Happy Deepawali

My wife, Seema, puts lot of efforts on festivals. We really had great fun last weekend.



More on this festival,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diwali

Bye for now...

Fall and now winter...
Finally Fall is here and surprisingly very early winter.. Temperatures are about 20F below normal..



But still some good colors... I captured this with Canon 350D/Rebel XT and Manula focus Takumar 50mm/f1.4 lens.
Cheers...

Zune Phone

I wrote a blog on Zune media Player by Microsoft. Seems like Microsoft is taking one more step in becoming (Multi) media Hardware vendor. There is very interesting statement,

In response to: The software giant’s Zune people at the event were asked whether that was any indication Microsoft might evolve its media player into a cell phone at some point.

“We’re definitely exploring the possibilities,” Chris Stephenson, general manager of global marketing for Zune, told reporters.

What what we need to find whether Zune will have softphone capability or full functional phone. What does this mean,

-> Softphone capability: A software client will provided, which can be sold through current or new telecom operators or MSN Live service can be used as platform to provide end to end communications. In this case. Zune will take advantage of in built WiFi capability to connect to network.

-> Full functional phone: Sold through wireless operators channels and will have all the air interface support. This will need change in basic Zune architecture, as in that case it will be phone first (regulatory commitments) and media device as add on features.

But every thing will come down to one thing, whats the OS of Zune. As I wrote earlier, I am hoping, it will not be Windows. But I may be wrong (I am hearing some version of Windows Mobile is coming as part of this player).

Hey, I am waiting for iPhone now and seems like Nokia Internet Tablet is getting tough competition (what competition.. to me Microsoft can create market.. and Nokia will sell its product.

Most interesting thing all are missing is changing landscape of personal computing devices. In 90's Apple took the approach of Hardware + Software, and Microsoft used the open Hardware architecture to sell its software. After making lot billionaires, Microsoft strategy is nose diving (check 5 years stock prices). Apple is finally showing new Mantra in this new world. (Although I still think, Apple will make more money in from its OS than selling cheap but fantastically designed media devices). Microsoft eventual entry in media device (Zune) and already presence in Gaming platform (XBOX) has again put in direct fight with Apple.

Deja vu..

Cheers...

technorati tags:Microsoft, Apple, Zune, Nokia

Blogged with Flock

Content 2.0

Its like a fashion these days to add 2.0 anything related to web. It all started with AJAX/Community driven concepts/sharing/Mash up.

In between all this, Music (lets talk about audio content only) remained same go either Apple way (cool player, great user experiance with affordable price for content) or every one else (from Napster to go to illegal downloading). In between Sony did biggest blunders, first launching digital music player without MP3 support and finally flawed DRM implementation in Music CD.

Microsoft was sitting at the back trying to put power in almost all non-Apple devices (with DRM and PC based software). Finally Microsoft is in the ring, not for boxing showdown, but for Sumo wrestling.

Microsoft finally launched Zune, its first entry into audio content device (Microsoft is already in gaming, XBOX).

Zune is really making music and content 2.0 in terms of downloading and distribution. Main specs of Zune are,

WiFi, 30GB of HDD, built-in FM, a 3-inch screen and the basic music, pictures and video playback

To me these functionality are going to make it distinctive from me too (lets keep Apple out of picture, that has cult following),

-> WiFi connectivity: Its not just basic but peer-2-peer (P2P) support, which is key in future evolution. File sharing among communities, software updates to focussed services (catering audiophiles) will become key differentiators.

-> DRM control: Zune is taking mobile DRM approach (Distribution/Super distribution). Now the user can share the content to different parties, with/without using network. The receiver can use the content for 3 days, and after that can buy the usage licence online. This will fill the gap in the creating communities for music fans (we need to understand, biggest online communities are music focussed.. MySpace also started as rock band fans community, rest is history).

Thats why I am calling this: "Content 2.0" world...

Finally Microsoft is putting its home in order, I am hoping, Zune is not using Windows/DOS based OS. It will be shame, if they are using. Whatever people say, only other product Microsoft is able to seel (than Windows OS) is XBOX, and that is surely not Windows.

Next blog will touch this in more details...

Cheers...

technorati tags:MicroSoft, DRM, Web 2.0

Blogged with Flock

Where am I...

I was out of sight (blogging, of course) for a long time. Reason, My future blogs will tell.

I was adding tons of glass in my photography equipment. I am not millionaire, so can't buy canon L lens (luxury or what.. dont know for what it stands for). But I found a way to add top class lens in my bag, old manual focus prime lens from '50s and '60.

I will write in details about these in future...

in the meantime, you can see some results on my flickr site,

http://www.flickr.com/photos/asbalyan/tags/manual/

Cheers....

New toy: Digital SLR

Finally after waiting for 2 years, I got my Digital SLR, Canon Rebel XT. This is a gift from my partner, friend.. oops.. why to use so many words, from my wife. There is nothing to say about this camera. Web is full of reviews and discussions regarding this. These are good review links...

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos350d/
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/xt-350d.shtml

I bought without any lense (just body) from Amazon.

This cool stuff for Photography enthusiast.

will keep the folks updated...
Bye for now.. (let me go a click few more pics).

Gates, Legacy and Historical Blunders

Gates, Legacy and Historical Blunders

Media, chat sessions and Internet (publish) is full with news of Bill Gates exit from Microsoft. Its too early to say whether “Chairman” Bill Gates will act as “American corporate” chairman or “active” board leader.
  
My views,
In Hindi, there is a saying, “Der aye, Durast Aye”…  “Although the happening is late, but finally is here”.

I was strong proponent of Bill Gates exit and for making him a visionary who “was”. Microsoft did the historic blunder in keeping the company intact during anti trust case. The left over company could have kept its product evolutions without “super czar” sitting on the top.

The technology industry history is full of “Legendry” creating utter chaos in their dawn,

The gold medal for the blunder should go to Wang Industries. Does anyone now remember this company? Only mention on internet you can find is, John Chambers (Current Cisco President and CEO) was once executive of that company. You can write books on this company. I am pasting the Wikipedia link,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Laboratories

Father of innovation in manufacturing, Henry Ford, single handedly gave the #1 auto crown to general motors. Reason, he was thinking only he had vision and capabilities to make auto a mass product. He was right when he was thinking “he had” but was squarely wrong when he was thinking “only he had”.

Fast forward 80 years and you will have Déjà vu: Microsoft, Bill gates and Windows/Office/Explorer…   (Ford industries, H. Ford & Model T).

The list can go on and on….   But I want salute Bill Gates for his vision which he had 20 years back and which he had shown now by taking himself out of Microsoft daily routines. He should stick to his wording.
And he has time and money along with geeky brain; why not try to create another intellectual powerhouse. Software is one industry, and now he is free from shackles of this particular domain...  Go ahead…

Infosys and China:

There is a nice blog written by Vinnie Mirchandani on the upcoming Software outsourcing firm and their bussiness model (on high level). There is small discussion in comments section between Vinnie and me.

http://dealarchitect.typepad.com/deal_architect/2006/05/the_infosys_of_.html

Vinnie:
"......But Chinese firms will evolve very differently from Indian ones. They will borrow capital and aggressively make Western acquisitions. Indian firms in spite of huge valuations are still primarily organic in growth and self-funded till they go IPO (with exceptions like Patni which took capital from GA). China offers its firms a lot better infrastructure than India. The talent, at least for now, is cheaper than in India............"


My coments: (I corrected some spellings here, these are not changing any meanings)
"hmmm... 17% cranes.. its interesting that with 17% of occupancy, what these cranes are doing... (I don’t have any data... but I heard the occupancy rate is very low (it was high in original post)...
Another thing… you write lot of business processes and knowledge based industry... How come you have so much regard about "catching game". 10 years, new boom in other industry.. . Is country is right to invest every time to create this "forced" boom. I am of view, that most of industries moved to China in '70s because of geo-political situation. (Put fingure (was figure) on the political map of 70s and 80s, there were 4 types of countries: US and rich western allies, Dictatorships in third world countries supporting US and west but highly unstable political situation, USSR with its colonies and finally, democracies in third world countries but supporting USSR political ideology, making these countries politically stable but economically unviable. China was a gold mine with political stability and anti-USSR political thinking.
This can be a long discussion... in short, last 30 years can not be taken as base for future jobs migration and wealth creation. It’s anew world with new challenge.
Not easy to be Infosys or Wipro or Tata... New companies should try to focus on new gold mines... Remember gold crazy west, eventually become wild west…"

Vinnie:
" Avneesh, thanks for your comments. I said Chinese vendors will start to challenge Indian vendors in a few years not pass them. I also said their path, as they are in distant catch up mode, will be very different that what Indian vendors have used to get as big as they are.

Any discussion of China evokes political reaction. I have written about that elsewhere. China also has language, IP protection issues buyers worry about.

However, India is a victim of its own success. Some bank auditors are already concerned about risk concentartion around IT systems with Indian firms. I have written elsewhere about wage/rate inflation and staff turnover and infrastructure issues in India. You would be naive to think a competitor would not harp on these weaknesses.

The overwheleming advantage is firms like Infosys have done over 20,000 global delivery projects - Chinese firms barely in the hnudreds. That discipline counts for a lot. But the Chinese have shown they can compete in many different markets on price. I can see a market where Indian firms move to the middle band and the Chinese get more of the bottom."

I liked his points and over discussions... you can go read other posts by Vinnie...

Bye for now....

Hottest Pepper and Scoville Heat Units (SHU)

Have you ever thought of the hottest pepper available? and what is the criteria? What the units, how calculates this etc....

I found out all these interesting facts,

The hottest pepper will be (hopefully), ‘Dorset Naga’ (from the family of Bangladesh ‘Naga Morich’).

".....pepper ‘Dorset Naga’ is. But exactly what is it? It is certainly a Capsicum chinense selected from the Banladeshi ‘Naga Morich’, but beyond that, we’re not quite sure what we have."

http://www.peppersbypost.biz/dorsetnaga/other_sightings.html

Seems like roots of this pepper are in North east Bangladesh and India. Naga is a tribe living in that region and large terrian is known as Nagaland/Tripura... And "Morich" is bangla word for Pepper (In northern India we call is Mirch).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorset_Naga

And how hot is this pepper,

"Two laboratories in the USA tested a sample of Dorset Naga which measured 876,000 SHU and 970,000 SHU respectively."

The current record is of,

".......the Guinness world record for the hottest chilli is currently held by Red Savina, which was once measured at 577,000 SHU"

What is SHU?

The Scoville scale is a measure of the hotness of a chilli pepper. These fruits of the Capsicum genus contain capsaicin, a chemical compound
which stimulates thermoreceptor nerve endings in the tongue, and the number of Scoville heat units (SHU) indicates the amount of capsaicin
present. Many hot sauces use their Scoville rating in advertising as a selling point.

Interesting facts.. Seems like Science has more depth than the hype of Web/IT/Telecom/Computers...

Caio for now...

Razors and Nanotech?

with every few years, we are seeing increase in the number of blades in razors. "The Economist" come up with good analysis on this razor war. Where this going to end,

http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5624861

"........70 years after King Gillette invented the safety razor for someone to come up with the idea that twin blades might be—or, at least sell—better........"

The analysis provides few scenerios, and key finding...

"just like Moore's law—the observation that computer chips double in power every 18 months or so—it seems that technology as well as marketing determines the rate at which new blades are introduced."

One prediction is,
"..........the 14-bladed razor should arrive in 2100...."




My prediction:

"by 2100 nanotechnology will evolve and most of razor will have millions of tiny blades capable of shaving only... Lets see who will break Million blade in one razor mark"

Lets see, how good pundit I am...

bye for now..

iPhone: Something is brewing

Apple, an icon for 2 digital age, is again brewing somthing in ots backyard. Seems like its really in backyard, in the silicon farms of Tiawan.

iLounge published the unconfirmed report but seems reliable,

"Apple is working on “an iPod with phone functions” and could use Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Hon Hai Precision to build the device, says Johnny Chan, a J.P. Morgan analyst.... ...............ho declined to be identified said Taiwan Green Point Enterprises, which makes plastic cases for the iPod, is in talks with Apple for a role in the phone..."

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/7368/

The market is full of rumor about iPhone. Although the domain of iPhone.com is not owned by Apple, but iPhone.org is.

This is the screen shot from Register.com.

(the screen shot is copyrighted material of Register.com)

Interesting fact: It's not that iPhone.org is owned by Apple, but Apple registered this domain in 1999. Seems they had a plan from late '90s.

Should I say, Thought Leadership. But why didnt they buy iPhone.com. OK, was not available at that time. But current owner bought just now. Am I missing something in thought leadership.

Question, when did Apple Launch iPod?
hmm.. October 2001.

http://lowendipod.com/ipod/1g.htm

And When did Apple registered the iPod.com domain?
Interestingly in October '98. (Date from Register.com)

2001 was really a watershed year in Apple history.. Check this link,

http://www.lowendmac.com/history/2001.shtml

bye for now...

Mozilla Fiefox 2.0 alpha-1: product from matured company(?)

Mozilla foundation provided the alpha version of Mozilla Firefox 2.0a1 (2.0 Alpha version, seems like pre alpha).

The link:

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/tinderbox-builds/pacifica-mozilla1.8/firefox-2.0a1.en-US.win32.installer.exe

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/?C=M;O=D

(Seems like it was 1.8 release)

Its really pre-production release. I am playing with this more than a day now. Before download, think twice:

• No plug-ins from 1.5xx will work.
• Its not going to resolve “infamous” memory leak issue with Firefox. So don’t open more than 4-5 tabs (With 7-8 tabs, I had to go for coffee just check where did I type my last characters)

But it is really fast compare to others (even 1.5x). It provides really smooth experience with web browsing. And you can manage your RSS feeds much better than earlier versions.
I am sticking to new one, although I am missing my 10+ plug-ins.

But I don’t have to go any Blogs and news sites. I am reading from toolbar folder (RSS feeds). (Again, why can’t we integrate our outlook into this)

Those who want to show themselves as geek (;) and dig into Firefox memory problem, check this link. Mozilla foundation has given a spin to this problem, showing its feature (seems like people are maturing within corporate environment),

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/archives/009749.html

Ciao...

Bubble is back or Brains are dead or Only I am crazy

I dont know why I wrote this line, but something is wrong somewhere. I didn't even hear this during the great mellinium gold rush.

Fox is acquiring a company which has not even started its beta service. The company was from the great web 2.0 domain. They are (rumors) are paying 10m, but not bad for small group of guys who hasn't even completed their html/http/javascript coding.

Fox is acquiring NewRoo:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/03/14/fox-to-acquire-startup-newroo/

So whats next after NewRoo...

even my 2 and half year old son can answer this: "NewKanga"....

Oh Lord.... Why didnt I watch "Winnie The Pooh" in my childhood... I am so out of corporate branding...

Google, acquisition and Web2.0

Google is making lot of headlines, although not very nice product. But it gobble up a nice product from the market. I am hoping it will nicely integrate that into its portfolio.

Google bought Writely.
http://writely.blogspot.com/

I wrote about this in my January blog.
http://balyanpage.blogspot.com/2006/01/online-documentation-and-sharing-we.html

This deal highlights web2.0 acceptence in a market.

Whatever be the fate of this deal, but seems like web2.0 is maturing and geting the acceptance in the marketplace...

hoping its not a bubble of last decade...

Hedging your investment: Mars "Google maps"

Google is wiered company. Not sure what those are thinking. To me, it seems like they just want to be in news. Dont have product, throw someone's hobby in the google domain. WHo cares, the services are not tied to revenues. Google jsut launched "Google Mars"

Try http://www.google.com/mars/

And its all XML, if you want to integrate this map with Mars Crime data, go ahead. Its easy...

Waiting for more to come from these guys..

Interesting: miniaturization of Wireless technology

National Geography is tracking dragonfly with tiny (real tiny) transmitters. will try to find about the details of the device (and the manufacturer)

"The transmitters—which weigh 0.01 ounce (0.3 gram) and are about 0.4 inch (1 centimeter) long—are glued to the insects' undersides. A single wire antenna runs the length of the abdomen, and a tiny battery powers the device for up
to a week."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/10/1012_051012_dragonfly.html

bye for now...

Korean Broadband Market (year old data):

I came across very interesting blog by rediff founder, Ajit Balakrishnan, on Korean market. He put together some facts, he found during his Korean trip (a year back),

-> 90%+ traffic is in Korean language (who says English is Internet langua franca)
-> 1.5Mbps is considered as Broadband (not 300K like in other part of world)
-> How Internet bandwidth is consumed: 40% is p2p traffic ( music, porn), 30% is video-on-demand ( people watching TV shows they missed), 10% is gaming and the balance is http traffic (according to his contact).

with 40% p2p traffic, I want to analyze how its impacting entertainment industry...

No Free Lunches: Taxing WiFi

Finally some biggies are able to push through the legislative maneuvering what they were saying from last 2-3 years. White elephants are not able to innovate, so they are planning to kill the fast growing sectors.
The budget which is sent to congress (by the US President) has clause of imposing the tax on Unlicensed Spectrum (read WiFi). Why they didnt tax Ham Radio, and whats the urgency to tax WiFi.

The news item can be read here:

http://www.rcrnews.com/news.cms?newsId=25545

The Budget details can be accessed at this site:

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy07/browse.html

Now you must be asking, how congress can kill this naive but exploding phenomenon,

If I am a lobbyist, I will put this clause in Telecommunications act '07,

the owner of Equipment shall pay a royalty of $xx amount for each channel and for each individual user accessing the spectrum on the spectrum, only if,

• The user of channel(s) is not the owner equipment transmitted the airwaves in unlicensed band.

This small legislation will kill all the hotspots as well as the plan by municipalities for deploying WiFi.

Good Luck Silicon Valley..

Back to Future: Bubble is back

This phrase has been so much that sometimes its just doesnt make sense to use. But sometimes you finds the things repeating and happening in a way, you cant stop.


Whats so great about this picture?

Some guy pasting all the little yellow "post me" all over the room. Either this guy is crazy or working in some Indie movie.
No, this guy works in Venture Capital firm.
His role: Go through the old articles (First dot com boom time) of the technology magazines like Red Herring, Wired...

Wired Magazine detailed about a Mayfield VC who's perfecting the art of refurbished ideas. Allen Morgan reached the heights of gold mining by hiring a 24-year-old to flip through old magazines for business ideas.
Morgan's researcher, Ankur Luthra (picture posted), reads through a stack of Red Herring, Industry Standard, and Wired issues and slaps post-it notes on stories of now-dead dot-coms.

The link to story is,

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.02/mayfield.html?pg=1&topic=mayfield&topic_set=

What should we call this.
Going back to past, or going back to Future.

Only time will tell whether these guys are right or fooling themselves. But with Google stock touching all heights, Microsoft is moving "live" project like a new goldmine, braodcasting is moving to IP network, and people are again talking about e-community; these guys may be on right path.

Another thing, I am liking Microsoft "Live", although nothing special compare ot My Yahoo or personalized Google... but the first thing coming from Microsoft after a long time, which is good.. more on this later...

Google: Advance search options

Lot of people always think (I used too), how to control google search results or how to make these focussed. I have no idea why google doesn't provide Advance Search link on this site.

http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en

Try yourself...