So far we have added features that let you calculate the correct fare for both Taxi’s as well as Autorickshaw’s in Mumbai. In addition to this, you can also calculate the correct midnight fare for journeys after 12:00 midnight. In case you have a problem with the autorickshaw, you can call the toll free helpline started by the RTO, right from the application itself.

I am pretty excited about this application, and we do have a lot of more nifty features that we will roll out soon (including our entry into the Android Marketplace). Please do use the application and let me know how you liked it or why you didn’t like it and what features/improvements we can add in future versions.

PS: We are also on Twitter, so please follow for updates.

Cheater Meter

I have been a bit busy of late, so its been a while since my last post. What have I been up to of late ? Well not much other than “work” and a few pet side projects.

One of them materialized very recently as a result of a hike in the autorickshaw fares in the city. Earlier, one could calculate the fare payable by the simple formula of (10*meter-reading)-1. Life was good, but noooo… the autorickshaw unions had to go on strike to demand a raise. Following a very successful flash strike, the government relented and hiked the administered price to Rs.11 as the base fare for the first 1.6km and Rs.6.5 for every km thereafter. The result? Well other than the increased cost of an auto ride, the painful mental math needed to calculate the correct fare. In this case (13*meter-reading)-2.

This got me thinking – Could I somehow make it easier for me to calculate this on my phone? So I got round to creating a simple android application for the phone (tentatively called cheater meter).

The result is a fairly nifty app that lets you calculate the fare payable for both autorickshaws and taxi’s, created in record time over two evenings (pats self on back). I’m still working out a few kinks in it and it should be coming to an app store near you soon. There will also be a web app for all the non android phones out there (in collaboration with my good pal Aditya). Watch this space for more.

Read the rest of this piece of analysis below…

Tedx Mumbai

Well, I’ll now get into a short review of what I thought of the talks. Of course, this is my own personal view and is shaped by my own experiences and knowledge and might not accurately reflect on a speaker’s skill or knowledge. (I does take an immense amount of guts to deliver a short five minute talk, hats off to you guys !! I’m sure the shots helped )

1. How to hack your way into an BEST Bus – Asfaq Tapia
   This was the talk I was most looking forward to actually. Maybe I over-hyped it in my mind, or maybe Asfaq just had the bad luck of starting first, this one just didn’t do it for me. Asfaq talked about how you could ensure that you got a seat in a crowded BEST bus, something that every mumbaikar ought to know. True, the talk was imaginative, humorous and very practical – but somehow it ended up being just good and not great.
2. Power of online communities: The wisdom of online communities – Aditya Rao
   This was the second talk, and the first slide had the words Asimov, Star Wars and I thought  – yup looks like this might be interesting. What followed was pretty disappointing. Aditya talked about the wisdom of crowds and how it might shape our futures. It started out well, but ended up parroting the same mundane examples you would find in Wikinomics or the gazillion social media books out there. The glimpse of the future wasn’t bold enough, though the touch on Asimov’s Foundation series was interesting. All told, a big #fail for me.
3. The problem with happiness – Amit Klein
   When Amit told me that he would be talking about happiness, I wasn’t very sure what he would be talking about. What followed was an interesting look at what happiness really means to us, how people have attempted to quantify it and five very practical tips on being happy. One of my favorite talks of the evening. (Amit, though one of your tips did sound a lot like the “All Izz Well” philosophy. Also see this essay by Michael Crichton on Happiness)
4. “Let the waves carry you to another shore” – KN Venkitaraman
   Engineering, Football, Nostalgia and the crucial life lessons learned in the four grueling years that it takes to fashion another mindless engineer is what this talk was about. It was witty in parts, funny, hilarious and taught some really practical life lessons. This was my favorite talk of the evening, possibly because I am engineer myself.
5. Not Another NGO! Building a modern movement in India – Amanda White
   A bit intense in comparison to the light and fun filled talks that preceded it, this talk by Amanda looked at NGO’s in India, her work at a non-profit dedicated to getting fair trade goods to consumers in India and how being just another NGO is not enough. It was a very insightful look at how NGO’s ought to operate in India
6. Interesting observations about Urban India – Harshil Karia
   Another nice talk on our little “Indian quirks”, it nevertheless wasn’t uniformly great. It did have some excellent ideas though, like turning the parliament into a reality TV show and covering walls with mirrors.
7. Words spell Sword – Ralston D’souza
   Well, I somehow really didn’t get this particular one. To me it sounded more like an English Literature class, and reminded me of the days when we first learned about figures of speech. Towards the end, with Benny Hill entering the picture, it became downright weird. I think this was a talk that needed a lot more than five minutes to get its point across.
8. Keeping a couple fight from becoming a break-up fight – Rohan Joseph
   I love the way that this talk started with a very Indexed like Venn diagram. The talk was witty and funny, but since I have never really been a relationship I can’t really comment on the practicality of the advice doled out. It did remind me a lot though, of this piece by Michael Crichton on how to fight.
9. How to explain almost everything – Karan Talwar
   I thought this was an interesting premise until Karan uttered the words economics or something that suggested economics. What followed was more parroting of examples explained in books like “SuperFreakonomics”, “Freakonomics” and “Undercover Economist”. Of course having read these books and having followed the field quite a bit, it seemed so to me. Karan did do a good job delivering the talk, though I felt his material was better handled in a longer format.
10. Mumbai and You – Mansi Trivedi
    Mansi’s talk on the pet quirks on Mumbaikars started off quite well, but lost steam somewhere in the middle and towards the end I just couldn’t care. She did hit a number of points spot on in the first half of her talk, but later on I guess it meandered a bit. Still a good effort.

To sum up – Had a great evening listening to some great ideas. For me, the best three talks were the ones by KN Venkitaraman, Amit Klein and Rohan Joseph (in that order). I do hope to speak at one of these events someday, though will have to brainstorm on the idea that I will present.

PS: A word to the organizers – Cafe Goa was nice, but please choose a place that’s a bit easier to get to next time

Also really sorry that I had to miss out on the after party.I had to get home and get gear etc ready for an early morning birding trip.

• Allegation #1 – Mr. Tharoor used his position and influence to get the deal done in favor for the Kochi consortium
  Hmm…this is an interesting one, considering that there is a certain politician who is virtually the patron saint of Indian Cricket and who could have gotten the deal done with more certainty and less hoopla. Also the winning bid for Kochi stood at Rs.1,476 crores, while the losing bid was apparently way lower. For someone who is supposed to have helped “rig” the process, he certainly overbid and did a poor job at that. So what exactly is Mr.Tharoor supposed to have helped do ?
• Allegation #2 – Mr. Tharoor received Rs.70 crore as a fee for his role, that he sought to disguise as free “sweat” equity paid to one Ms. Sunanada Pushkar
  Again, for doing a poor job I don’t think you get a reward. Still lets see this too. Well, first of all it’s the Kochi Consortium’s money, they can very well give away all of it if they wish. I don’t think we should be bothered as long as its not public money that finds the way into that 70 crore amount. Also, remember that the IPL and BCCI are private trusts, and contrary to public belief not arms of the government. Secondly, on the issue of tax evasion, while I don’t really know what the IT rules are, I don’t think taxes really come into the picture on notional income which isn’t yet realized. It would be like paying taxes every time your bonus shares go up in price. However here I may be wrong.
• Allegation #3 – Mr. Tharoor’s antics in public did not befit a minister of his stature
  Guilty as charged. Mr. Tharoor what on earth were you thinking ?

To summarize, in my opinion, Mr. Tharoor may or may not be guilty of points one or two, but its certainly not right for us to crucify the man before all the facts tumble out (and boy are they tumbling out).

So far Mr. Tharoor only seems to be guilty of being in love with the limelight, and lets hope for his sake that it only seems to be that once all the dust has settled

After much pondering I decided that what I was really looking for was a phone that featured a camera, could play music (with a radio), surf the internet, get me on twitter etc on the go, allow me to install apps, show my location using GPS + maps and maybe allow me edit documents.  The first phone that came to mind was the iPhone, but in my opinion it was way overpriced at about Rs.33, 000 (I could replace my desktop I think for that price, plus I’m no fan of Apple’s pricing and for how it treats its users). Initially I had narrowed down to either a Nokia 5800 or Nokia E72. Both phones had most of everything I wanted and were a lot cheaper than the iPhone. On a whim I decided to check out what android phones were available in the market, and after much thought I narrowed down on the Samsung Galaxy Spica.

What’s in the box?

The Spica comes with a charger, USB data cable, Stereo hands-free kit, Software disc and a nice leathery case for the phone.

Hardware

The Spica comes with a gorgeous 3.2” TFT screen that is only slightly smaller than the iPhone screen. It has a capacitive touchscreen, and I can attest that it is highly responsive. The Spica is powered by an 800MHz processor which in my experience has been able to speedily handle anything that has been thrown at it so far. The phone features four main buttons for taking calls, hanging up the phone, pulling up the menu and for exiting options/ apps on screen. In addition to this it has a four way controller with an OK button in the center of the key arrangement and dedicated keys to bring up search and the home screen. On the sides it has volume control buttons, screen lock key and a dedicated camera button. The top of the phone has the headphone jack (standard 3.5 mm) and ports for USB connectivity. Overall it has a nice solid feel about it.

Connectivity

The phone comes equipped with Bluetooth, GPS, wi-fi and a digital compass. Bluetooth can by default only pair with Bluetooth capable devices. However it seems that downloading an app from the Android marketplace will enable file transfers. Ditto for the digital compass, there is no app for that in the phone. I wish Samsung had pre-installed an app for the compass. I haven’t yet tried out wi-fi on it, but I imagine it should be snappy. Lastly the GPS is quite quick. I was able to get a quick lock on a satellite and pinpoint my location on the map pretty fast.

Software

Twidroid on the Spica

Spica runs Andorid 1.5 (Cupcake). However Samsung is currently in the process of releasing an Andorid 2.1 (Éclair) firmware update for the phone, which means that this humble phone will soon be running the latest Android OS. The phone comes pre-installed with the standard Google apps like GTalk, Gmail, Google Maps etc. All the Google apps synch with my online accounts exceedingly well. It also has some social apps like MySpace, Facebook and Orkut installed.  I also downloaded a few apps from the Android Market for Twitter, Evernote, a few games etc. I have been pretty happy with them so far. My only grouse is that it comes with just 200 MB of memory, which seems a tad less for installing apps. While it’s true you can expand the memory to about 32 GB using the SD card slot, I am given to understand that you can’t run apps off the SD card without “rooting” the phone.

Browsing on the phone is a pleasure. The pages load exactly like on a PC browser (wherever mobile versions of web pages aren’t available). You can pan across the page, zoom out and zoom in on a particular part of the page quite easily. In fact this morning, the browser came to my rescue. I had set up a ruby script on my server for some research work that I was doing and suddenly realized that I need to set up another script. I could log on to net2FTP, copy the script, make changes to it and then log on to my server control panel and set up the cron task all from my phone browser!!

The Spica has three customizable home screens on which you can add shortcuts, widgets etc. The Éclair update is expected to expand the number of screens as well.

And the best part – the much vaunted multi-tasking does work!!! I have often clicked on a link in Twidroid and then switched back to it while the page loads in the background. It works very well, though I suspect it does play havoc with battery life. More on that later.

Camera

The phone has a decent 3 mp camera. The camera is without flash and in well lit conditions it takes fairly good photographs with accurate color reproduction. However in low light situations it doesn’t have stellar performance.

Sample Photograph

Multimedia

The Spica can play MP3’s on its installed multimedia app.  In addition to this it can apparently play DivX movies right out of the box, without any need for conversion. I haven’t played either of them so far so I can’t comment on the quality or performance of the device in this area. The phone however does not have a radio. I did think of using Pandora on it, however it turns out Pandora isn’t available in India.

Battery Life

Now this is something I am not very sure of. Thing is while I don’t really have many calls, maybe a maximum of 15-30 minutes in a day, I have however really played around with web apps. I have found myself checking twitter every 20 minutes or so, chatting on GTalk as well as checking mail frequently. In addition to this, thanks to multi-tasking most apps remain open even after you seemingly exit them. This is possibly to bring up the app faster when you use it again, but it does drain the battery. So with all this tinkering around and having GPRS/EDGE on all day, I have found that the battery lasts little over 2 days. Whether this is good or bad, I really don’t know because I don’t have a frame of reference.

To sum up, I think the Spica is good phone. It has pretty much catered to all the requirements I had of a phone and done admirably well in every aspect. If you are looking at getting a smart phone, I’d definitely recommend it.

Oh, I forgot the best part, it’s cheap!!! It cost me about Rs.12500 or about one third the cost of an iPhone. I’ll leave you with that thought for now.

Sometime last month, my good pal and former colleague from JP Morgan, Soumen asked me whether I wanted to accompany him and another pal of his on a trip to Dapoli. The description of the place seemed interesting and there were forts nearby (have a fascination for old forts), so I decided to tag along.

Dapoli, a small town in Ratnagiri, along the Konkan coastline is about a 5 hour drive from Mumbai. The place boasts of being a mini-hill station, as the elevation rises quickly to 800ft above sea level within just 7km from the sea shore. It has a number of beautiful beaches close by, some old forts, an excellent agricultural university, old temples, caves, hot water springs, parasailing, ATV rides on the beach, dolphin spotting, plenty of spots for birding and some fantastic local cuisine. In short, there is something for everyone at Dapoli.

We left Mumbai early on Saturday morning by a semi-luxury ST Bus from Borivali. It was probably not the most ideal mode of transport, given that it took almost 2 hours to exit the city, but I guess we had few other options. The ST bus ride usually takes six hours from Mumbai to Dapoli, on account of the numerous stops along the way. In our case we took probably 8 hours, courtesy of a flat tire along the way. We finally reached Dapoli at about three in the afternoon, just in time for lunch. After a quick lunch we headed to our next stop.

Accommodation was courtesy of the uncle of a friend of Soumen’s, who generously gave us his empty flat to stay in. He even arranged for a car for us travel around as well as gave us a guided tour of the place. In the evening we headed off to the nearby Murud beach. Murud beach is pretty close to Dapoli, and is probably a popular hangout for people visiting Dapoli. The beach wasn’t as deserted as I expected, given my previous experience at Tarkarli. You actually had camels on the beach, along with ATV’s and parasailing. We spent some time on the beach, before deciding what we would do the next day. Dinner was some excellent fried pomfret at a local restaurant.

The next day we set out first on a short visit to uncle’s farmhouse. They were harvesting mangos at his farm and we got see some excellent specimens. After this we paid a visit to some caves which also hosted an ancient temple. The region was once ruled by Muslim rulers who destroyed any temples in the region. This caused the temple to move underground to a safe location. After this we went onwards towards Dabhol, the location of the controversial Enron built power plant. We spent some time at the ferry docks there, chatting with some boat owners who regaled us to tales of the seas, storms and pitched gun battles on the high seas. In the evening we went towards Harne, a fishing town some distance from Dapoli. The ride to the place was breathtaking, with sparkling white beaches seen from the hilltop road. We visited the famous Kadyavarcha Ganpati temple, passed by Kanakdurg fort, the old church of Harnai and tons of fish being dried on the hillside. A tank near the temple presented a unique birding opportunity. In the ten odd minutes that we were there, we saw a golden oriole, a pair of spotted doves, coppersmith barbets, magpie robins and an Asian paradise flycatcher.

Prawns on sale at the Harne fish market

We spent the remainder of the evening at the landing area near the fort, where fresh catch was being landed on shore. It was fascinating to see the entire process of  the catch being landed, auctioned and packaged in a matter of a few minutes. We then moved on to Murud beach, where we had arranged for stay on the beach.  Dinner this time was fried pomfrets, kingfish and prawns  on the beach with some wine and good friends for company. We finished the day with a walk on the beach at almost midnight, looking up at the stars in the sky and planning out our next trip to Ladakh.

We woke up early in the morning on the next day so that we could head out to sea to try and spot some dolphins. Luckily we managed to spot a good number of them in a short while. After that we went back to the beach for some breakfast and then proceeded to return to Dapoli. We spent the rest of the day getting a guided tour of the facilities at Dr. Balasaheb Sawant Kokan Krishi Vidyapeeth, one of the prominent agricultural universities in Maharashtra. It was an interesting journey through the manicured gardens of the university. We also saw the university’s various plantations like Sapodilla, Brinjal, Rubber etc. We also saw the university’s greenhouses and saw how mushrooms were being cultivated. Some of the other interesting things that we saw included a visit to the winery at the university where they were experimenting with creating wine from cashew instead of grapes. The sample that we tasted there was quite good. We also saw how biological pesticides are used to control pests as well as got a peek into a state of the art transgenic research lab where research was on into making more varieties of Bt crops. We ended the day with a visit to the 1000-2000 acre Bio-Diversity Park that the department of horticulture created at the University.

The next day we got back to Mumbai by an afternoon bus which thankfully took just 6 hours. Dapoli was an interesting trip overall, and though I didn’t get to finish everything on my list there, I had a nice time there. The hospitality and the kindness of strangers there really made my day. I’m hoping to visit the place again after the monsoons so that I can explore the region further.

Greenpeace bought out a video that showed the effect that palm oil cultivation (a key ingredient in the chocolates that Nestle makes) has on the ecology and how it’s leading to a shrinking habitat for the orangutan. The video, which was up on YouTube, showed the KitKat logo (a Nestle product), with words “Killer” instead of KitKat. Nestle, citing trademark violations, had the video pulled down from YouTube. Greenpeace then turned to its army of twitter followers to help in hosting the video elsewhere on the Internet and the video went viral. All this also attracted attention to Nestle’s Facebook Fan Page, where Greenpeace activists turned “fans” were already launching an assault on the brand. A number of people started posting comments using the morphed logo with the words “Killer” as their avatar. This led to Nestle putting out a request to people to stop “violating” their trademark. A couple of high handed comments from the Nestle people managing the fan page ensured that this snowballed into an all out assault. People joined up as “fans” just to put in their 10 cents on how much they hated Nestle and how Nestle shouldn’t have asserted their right to their trademark. In the end it seems that Nestle has one big great PR screw-up in the hands.

A number of blog posts were of the opinion that had Nestle followed the rules of engaging with “fans” or what could be called “Social Media 101”, this whole fiasco could have been prevented or at least mitigated to some extent. Some of them even put forward ways in which Nestle could have re-worded some of its comments so as to make them more palatable.

I have two basic problems with this whole take on the issue:

1. It’s easy to give arm-chair advice after an event has happened.
2. This isn’t some consumer complaining, that you can “handle” through the normal manner.

I’ll elaborate a bit more on my second grouse. All the various suggestions put forward are brilliant and are absolutely the right thing to do if you are dealing with genuine “fans” of your brand or even genuine “critics” of your brand. Note the emphasis is on genuine here. By genuine, I mean to say that these are “real” people, “real” consumers, you get the drift. In my opinion, the playbook goes out of the window when you are confronted with a rogue social army with its own agenda for your brand, hell bent on pulling you down no matter what you do. In this case, reason does not work, especially when the issue seems to be fuelled more by FUD than any real shortcoming of the brand.

I’d liken handling such social media crises to being a hostage negotiator. Consider a situation where say a bank (your brand) has been taken over and you are called in to negotiate the release of hostages. In the first case imagine that the hostage takers are just a bunch of irate customers who decided that it was a good way to show their displeasure by turning up at the bank with a loaded gun. Maybe they have just had a really crappy experience with your bank’s products or maybe they just had a bad day, either way a skillful negotiator can win them over by engaging with them. A really skillful one can even get them to “turn themselves in” without any damage to the bank. This is what I’d liken handling normal brand criticism to.

On the other hand, now imagine the same bank taken over by a professional crew or a bunch of terrorists, hell bent on their own agenda. In the case of terrorists they might not even want to “take” any hostages or leave the bank undamaged. Are they likely to listen to reason? Is “negotiating” with them even useful or just plain counter-productive? Shouldn’t you just call in SWAT to end this quickly and painlessly?

Well, when you are specifically targeted by a special interest group with an agenda that they want to force on your brand, I think it ought to feel precisely like the case above. As to what the SWAT option should be, I really don’t have any answers. It’s probably still early days to craft a credible strategy to deal with these kinds of social media attacks, but I believe that as social media goes more mainstream the frequency of such attacks on brands will only increase and brands had better be prepared then.

PS: Just to clarify the intention of this post is not to support Nestle or to show Greenpeace in a poor light.