Last (W)rites

Bannerghatta Zoo, Jan 28 2006

2006-01-28T15:23:00.000+05:30

Bannerghatta Zoo, Jan 28 2006 002
Originally uploaded by keviv.

Raghav and I stand in front of the hippopotamus - well you cant see the one in the background because of the ones in the foreground!

Tsunami

2005-01-03T15:03:00.000+05:30

Enough said - here is where you need to contribute towards the tsunami if you are able and willing.

www.mssrf.org - The MS Swaminathan Research Foundation

http://pay.hindu.com/thrfpay/thrfpay.jsp - The HINDU Tsunami relief fund

Specialized PCs or why I was right all along :)

2004-11-04T03:00:00.000+05:30

In one of my previous posts on how the PC should be re-invented to cater to specific scenarios, I had mentioned some far out scenarios around catering to the Indian household - check the link enclosed in this post.

Although not directly relevant, it is clear that the PC is evolving from a generic one-size fits all device into a scenario-based "genre" device - a sign of things to come......

Also read this press note on Adam Bosworth's opinions on Packaged Software vs Software as a service - http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=07B7445E-F82C-461D-84BB-FED9DBC55C68

For the relevance of this post, I am culling out the portions you should be looking at - "....Quoting Apple Computer Inc chief executive Steve Job's, Bosworth said: "PCs need to be as easy to use as TVs and radios, the browser can help achieve that...."

Though I am not sure how browsers as a form factor will help accomplish that. Comments are welcome.

The Devolving Programmer

2004-10-25T15:20:00.000+05:30

A really interesting posit on how programmers as we know them today will be subsumed by the commoditification of their skills;Read all three parts to enjoy the full import of Max Goff's suggestions......(click on the title of the post to be re-directed to the site)

Juxtapose this with my previous post on the Great Indian Con and you will begin to understand why it is important for us to move from commonplace to niche.

The Middleware Report

2004-10-05T13:00:00.000+05:30

Hmm...familiar story....once again Middleware publishes a benchmark report comparing .NET with IBM (please note, not J2EE) and once again the results are favourable to Microsoft.

While I question the contradiction of a report remaining "independent" while being "commissioned" by an IT vendor, I think it is fair to say that all of the research muscle that MS has put behind .NET seems to be paying off - might as well acknowledge all of the good work they have done and continue to do in the tools space....

On this topic, it amazes me that developers who are usually such a pragmatic lot metamorphose into such intransigent zealots when it comes to languages and development platforms - Any comparison is always followed by heart rending but ludicrous cries of "unethical", "unfair", "sold out to the devil" (wtf?)......

Take a look at this - http://www.fogcreek.com/About.html (yes it is from the redoubtable Joel Spolsky :) ) So what are we really fighting for?

The Great Indian Con(tractor) or Why the Indian developer needs to grow up....

2004-08-11T12:26:00.000+05:30

Hmm....I dont know how to say any of this without causing considerable angst but here goes it -

I was in a technical event last week ensconced somewhat uncomfortably in a dimly lit auditorium in the midst of an eager, young and aggressive crowd of developers, listening.

Like all technical sessions, this one was also inundated with questions from the audience - no problems so far. What struck me though was that very very few of the questions were really intended at sharing some particular insight or to broaden any perspective of either the audience or the speaker - it looked like the only intent was to -

1. Put the speaker in a spot
2. Showcase the questioner's superiority (real or alleged) to his audience and
3. Enjoy 15 seconds of fame

At the risk of being severely censured I am going to make a sweeping generalization which bitter though is true - this attitude seems to be typical of the average Indian developer eager to make his mark, anxious to differentiate himself from his less-fortunate peers, on the prowl for the next three letter acronym to decorate his resume.

As much as this may be a behavioural trait of an individual, the problem is a little more deep rooted - If you have been in this industry long enough you will begin to realize that the average Indian developer has unfortunately commoditized himself.
He also can be typified -He "knows" half a dozen programming languages, "has worked on" two or three databases, "talks" about how cool one algorithm is vis-a-vis another and of course my favourite - loves the philosophy of "free" be it soda, music, games or software.
Every Indian developer today is a replica of the one before him who is a replica of the one before him who is a replica of......you get the idea.

Herein lies a curious dichotomy - while our system is churning out wannabe developers by the hordes with nothing to differentiate them, each of these developers spend a life time trying to stand apart - a very noble ambition if not for the almost machiavellian mechanisms they employ in doing that.

The other notable point which comes up is because the Indian society is inherently heirarchical, one really effective way of standing out seems to be to become a.....hold on......yes.....Manager

-Have you ever heard this conversation before - "I have over 4 years experience in bleh, blah and blooh so I should be a tech lead." or the ever prevalent "I have designed and architected foo and faah and was managing a 6 people team and I have over 24 months exp...."(24?!!!!)
(btw even yours truly has been guilty of this though this was when the world was a better place :) )

Which begs the question - when will we move from commonplace to niche? When will speciality be appreciated and rewarded? When will recruiters stop asking for "atleast 2+ yrs exp. in Java, XML, XSLT, SOAP, WSDL, .NET, C, C++, Python, C#, SQL, Oracle, DB2, blah blah blah"?

Google and the Semantic Web

2004-08-02T16:48:00.000+05:30

Found this really interesting perspective of Google's proposed dominance in e-marketplace (circa 2009).

The Indian PC (aka “What women want.” :-) )

2004-07-06T12:55:00.000+05:30

Call it serendipity but there I was, this weekend, blue-skying as to how someone would energize the Indian paying public through a PC when I saw this interesting news feature on...hold your breath...microwave ovens.

What I saw set me thinking - the average Indian household traditionally views Microwave ovens as a not-terribly useful and very expensive food-warming device. So if you are an LG or a Samsung, it becomes really important to enthuse the end-customer and galvanize demand for more of these devices. But how?

This is how -

“Microwave sales sizzle in small towns
Experiential marketing is the new buzzword for the microwave oven category. For consumer durable majors catering to microwave ovens, cookery shows are the order of day and tagging along for the sales pitch are microwave oven cookbooks and even microwave cookware. The target: B & C class towns.

While earlier markets like Ranchi, Haryana and Coimbatore accounted for 30 to 40 microwave ovens, today, consumer durable firms are selling approximately 400 microwave ovens in these and smaller towns. The positive response has had firms ramping up their marketing and communication efforts.

Consumer durable major LG Electronics has chalked out a clear strategy to tap the mass market and is looking at selling one million microwave ovens in the next five years.

According to the latest figures released by ORG, LG has cornered a 33.3 per cent market share for the first half of 2003. Samsung is a close second with a market share of 31.4 per cent.

Samsung director R Zutshi pointed out that, "Cookery classes, MWO melas in smaller markets and a fully-equipped demonstration centre in Pune, where cooking classes are held for housewives and potential customers, are some of our marketing initiatives which have yielded results." In a bid to boost sales, Samsung is also giving a free Tarla Dalal recipe book, a MWO starters-kit comprising of five bowls, a chappati warmer, a dhokla maker and a coffee maker among other cookware.

The Times of India, August 18, 2003”

If I were to apply this parallel to the Indian PC market, how do we galvanize demand for a device that has been traditionally “useful in a limited way and terribly expensive”? To answer this I ask myself this fundamental question – Is there something called an Indian PC? What is so fundamentally Indian about the PC that we use today? What scenarios, relevant to the avg Indian household, does a PC address?

Let me expand on this perspective – if you start to profile the average Indian PC buyer what stands out notably is he is more often than not a “he”. If we regard women as the central figure of an average middle class Indian family, what are we specifically doing today to ensure that the PC addresses some common scenarios around Indian housewives? How do we motivate a housewife to want a PC for her home badly? Move from “nice-to-have” to “must-have”?

For the PC to be treated like a household “appliance” few things have to happen –

The PC has to become an “Appliance”. (Long term and oft repeated but worth keeping in mind) – What if the PC is re-branded and re-tooled from a generic computing, “word-processing” device into a specific scenario-addressing tool?
“Internet/Email PC”, “Gaming PC”, “Entertainment PC” are terms which are very used in a limited sense today – we need to re-think on how intuitive the interface is for an end user when he/she “turns one of these devices on” and how quickly he/she is able to start using it effectively without getting mired in esoteric terms and concepts. Think TV/Food Processor/Microwave when thinking about intuitivity.

2. More importantly, the PC has to evolve (by way of content, services) to address scenarios around Indian housewives. – Take some scenarios as listed below –

1. With telecom costs still on the higher side, can the PC help the smart housewife, separated as she is from her parents/brother/sister/cousin/ etc, re-connect with her family everyday by helping her chat, email and speak to her loved ones without impacting her household budget?

2. Children’s education is probably the highest priority for her – what if there was a service which in agreement with schools and faculty help the housewife track her children’s academic and behavioral progress, review teacher comments/notes, interact with faculty, help her help them with their homework, art, crafts and so on?

3. How about content around local residential communities, online ladies clubs and so on? (A little far out but hey this is "women" we are talking about here! :) )

Consequently should we be selling to the Indian “wallet” (price) or should we be selling to the Indian “psyche” (nature of use) so that the size of the wallet becomes moot?

Of Aliens and Ramayana

2004-06-25T10:19:00.000+05:30

Check Diwakar's Blog - Interesting point he makes about our perception of the so called "outlandish" artifacts that are described in the Ramayana - if art imitates life and the culture, arts, crafts, poetry, history of a period is inextricably bound to what are contemporary occurrences at that period of time, is the backdrop of Ramayana fictional or is it a hyperbolic yet real depiction of ancient Indian society?

On a related note, there has been so much hand-wringing about Astrology lately - consider this - why would a society which was intellectually so advanced and mathematically evolved (number 0, PI, vedic math, integral calculus - you surely get the picture?) come up with balderdash like astrology unless....? I think Astrology as we know it today is a highly diluted version of what it was originally - I also think that it was a highly precise science and that it was much too accurate for anybody's comfort which is why it was corrupted and watered down to what it has become today. (Maybe I really should have a disclaimer here that this blog may contain "Forward looking" statements :) )

BTW - For all you conspiracy theorists, hope all of you have read Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code.

2004-05-17T11:25:00.000+05:30

Keeping in line with my observations in the previous post, I thought I would share this interesting link on "Microsoft and Commodity Software". David Stutz incidentally was responsible for the Rotor implementation and used to work for Microsoft a couple of years ago.

2004-05-07T15:20:00.000+05:30

Ah - I finally managed to take some time off to update my blog after more than a month - I know, I know but I am going to be a little more organized and touch this almost once a week from hereon. Well anyway I *do* have a little something to post today -

I want to start off by referring to Rajesh Jain's Blog - where Rajesh not only highlights what ails India as a country today in terms of information technology but also paints a vision ( a promising one at that) as to how we can overcome some of those.

As much as I respect Rajesh's views especially on Low Cost or Affordable Computing there are some areas where I fundamentally disagree with him and I will attempt to list down some of those and hopefully offer some strong rebuttals -

1. The core of Rajesh's arguments are based on the premise of "Affordability" - Refer his entry"...Emergic is about realizing Bill GatesÂ vision of Âa computer on every desktop and in every homeÂ Â a vision which has not yet gone beyond the worldÂs 10,000 large companies and 500 million consumers, most of whom are in the worldÂs developed markets....."

The key point is - Are "Affordability" and "Accessibility" the same things? If you notice carefully, almost everyday we grapple with this choice in our daily lives - not everybody owns a means of private transport but does that prevent travel today? Not everybody owns a phone but does that prevent communication? I can go on and on but I think you get the idea... The point I am trying to make is - why should a low cost computing model almost always lead to a discussion around lowering the *acquisition cost* of Hardware and Software? Do we always buy something before deriving benefit out of its usage?

Isn't it fair to say that the proliferation of the ubiquitous STD/ISD booth revolutionized communications in India by making telephony "accessible" to the common man? India traditionally has one of the highest cost of tele-communication but I have never seen that impacting us in terms of using it, do you? Similarly is it fair to say that technology penetration will happen only if the cost of IP is discounted?

Let me add another aspect to accessibility - for all of the noise around the Microsoft monopoly, it is fairly safe to say that no other company has influenced as many lives nor has generated as many careers as Microsoft has(how is the point of another discussion but the fact remains). Microsoft "democratised" computing by moving it from being an esoteric science available to a privileged clique to a commodity that can be used and benefited by all. The larger issue is should or shouldn't Microsoft (or any other commercial software company) be rewarded for its efforts?

2. The next aspect Rajesh focusses on is his stress on Thin clients and thick server side computing by re-using older hardware and by building his infrastructure on Open Source technologies - let me address this by taking the example of cell phones -

It is a well known fact that Cell phones today are packed with a whole host of features - cameras, music player, PDA, GPRS enabled mail, Chat, WAP and so on. Add the broadband experience to this and you can see how rich and interactive the device has become. What drove this innovation? In short - user demand for more. As users become more and more sophisticated they also expect to interact in richer and more complex scenarios. In fact isnt it obvious that this innate need for more has been the bedrock of our civilization fueling growth over the centuries?

By evolving a scenario around re-use of older computers Rajesh makes an inherent yet faulty assumption that user needs do not change but remain the same. He also oversimplifies user needs by suggesting that email, calendar, office and instant messaging are all the applications the end user would ever need. What happens when more complex applications are needed? What happens when richer forms of interactions are demanded by the users as they become more and more sophisticated users of technology? (Rail tickets used to be booked manually personally, then through touts/agents, then through computerised railway reservation counters and then finally through the internet - see the evolution as user needs increased?) How will new requirements be met without new investments in hardware and software? Consequently who will pick up the tab of such innovation? How long will "cheap and best" be cheap and best? Is good enough really good enough?

3. Rajesh then mentions that "All the applications are run off the server, with only the display happening on the client side....". He also mentions that "there is no performance penalty even though the applications run off the server." - How? Can it be conclusively proven? The premise of client server computing is that processing is shared between client and server thereby improving the overall performance of the application; today we have highly evolved middleware models which cleanly abstract functionality across layers and help applications be scalable, reliable and performant. Given that the server(s) manage(s) all of the sessions, the applications, the user activities and so on any penalty on performance will only be now moved from the client to the server. Rajesh doesnt seem to provide any strong datapoints to the contrary. Let me look at this in one other way - lets say to support this complex infrastructure if a farm of servers is needed (which does away with performance penalties) then would customers still continue to pay only for the acquisition cost of the desktop (150 USD) or would they also need to pay for the services they are getting out of this amazing infrastructure simply to maintain it? (the answer is obvious isnt it?)

"What every user sees on their Thin Client can be standardized and controlled from the Thick Server itself. In addition, the use of Linux does away with all the virus-related problems. " - This seems to suggest two things - a. that viruses are only a client side problem b. that Linux is not plagued by viruses. Let me just point you to a linkwhich should avoid further debate.

4. Rajesh then says that the TC-TS model is ideal in environments where software piracy is rampant because it is cheaper and not disruptive - this suggests the following -

Software from Microsoft is being pirated primarily because of its high price point - How conclusive is this point? Where are the data points to suggest this? A pre-recorded audio cassette costs Rs 45 and the average cost of a cinema ticket is between Rs 50 and Rs 80 (well Delhi is another story) - has this brought down audio or video piracy? Are the large incidents of power theft and ticketless travel because of people's inability to pay for "expensive" services or is it our innate cussedness as a country?

5. The "Edge Strategy" - Although Rajesh's vision is ambitious it really throws more questions than answers. How will Emergic build an economically viable model around their grand vision of Digital Dashboards and E-business applications at a $50-$150 price point?
Users interacting with Enterprise Applications do not typically fall in the bottom part of Rajesh's pyramid because they are niche users;Enterprises spend a lot around these line-of-business applications because they see it as a strategic investment to increase revenue and cut costs - why is Rajesh's low cost-per-seat computing model in this scenario relevant to the bottom of the pyramid and also how will Emergic provide services around key areas like 24 by 7 support, end-user and technical training, service levels around performance and availability - all of which are extremely critical for Enterprise Applications without sacrificing affordability?

Let me end all of this by asking you a few simple questions -

1. By lowering the cost of hardware and software are we also expecting that all associated services around these two will come down? Will training become cheaper? Will support become cheaper? Will employee costs be rationalized? Will consulting become cheaper? If not, why not?
2. Is lowering the cost of technology the only way to bridge the digital divide?
3. If IP around Information Technology can be asked to be discounted why not IP around engineering and management and medicine? Why is there a hue and cry about the fee cuts in the IIMs? Is Medical education affordable to the common man?

We as a nation have unfortunately become attuned to what I call "subsidy thinking" - that we cannot afford anything until it is subsidised. As much as this was very relevant in the first 50 years after independence, I think the time has come for us to think in fundamentally different and progressive ways; to assume ownership and responsibility to fulfil our needs and desires; to think in terms of balanced global partnerships instead of bull-headed self reliance;

2004-04-02T13:02:00.000+05:30

Check Deepak Gulati's cool blog out at http://deepakg.blogspot.com - it is so refreshing to know that not all folks in the technology industry are code junkies huddled behind a CRT typing their way into repetitive stress injuries.

On a different note, I was reading a review of Yuva on rediff.com - surprising that this review has been in total contrast to the ones I have read/heard/seen elsewhere.But of course those were on Ayudha Ezhuthu and not so much on the hindi version.

Personally somehow I have always believed that Rahman's music sounds richer in Tamil than in Hindi (or any other language for that matter) - maybe it is Rahman's legacy in Tamil films, maybe it is the quality of the lyricist in Tamil or maybe it is just the quality of singers Rahman can choose from when it comes to Tamil.

I have also realised that Tamil as a language is easily more extensible and open to lyrical nuances from other languages vis-a-vis hindi which even with the best of efforts sounds stilted and contrived (Try "Telephone mani pol sirripaval ivala" against "Telephone dhun mein hasne waali" and you will know what I am suggesting!) which means lyricists potentially have a larger landscape to work with in Tamil.

One set of composers who I think have made the cross-over are Shankar, Ehsaan and Loy - their music although invariably coated in inane "Munda","Maahee" and"Sony" is refreshingly tuneful and immediately hummable. Although Kamal's "Aalavandan" ("Abhay" in Hindi) was a resounding flop, their music was extremely raw and powerful keeping with the protagonist of that story. Of course enough said about Dil Chahta hai.........

Which brings me to my next question - so is this cross over only uni-directional? Barring an Udit Narayan and maybe a Sandeep Chowta why isnt anybody approaching this side of the country? (I will reserve my not-so-charitable comments on this till my next post)

Happy listening.....

2004-04-02T12:45:00.000+05:30

Trust me to start something and get swallowed by work......I am frightfully close to living out of a suitcase. Hope all this will end well.

BTW, one of the other days I was having this discussion with a friend around mobile phones - have you started noticing that mobile phones have enough complexity to put an intergalactic communicator to shame. Minus doing a "Beam me up, Scotty", they are increasingly falling victim to good old feature overload - the new Nokia ad if you have seen it, actually has a torch - huh? Agreed that light travels faster than sound, but will this make for more "enlightening" conversations? Maybe if your cell dies on you you can use the torch to find a pay phone........Maybe I should just "lighten" up.....

2004-04-02T12:43:00.000+05:30

So it is official......Try as I have for the past couple of years to avoid getting into this, my will power just wilted against the daily onslaught of online opinions randomly peppering my conscience so much so that I finally decided to eat humble pie - the result is this Blog - my own padded 6X4 virtual confinement. What do I plan to rant about? Well anything on which I have an opinion (which is usually everything under the sun :) )

So there it is - welcome to my blog - hope you have as much fun reading it as I have had ruminating over it........

Vivek