater respect for the current PM Dr. Manmohan Singh, who by his economic reforms made India the power that it is today. But both of them failed to protect India. Vajpayee meekly surrendered to the IC 814 hijacking and released prisoners who attacked Indian parliament and killed American journalist Daniel Pearl among their other achievements. Dr. Singh on the other hand has goofed up by having a man like Shivraj Patil (who had enough time to keep changing his dress while terrorists were blasting up Delhi) and making empty promises.

In his speech after the Mumbai attack, Dr. Singh talked about “innocent people”, “external elements”, “tough actions”, “no compromise”, “toughen laws”, “set up federal investigative agency”........ when the hell will you do it? On the last day of your tenure. If the PM of the country can’t implement his words on a matter as important as terrorism, we are doomed. I imagine terrorists laughing at us seeing our PM make such empty claims. You have let us all down Dr. Singh.
And then there is the BJP. The right-wing party supposedly tough on terror. Shame on hypocrites like them. Do I need to present a spreadsheet to show that they were equally worse (or even more for releasing terrorists)? Though they showed uncharacteristic restraint by not attacking the government straight away, but I read the first of it yesterday afternoon in Deccan Chronicle by BJP MP and journalist Balbir K. Punj. I believe that the way some people try to isolate the complete Muslim community as responsible for these attacks start a circle which creates suspicion among other Hindus, separates Muslims, very few of whom go on and support the terror activities and the cycle goes on.

So I took on him (he had given his e-mail id) and wrote him this mail. I hope that you read this and tell me if I am wrong at some point. If I am correct, then support me and send your own mail to Balbir Punj at (punjbk@gmail.com). I am not able to find his article on the web at the point, but will upload it as soon as I am able to get it.

Subject: Do you have the guts to answer this?
I just read your column “Islamic terror is not new” in ‘Deccan Chronicle’ (November 28, 2008). I and you share one common idea – we both don’t what a repetition of what happened in Mumbai. But, unfortunately I think your words are utterly divisive and are responsible for these acts at a level.
• You say that USA crushed terrorism without caring for human rights and suggest India to do the same. I don’t think that what actually worked in USA – increased security, centralised body (Department of Homeland Security), more extensive ID checks and taking the attack to the opposition in USA involve breaching human rights. On the other hand, among the first steps of President-elect Obama will be to shut down Guantanamo Bay – the theatre of human rights violation.

• You use the word “secularists” in quotes and have portrayed them as minority-appeasing, anti-majority and unmindful of national interests. I want to remind you that its only your community – politicians – who need to appease others. Rest of us are true secularists who love their own religion but equally respect the other’s right to respect his.

• You claim that the “secularists” media always tries to justify these acts. No media- print, electronic or web has mentioned the phrases – “Babri Masjid”, “persecution of Muslims”. In the last 48 hours. Your column is the first place where I am reading this.

• Media portrays security forces as villains!! Which media do you subscribe to?? We including our media love our forces. People of your gentry have some special imaginary media delivered to your homes.

• You highlight the release of “Abdul Naseer Madni” – the alleged plotter of the plan to assassinate Mr. Advani. This action is completely deplorable and should be revoked immediately if it is motivated by political concerns. I wonder why you/your party challenged it in law courts??

• According to you, POTA is the solution to every terrorist issue in this country. The NDA regime had applied it, didn’t it? Please enlighten us that how POTA itself was able to prevent terrorist actions? Instead of shirking responsibility by overusing this word, why don’t all of you sit and discuss its provisions detailing how all of them will help. This is a real problem Sir. Not one of your ally jumping the boat that you will fight it with words. Show us what are the actual plans you have.

• Sir where you in a state of hibernation before 2005? You claim that terrorist attacks since 2005, always. Vajpayee ji was a noble statesman. But, irrespective of my respect towards him, I will have to say that the most severe terrorist activities – IC 814 hijacking and the attack on Parliament happened during NDA tenure. The last government also didn’t take any concrete steps to boost up intelligence or make superior anti-terror forces.

• Why do you raise so much hue and cry about Hindu terror? If it exists, it can become a serious issue. Why don’t you people let the ATS do its job? Why have you people created such a situation where even anti-terrorism operations have a political colour. Instead of praising the bravery of officers like Hemant Karkare – who died for the country, you are only reminded of their role in the Malegaon case. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Even your party-men have praised their bravery. What is that you have done for this country that enables you to talk about such martyrs in this manner?

• And yet again Sir, why are you so shallow so as to raise an event of 8th century in a time like this. If all of us start keeping grudges for 13 centuries, then this human race will not see tomorrow’s daylight. The India that matters is the one of today. We have to think about how to strengthen it, develop it, and make people feel blessed to be Indians, not fragment India with statements like that of yours. I find your words to be very close to those used by British during their “Divide-and-Rule” policy to govern India.

I will also be extremely glad and proud if we had intelligence agencies and anti-terror forces of the standard that the West has. But by continuously trying to isolate the whole Muslim community as partners in terror, you create an environment of distrust due to which some of them start collaborating with external terrorists. Blaming the whole Muslim community for terrorism is akin to blaming the entire Hindu community for the Gujarat riots.

I really wish that you take the time to share your views with me. If I am wrong, please correct me. But, if I am correct, please reform yourself. Don’t believe in your views so much that you cease to have the ability to have a fresh view.

My Opera usage notes

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Mishra) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 23:11:00 +0000

Unconvinced by the indecisive reviews of browsers in Chip as well as Digit, I want to do it myself now. First on the block is Opera. A very fast browser with die-hard fan base but usage lower than even Safari. Used it for 2 nights and here are the notes:
Opera Usage Notes

• Didn't allow other browsers any share in bandwith. Safari, IE showed server not responding while I ran Google Reader on it.
• No spell check in Blogger. Firefox had it by default.
• My blog wasn't showing up properly i.e. with correct dimensions.
• Worked faster I think with Twitter.
• Needed flash plugin. Can't it be preloaded or use the IE/Firefox plugin. How many times am I going to install it!!
• Interface is better and cleaner. Inspired to clean and improve my firefox now.
• opera wants that all feeds should be linked to its inbuilt reader. no i use google reader. bad!
• Very peculiar lag while shifting between tabs sometimes like 4-5 secs!!
• Got phreaked out typing in facebook
• Had to digg. Missed shareaholic on firefox
• Labnol had a link compfight.com - searching flickr, site was not able to work on opera! Old problem
• Even MS Mesh - the cloud computing next-gen site hung up with Opera. Really not a browser to be used in isolation.

Send in your browser feedback. Lets really sort out this browser war.

The Economic Crisis - Simplified

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Mishra) — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 19:28:00 +0000

The amount of media attention that the global economic crisis has generated is worthy of creating a newsprint crisis by itself. Surprisingly, very few of these reports have actually tried to simplify the whole picture so that a common person is able to comprehend the economic crisis. One of the major causes of the crisis has been the fact that financial instruments have become so complex that even CEOs don't get a hang of it. Even as the crisis unfolds, the media has failed to adequately simplify maintainig its tradition of keeping things complex.

Maybe its not all the fault of media. Because the crisis itself is so complex that everyone has a theory but no one has a concrete one. So, I will present mine (basically an adapted version of Thomas Friedman's

It started with 9/11. The incident caused a major downshift in comsumer demand. To fight this deflationary sentiment, the Bush administration encouraged people to spend and give a boost to the economy. The housing market was a part of this greater plan. EVERYONE was offered a loan for a house. Many articles claim that the only condition to get a house loan in this phase was a desire to express it regardless of your credit-worthiness. With credit being so easy to avail, everyone wanted a home and got it. The housing market boomed. But Bush forgot to tell Americans to take their legs off the pedal! How could he? He was busy accelerating in Iraq and Afghanistan. And a bubble got created. Prices went up like a rocket. Very soon, people started defaulting on payments. Banks realized but they had already offered too many bad loans which were now defaulting. We got the first buzzword of this saga -- subprime crisis Subprime, as I have been able to infer are that group of people whose credit worthiness is below that of a regular income group. A huge number of people were now defaulting and banks were losing huge amount of money. But how, they must have some guarantee?

They had. The house they financed was their guarantee. They seized it. But what next? As the crisis erupted, the housing bubble bursted and prices crashed. So a house funded for say Rs 10 million was only worth Rs 5 million now. Banks lost out Rs. 5 million. And unlike here in India, they couldn't go seizing the person's other assets to recover their loan.

You would have seen and read a lot of people aggressively that stock markets are only a hang-out of speculators and nothing more. They don't have any significant impact on the common man. Hopefully all that aggression has given way to some meditation about the current crisis. As the subprime crisis grew in size, the sentiment in share markets became negative. People thought that it is more prudent to sit on cash at a time when several major financial institutions (Merill Lynch, Lehmann Brothers, AIG) are cracking up. This caused the markets to enter into a freefall. Our own Indian BSE Sensex is down from its high of 21000 to 9500 levels now.

This equity crisis led to huge losses for a lot of people. The profits they had earned throughout their lives got wiped out within weeks and months. This made people cautious and caused the next monster -- demand crisis. Everyone had lost big amount of money? How? Very few people invest in share markets. Yes!! But, where do they invest? They invested in mutual funds and unit-linked insurance plans which are themselves based on share markets.I have written a post related to it earlier.

Now corporations started feeling the heat. Already with banks finding it tough to stay afloat, credit was tough to find and new projects were slowed down. With the depressed consumer demand and cracking stock prices, companies had to cut down on projection and revise their revenue projections. This eventually caused the employment crisis.

Never after the Great Depression in USA (1929-32) have all these crisises - housing, equity, demand and employment - occured together at this scale. This is why you feel the anxiousness in the voices of even the prettiest of news anchors. (Case in point - Namrata Brar on NDTV Profit. I haven't seen another better mix of beauty with some really sharp economic brain. Yes, I have a crush on her. Lets get back.)

Finally, the most common confusion! With all this mayhem starting in USA and Western Europe, why are we getting involved. I can't give a lecture on how the world has globalised and flattened and become inter-connected. (Buy Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat" - preferably through the LibraryThing link on your right. We will and have been affected. But that affect has been mitigated some what due to some prudent and watchful. You don't get a loan easily in India unless you drive a BMW. There are zillions of formalities. And if you default once, your name (using the PAN card) goes on the black-listed credit database that all banks share and you won't get another loan unless your dues (even credit card bills) are cleared. Anyways even if we got easy loans at some time, Indian mentality is not too look for too big too early. However, we got involved at the next stage - equity as a major portion of the money flow in our share markets comes from foreign institutional investors(FIIs). Hopefully our domestic demand will see us through this phase. But to completely restore order, I hope global leaders like Barack Obama, Gordon Brown, Nicholas Sarkozy, Hu Zintao and our PM Dr. Singh make a coordinated plan.

Dostana -- Its good

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Mishra) — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 16:08:00 +0000

This post was written on Saturday but due to connection problems, I wasn't able to publish it.

After the debacle called my Math Semester examination (more on it in the next post), I actually went out and saw a movie. Yeah, times have changed as Mom said "It looks like you are into an engineering college now. Going for the movie on Day 1 of your semesters."

I have a strong dislike for movie analysts and experts. The basic criterion for the dislike is the fact that if you end up watching each and every movie that is made, how can you enjoy it!! And yeah, we do appreciate good plots and every other technicalities, but the point is that when you are in the theater, are you engrossed in the story or wondering about what this character or the plot could have shaped up? I had the plan of writing a review on Dostana and so when I was watching the movie, I was making some sort of mental notes on it. Its inescapable.

Ok. A hell lot of theory on movie reviews. Now lets move on to Dostana. The movie opens up with a Shilpa Shetty dance number. The song's good. But, I have never been a big fan of hers. Though you have to say that she's looking good. My friends were gasping from the first scene onwards. What is more attractive is John!! Man, his look wil put Troy's Brad Pitt to shame. As the whole movie revolves around a gay love story, I can take the chance of calling him hot. John -- a photographer and Abhishek -- a nurse end up at Priyanka's home looking for a room in Miami. (Thats a place to workThey end up making a gay love story because Priyanka's masi won't allow two baba log to live with baby. The story is very predictable. Both end up loving Priyanka and do their best to break her courtship with the boss at her fashion mag "Bobby Deol". And as the movie ends, Priyanka goes to Bobby leaving John and Abhishek. Only in a movie!!

Now, Priyanka is looking deliriously hot, sexy, beautiful, put in the adjective of your choice. I am not competent to talk about acting in a forceful tone but, I will only say that she did great in all those happy moments. And thankfully, there weren't that many sad moments in the movie to deal with. Priyanka, it felt good to see you back in your beautiful groove. (Haven't watched Fashion till now, but friends say she's better over here.

Abhishek surely looks the more authentic gay. His comic timing is impeccable. Although not the hunk like John, there is some mysterious sexiness inherent in him. His clothing, look, everything is great. He is in the character of the imperfect person, afraid of horror movies, slapped by his mother, ..... and does it well. John is first-of-all hot, but there's nothing new for him in the movie. It was a kind-of-repeat of John in "Garam Masala". But, yes he looks the part and is a very suitable cast for the role. Kirron Kher goes bonkers when she discovers that her son is uhoh gay. The song "Ma tera munda bigar gaya" is a comic mad. The whole theater went mad with laughter. Her dialogues like "Mere ko pata nahi ki tu meri bahu he ya damad ( I don't know whether you are my son-in-law or my daughter-in-law) are comical epic stuff. Bobby as Priyanka's boss looks as ordinary as he always does. We kept wondering why Karan didn't use his Filmfare Most Powerful stuff and rope in some dude like Hrithik for the role. Basically, Bobby's part is the movie's not-so-glorious one.

Overall, its a must-watch movie, if you want to just have fun, There is no big story, but the movie does it. And yes, you won't find a movie where two mainstream actors John & Abhishek are in a lip lock. It was aaaarghhhhhh. How could they? So much for reality depiction.

What, looking for a rating or what? This is no self important bloke talking. And I can't rate a movie by watching it once.

Obama : USA is back

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Mishra) — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 17:07:00 +0000

As I was growing up,the perception that I had about USA was of a country that is at the best in most of the fields, where life is much better and the most innovative work happens. Then 9/11 happened. I still remember that Dad called from office telling about the twin towers crashing after planes hit them. And I - then a mere Std. 5 student was not shocked, more fascinated about what happened, how the best USA could be hit. I think I became a more passionate enemy of Osama than many of my age in USA would have been.

Since then USA hasn't been the same. It is known only for unnecessary aggression in Iraq, a place where amazing number of people fail in Math, drop out of college, get into drugs, its careless attitude towards climate change, its failing heritage brands like Ford and Motorola, and for the last year it is in news for causing the credit crisis. You see USA had become the big guy who has lost his mind, and after living greatly is falling out piece-by-piece. This belief was reinforced when I learnt that my USA college applications were unsuccessful because the country is cutting down on funds for outsiders and spending it on what?? Fighting senseless wars.

In midst of all this came the presidential elections. Now, I must speak the truth in my own blog. I was rooting for Hillary first because of the charisma of Bill Clinton and because I read that she would be more favorable for India. But, I often doubted my favor. Barack Obama was just such a magic. A self-made man, who studied in the best colleges, worked hard and had the slogan "Change we can believe in." God, I love those words. I often went to sleep thinking how can I support Hillary over Barack. And by the time Hillary lost, I was happy.

I haven't heard anything significant India specific from Obama apart from his tough comments on Pakistan. But still I am a fan of this man. I had done a project in Class 11 on Martin Luther King and had read a lot about how Blacks were discriminated in the States. So when Barack won and I read articles like the one Shobaa De wrote today in Deccan Chronicle describing how teary-eyed blacks listened to Obama's victory speech, it touched me. I know Obama is the president of USA and his concerns will be primarily of his own country. But I am sure a leader like him will inspire the world and lead it into newer brighter areas. I say so because I admire Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat" and one thing that he focuses on in his book is the dismal health care system in USA and here is a leader who voices the same concerns. That is a real agenda.

USA is not out of the pits. It has leaders like Sarah Palin whose motto was "Drill Baby Drill". I read a nice word for it by a Columbia professor -- "anti intellectualism" -- the rejection of everything sane and scientific. And I am still depressed that I wasn't able to fulfill my dream -- study in MIT among the world's best and change the world. But with Obama, I am sure USA will become a better, friendlier and a smarter country.

Just looking for a buyable Obama T-Shirt now.

In Search of better brand names

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Mishra) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 18:08:00 +0000

I have fallen in love with watching television due to the brilliant quality that Tata Sky manages on our vintage decade old BPL television. See the picture and sound quality, and you will be convinced that you should also shift to DTH (Direct to home). This segment is very Big and Digital these days. By the way, that is also the name of the two new competitors that have launched in the DTH space. Surely, there is a big crisis of new brand names when people still launch products with the name “Digital” years after even our bikes engines became digital.

I was recently working on deciding a name for a project that I am doing with a couple of my friends and we also felt it unexplainably tough to come up with a proper name. But, I hope with an advertising budget of Rs. 1200 crore – a combined figure for all DTH operators, there could have been more effort. Now, Reliance ADA (Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group) has named all its entertainment sings – movie production, distribution, music label, FM radio etc. as Big. So, you have big music and big movies.............. I don’t know what you feel, but I find Big very odd. I didn’t know when using common names as your brand became the latest trend among brand managers.

If this surprised me, imagine what would have been my reaction the first time I saw the advertisement of Digital TV. I thought it is just another feature of their product until I realised that it was actually the name of the brand. Unlike Reliance’s Big, digital TV has no logo or stylised “digital” text also. Is the economic recession responsible for this too?

No, I don’t think so. This has become a trend – an unexplainable one. Why will someone name his work so shabbily? Earlier too, we have Big Bazaar and while roaming through the Main market area of Ranchi, one of the better shops was named Big Shop. Maybe, it is all about just how big you are!

If companies are doing it for the sake of easy recall among the lesser affluent class, they should have named it Airtel TV, or Reliance TV – that is way better.
I managed to visit both Reliance Mart as well as Reliance Fresh in this trip. The earlier is based in a large double-storey building while the latter is a much smaller version. Both are part of Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Retail. But I wonder if the same group has been behind designing the logo and look of both the companies, Mart looks very cheap and has a bad shade of Red. Someone really watched Om Shanti Om a lot of times before coming up with the staff dress. On the other hand, Fresh looks cool in green (also green n fresh – nice combination).

I have read many a times about the huge scarcity of movie and television scripts. Looks like the problem has spread to the advertising and branding mediums also.

Internet in India

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Mishra) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 11:50:00 +0000

This post is out of sheer frustration. Now, I have written enough about the (lack of internet facilities in my college. It is irritating because almost most of my works have an online component - or I put one in them. Its same right?? I had told my parents to get a broadband connection at my home in Ranchi. They shifted out of Patna a month after I joined college. After some discussion, we settled on BSNL broadband. Numbed by the lack of trouble-free net access, I was desperate to get one clean passage at home. But someone told Dad that BSNL is hopelessly bad over here in Ranchi. Net result: we revived our old Reliance NetConnect "wireless net" connection. It took 1000 bucks and now it is lifetime free.

If you are not in a mood to listen to any more of my diatribe, just read this: Never ever get a Reliance Netconnect and not let anyone else to take it Its the worst thing to have hit India after the shameless and obviously contentless news channels.

You simply can't do anything on Netconnect. The speed hovers around 5 kbps. Yes - 5. I wasn't able to open up my Yahoo mail account in 15 attempts. Forget it, if you have any bigger task on hand.

The problem is what are the options. Tata's plug2surf though better is widely insufficient for the media-rich net of today. BSNL has huge reliability issues. Our landlord says that he has never been able to complete a job while working on BSNL. Airtel, Reliance and Tata don't offer cable broadband in India. Even in metroes, there MBPS plans are simply unaffordable.

Wondering if a solution exists.

Indian Sports - The Mess Within

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Mishra) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 13:55:00 +0000

The weekend holidays gave me a nice time to hang around with Pritesh. (Photo not available. Pritesh is a great friend of mine and my partner in our upcoming mobile notification project. But this post is not about me or Pritesh or our partnership. With all that I have told, the one more important thing is that Pritesh has played Table Tennis (TT) at national level. I came to know yesterday that he was actually India no. 3 while in Class 9 He has participated in three tournaments as yet and helped VIT to win or finish in positions unknown before for my not so sporty university.

He, by the way, suffered a very bad leg injury while travelling to a venue in Karnataka. Reason: My university didn't made necessary arrangements and my friend sat in an unnecessary manner. I have just played TT once, but the conversation around me assures me of the fact that Pritesh at least deserves a proper chance to realise his full potential. But, that looks very remote considering the fact that he is really low-beat about the whole infrastructure and support that sports get in India.

I have always been very sad to see our hopelessly miserable record in all non-cricket sports. Though, I love cricket and don't agree with the fact that it is responsible for the condition of other sports. We actually did a few calculations yesterday and found out that VIT's Table-Tennis team needs a sponsorship of about Rs. 50,000-60,000 (both men's and women's) for playing comfortably. The University now gives players Rs. 100 per day (that excludes only accomodation, I suppose). It is absurd. It should be a minimum of Rs. 200. But, the problem is not with my institution. It is with the general attitude. Pritesh told me that host colleges generaaly shy away from providing proper facilities. I don't count making students stay in classrooms and go a mile for toilet to be proper. The story is the same even at a national-level tournament. You get almost nothing.

On my relentless insistence, we found out that a sum of Rs. 30,000 will be enough for Pritesh to have his best shot to compete at international level. I have read so much about corporates talking about CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility). For all its high ambitions, the requirement for CSR is simple. Invest in sponsoring college teams or at least individuals. Sponsorship money really needs to flow in urgently. Because, every Indian is not lucky enough like Abhinav Bindra, whose father made a shooting range in his home for his son to practice. But the problem is that middle-class India also has certain standards. It can't adjust with the pre-independence style of ill-treatment.

But, money is not the only problem. People need skilled opponents too. That means, there must be a critical mass of players for any game to survive. The other, even more important thing is that sports need glamour. If someone does good, it needs to be broadcasted, hyped....... whatever unless people understand it. I don't see that any sport can ever have reasonable amount of support. Either its pure hysteria or complete "Who cares" attitude. The hysteria is better.

I really hope that some passionate marketing chief or CEO will read this post one day and execute his passion. All of us will love to see a bigger number on our medals tally. Both Pritesh and his unknown sponsor need to pull their socks up.

My first blood donation

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Mishra) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 14:46:00 +0000

Mom got it right - what was I doing with blood donation!! You know, I am one of those who has had luckily few interactions with the needle and certainly doesn't look forward to it. But, this Tuesday, when I suddenly heard that a senior is in need, I clinched a victory over my fear. The fact that five of us were going was relieving.

We had to wait for a long time to get our blood tested. The questioning first by nurse and then by the doctor was incredibly funny. Questions about medical history were okay, but ones like "paraya aurat ke paas gaya" (have you gone to an unknown woman?) -- add to it the accent of South-Indian Hindi! We wondered the irony - let us get one first, then the question arises of another, right?

But, hospitals are not a place of fun - the myriad hospital romances not withstanding. Teh next morning, I and Abhishek witnessed an unconsolable women who most probably lost her spouse. It was not a scene which you want to see - anytime, anywhere. I also met the patient - not our senior as we had guessed earlier, but an Air Force man. I thought that its the least we can do for the Forces. We returned in afternoon -- 4 of us this time. The process was not very painful, just very boring. Warned by Anuradha Ma'am - our caring Physics teacher, we were cautious. At the end of it, I was proud to have done it. Hopefully, the receiver will recover soon.

The XPS goes down

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Mishra) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:17:00 +0000

After the repeated formattings, my XPS just gave up on Tuesday. It went dead- no activity at all on pressing the power button. I had to go for blood donation, so couldn't look into it at that moment (which was after the Chemistry Lab).

(I am writing this after the idiotic restricted IE or the proxy connection lost all my work half an hour back)
After I returned in the evening, situation got tense. I had no clue what happened. A friend of mine, Vishnu (campus representative of Mozilla - cool no!) looked into it. He has XPS (in black, doesn't look better than mine - Vishnu). We replaced battery, tried without power. Nothing worked. As Dell shuts down customer service at 6 p.m., I had no option but to wait. As I had to go for blood donation in the morning, it was going to be a rather long wait.

After I returned from CMC (Christian Medical College) in the morning, the customer service got it quick. A capacitor on my motherboard had got fried and since there were holidays on Wednesday and Thursday, I will have to wait till Monday. So much for XPS Premier Support!! Considering the fact that the Dell factory is an hour away, I can't see the logic. Nor can I see a capacitor on a week-old XPS going dead.

I have to make a paper on GPS assisted mobile advertising and start work on very interesting mobile-notices software in the weekend. A bad time for XPS to go wrong. You have got it wrong Dell!!

My marks & Wall Street - Unexplainable

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Mishra) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 14:01:00 +0000

Thats right. I haver got a 50 in Physics, 47 in English, 44 in Chemistry and a decent 32 in Math. You will say (and Dad always says) that I wrote how bad my exams were. I wrote so, but the marking has been liberal. It easens things up a bit. If I can score well with the input time that I gave before this exam, I can do quite well by systematic studies.

Thats nice and will leave me with sufficient time for working on my projects, which is limited to reading a basic networking book only till now.

On the other hand, Wall Street - the center of world economy (though there isn't one according to Friedman's World is Flat theory) cracked. The companies that were the dream merchants - Lehmann Brothers, Merill Lynch and AIG have gone bust. These companies employed the world's best minds. I wonder how none of them were able to figure out this mess. Its ironical how subprime crisis alone was able to account for all these dream merchants. The whole thing reminds me of a quote by Michael Dell that I read somewhere
"IBM does complicated buisness. They thrive on complexities. We at Dell try to simplify things for our customers." There is a strong analogy with the current crisis here. Normally banks are supposed to take deposits from customers and invest them - earn revenue, pay interest and keep a share of pie for themselves as profit. These companies that have gone bust aren't due to a sudden withdrawl of fund by customers. They have gone down playing in a maze of risk hedging, mortgaging, transfer and insurance of bad assets.

Wonder why none of the best buisness minds of the world ever gave importance to keeping things simple.