Desicritics Category: BizTech: Gadgets

Innovation - That Strange Mythical Animal

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sat, 7 Feb 2009 05:16:13 EST

It was an interesting email that I got from Google Alerts. I have an alert setup for “innovation” as a keyword. The interesting thing is that I get the most interesting and curious hits on that keyword. As it so happens, on the same email, I got referred to a Businessweek article on innovation and another article on how Nortel could not save itself from bankruptcy despite investing heavily in innovation.

Innovation is a tough thing. What exactly is it? Something to do with new things? OK, lets run with it for now. But everybody and his dog wants to be known as innovative. Nothing wrong with it at all. But just like every buzz word, it needs to be treated carefully. People can get into all this innovation business too much and then forget about the basics of business. The two articles given above are interesting examples of this phenomena.

My son has been on World of Warcraft for the past 4 years now and has a good little business running there. So I have a fair idea of what is happening there. He has also managed to rope in my little princess as a magic maid, so that promises to be a good story one day. Anyway, I do appreciate the points made in the article about how WoW has managed to incorporate basic principles of innovation into its game so that it is doing brilliantly. I quote some of the main principles that the authors quote as lessons from the game:

Reduce barriers to entry and to early advancement
Provide clear and rich metrics to assess performance
Keep raising the bar
Don't neglect intrinsic motivations
Provide opportunities to develop tacit knowledge, but do not neglect broader knowledge exchange
Create opportunities for teams to self-organize around challenging performance targets
Encourage frequent and rigorous performance feedback
Create an environment that rewards new dispositions

But I have a bit of an issue here, and that is that the principles seems to be driven from the story and then generalised. To put it in another way, if I had to pick up these principles and plonk it into any other business, i can, very easily, but does that mean that my old business has suddenly become innovative? Or that innovation starts gushing from each pore? No, obviously not. None of these principles are wrong at all. But at end of the day, people have to keep a a laser eye out on the main business of selling profitably.

Which brings us to the second example, that of Nortel. Nortel did everything that these principles said should be done. It turned its attention to new products, it brought in imaginative thinkers, changed its investment policy, new products were gushing out, strategy was changed, people were let go and new people hired, and so on and so forth. But does this mean that they did wrong? No, just that their basic idea of migrating the firm into a new world of web 2.0 was simply not good enough. It just bombed. As a matter of fact, you could point towards its debt load but then again, they already had $2.6 billion in cash. That again was not enough to save it from going under provided its products were good enough to provide a good cashflow. Which it didn't.

Depending upon which product category you refer to, innovative products have a very high failure rate, ranging from 40% to 90% (as reported in the HBR – June 2006 edition). When you are talking about such a high failure rate, to maintain innovative capability is paramount. You have to dust yourself off and keep on working. In a recent research paper where innovation was studied with respect to Sun, what is normally held to be an innovative company. After one of their products bombed, the researchers coin what is called as Innovation Trauma. This manifests itself by disillusionment, cynicism and contagious demotivation.

So what do you do to improve matters? The researchers suggest that individuals who were championing and pushing innovative products should be given time to disengage from their previous work. Second, they need to conduct post-mortems on the failure to find out why that happened and if they can learn from the results. Third, this postmortem is best if its done collaboratively by the original team or a team of some sort, an innovation anonymous, if you will. Fourth, seed the failure aspects into a new project so that the old failure is uplifted by the excitement of the new project while the new project is calibrated downwards by the caution of the old failed project. Expectations management.

So what do you do? Here’s something that we are trying to do. The British Political system is pushing heavily on the idea that Britain has to become an innovative idea. Pretty good stuff, but how do you deal with innovation? I have recently been invited to join a group on Innovation which will assist in coming up with strategies to improve the UK innovation footprint. It is not easy. Actually, anybody can come up with a good idea. Ideas are dime a dozen, but to get from the idea stage to a company which is stand alone, has some cash in the bank, has a good order book with some good client companies, ah!, now that’s the holy grail.

So what we are hoping to do is to provide that bit of a helping hand from the corporate and government sides. If a small firm does have a good idea, we will get together and try to do two things, (1) try to assist in framing the new idea as something that is innovative in terms of resolving a business problem and (2) try to assist by championing it inside our firms. Obviously no money and all that stuff, but in my experience, innovators fall in love with the idea rather than how it will resolve the problem.

They forget that we are in business to sell (anything, potatoes, widgets, credit cards, etc.) to somebody who can pay for it. Do not want to go into detail, but the idea has to be something that somebody is willing to push his hands into his back pocket and put out money. So despite having great ideas, if you forget the basic elements of selling and making products that will sell, all those innovative ideas will be useless.

Technorati Tags: innovation

Miracle on Hudson: All Survive US Plane Crash in New York

Aaman Lamba — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 19:57:03 EST

The new year, which has already given us much shock and awe, delivered a note of relief when all 155 passengers and 5 crew members were rescued from US Airways Flight 1549 which crashed minutes after take off from New York's La Guardia Airport, en route to Charlotte, NC.

The Airbus A320 plane had barely gained altitude from the relatively short runway at La Guardia when an engine appeared to blow and the pilot warned passengers to brace themselves. He was able to land the plane into the nearby Hudson river, albeit with a thud. The evacuation appears to have gone well, with all passengers exiting the craft quickly and safely. Nearby boats and ferries rushed to rescue the bedraggled passengers, on one of the coldest days of the year, with temperatures around 40 degrees Fahrenheit.

The investigation will reveal what may have gone wrong, but a FAA spokesperson indicated it could be due to various reasons, including a flock of birds being sucked into the engine, although such incidents were rare. The pilot reported a "double bird strike" and the plane had reached an altitude of 3200 feet before being forced to descend. Given low visibility and the shape of La Guardia's runway, the pilot would have had little time to respond to a flight of birds as he took off from the airport.

Passengers were being treated for hypothermia. Executives from Bank of America and Wells Fargo-Wachovia Bank were on board, as the banks are headquartered in Charlotte, the plane's destination.

Book Review: The Art of Black and White Photography

BangaloreGuy — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 02:17:50 EDT

The Art of Black and White Photography is the first serious book I have read on photography. As an amateur photographer with relatively less experience with the SLR camera (a little over a year), it was a booster in a lot of ways - and it really is a book one shouldn't judge by its cover (which, doesn't look too er, artistic)

Having long been fascinated by the visual landscape around me, and being persuaded to buy an SLR, my photography ability seemed to be finding its limitations in that from a passion it seemed to be turning into a boring hobby. The trouble with finding good guidance on photography is that most websites and people talk more about the technical details of the camera, and less about how a shot can be approached, planned for, anticipated - and then taken - and also on how post-processing is to be done.

That is where this book is so handy - and where it actually justifies the title's Artistic reference. Torsten Andreas Hoffmann is still new to me - he's still a fantastic teacher, decent author and superlative photographer. But most importantly, he's someone who helped me appreciate the art of photography even more than before, and to broaden my way of looking at images.

As the preface notes, the art of digital photography is about seeing images, about composing them, etc., - not about technicality, even though it does deal with in bits and pieces. To drive a Ferrari well, I need to know how to shift gears, where the pedals are etc., and not a PhD in automobile technology!

The book starts off at a very easy pace - which is especially useful for an amateur. Among the first pieces discussed are the need for selecting a good camera, why RAW mode is best for the B&W photos - and the use of filters. It's been amongst the best things I have learnt from this book - and initially transformed the way I look at things, of course the book has also helped me immensely in the way I approach photos as well- in composing them in my mind before I actually take the shot, in looking for "visual tension" as Hoffman puts it. The various forms of photography are covered in depth - and illustrated to telling effect via Hoffman's lens - and some seem to make even the more difficult forms of photography very easy, when the shot has been thought through and executed well!

Hoffmann writes in a very easy approach - although not all lessons can be learnt in a day, and not all of them are immediately apparent - some of them actually took me a while to figure out. (and some I still haven't!) The best part is that each of the lessons are imparted as though one's taken through distinct phases of learning - a first basic shot, a second improved shot, a 3rd shot with most things in place - and then the best shot. It is this which would be of most use to any reader - and that is really the crux of this whole book - the approach to taking a photo - where taking a photo isn't just a point-and-click, or point-make a thousand camera adjustments-click.

It is instead more of looking at life, through different lenses, analyzing the mood which that lens shows - and even changing it, for a better, more interesting view.

Don't buy the book because I'm recommending it. Buy it because it will help you look at things more visually, because you'll notice art in everyday life - even help you fall in love with the black and white medium - almost like I have.

Book Review: Android Essentials

Aaman Lamba — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 07:18:17 EDT

The Google Phone is based on the Android platform, which is a software stack for mobile devices including an operating system, middleware and relevant applications for the device. The Android platform is maintained by the Open Handset Alliance. This is Java-based and uses a custom virtual machine, Dalvik that is Linux-based. The Google Phone and Android are gaining attention primarily due to the ease of developers being able to program new applications and submit them for the platform. This is counterpoised with the 'closed' Apple model for the iPhone.

Android Essentials by Chris Haseman is a useful guide to the platform, designed for the 'dabbler, professional, hobbyist, or coding junkie.' A knowledge of Java and a familarity with mobile platforms is useful to leverage the book, although the technically minded can read through and skip the more detailed parts. The only technical tools needed are the Eclipse IDE (Jave EE version) and the Android SDK. Once these are installed, the Android Developer Plugin for Eclipse makes common tasks related to working with Android almost effortless.

The basic Android project in Eclipse is structured to provide space for multimedia assets, the Android SDK files, UI resources, and activity files. A manifest file, AndroidMainfest.xml, is used to maintain order between files, manage permissions, resources, and for parsing by the Android engine. The interesting section in the manifest is intent filters, which are used to define specific activities for the application. An acivity is similar to a Java ME midlet. Running the application is easy enough and launches the Android emulator from Eclipse if the plug-in is installed.

The Android platform allows a single application to support multiple activities, a key difference from other mobile platforms. The platform supports multi-threading to make for efficient use of resources. The book goes into sufficient detail on these aspects and provides working code samples for them. It is very easy to set up tasks such as transitioning from a splash screen to the main menu of an application, for example, and intent receivers enable the development of applications that are event-driven, such as initiating an activity when an SMS arrives.

The Android platform provides a good set of libraries. The Telephony library, for example, provides access to GSM and other common telephony entities. Services are used to execute processing actions behind the UI. Data management is handled through content resolvers. The book takes some prank applications as examples to lighten the tone, but the more practical applications are left unexplored.

The user interface is a combination of XML-based widgets and Java-style Canvas/Panel layout managers. These are the usual TextViews, Linear Layouts, and Relative Layouts. Widgets such as buttons and text fields are added by embedding them in the XML Layouts and actions are processed by using CodeBehind-style handlers. The same XML Layout can be set up using Java or even custom UI rendering using the Canvas object. This last approach is best suited for visually rich applications like games.

The book wraps up with a useful example of how to load and parse a list of Internet radio stations, and possibly play them, although, the author notes that 'Sadly, the state of Android's streaming audio does not live up to its documentation.'

The final chapter covers some useful tips on UI design and location management, and points the reader to more information on Android development, as well as a call to arms for Android developers.

Kindling The E-Book Revolution

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 06:53:07 EDT

In the dim and distant past, I have used the Palm Pilot as well as the Sony Clie before as my e-book reader but after having moved to a Blackberry which did my PDA bits, I never could get back to getting an e-book reader. In an ideal situation, if the Blackberry can give me Windows functionality, a very good camera (5-6 MP) and some kind of e-book reader capability, I would be happy. Just one device to carry around, but in the meantime, I either had to read on my laptop or on my home pc.

But recently, on holiday in the USA, I was gifted an Amazon Kindle by my brother-in-law and his sister. This is one of the best gifts one could have hoped for and I immediately started drooling over it.

The Kindle comes in an attractive box, it looks like a book itself. Nice packaging. Something that you can easily plonk into your bookshelf without any issues, looks pretty neat, those letters and symbols floating around?

The package is clipped closed with a rubber band and opening it shows you the kindle on the right and a storage compartment on the left which contains the leather case, the charger, USB cord and the manual.

Took it out, charged it up (see the white charger? shades of Apple?). This was in the USA and I have an amazon.com account. So when I powered it up, it asked me for my amazon.com account, put that in and viola, I was up and running.

Can you see the little round button on the right hand side? looks like a wheel? It is a wheel and click mouse. The lone channel on top of the wheel with a small silver pointer running up and down is the main guidance mechanism. Pressing it brings up a context sensitive menu, you can go to the Kindle Store (I am in the UK, so the wireless network doesnt work, but in the UK, you can subscribe to newspapers, blogs, magazines and the lot, brilliant stuff).

It seamlessly connected to the Amazon.com website via the wireless cellular link, showed me my purchases and recommendations, and so on and so forth.

I did a download for my son and it was again seamless, a chapter came down, he read it and it was quite easy.

As I would be in the UK, I would not be able to connect wirelessly, so have to do the USB business. So I connected to Many Books, a site with free books in kindle and mobipocket format books and downloaded the top 10.

Here's the Count of Monte Cristo e-book. Pretty crisp to read. There are 2 buttons on the right, for next page and back. On the left, there are 2 buttons, back page and next page.

You can change the text size, this is the default big ass size, which I reduced as soon as I could. The battery life is amazing. I have been carrying it around for the past week in India without charging and have read it for about 15 hours now, and the charge meter has rarely shifted. Oh! yes, I did have a problem with it, it froze at one point. But being a good old windows user for a long period of time, simply opened the kindle's back flap, got out my trusted paper clip and gave the reset button a damn good shove. Obviously nothing happened. Still frozen. So swore at it, banged it on the desk, prayed to Ganesh, poked the reset button for 5 seconds and it worked.

I have downloaded the mobipocket creater to convert my e-library to the mobipocket format. The Kindle comes with 200MB of built in memory which is good enough for about 100-150 books, I guess. I have a few CDs full of scanned and downloaded and free and gifted and every weekend, there is a pleasurable time reading and converting those books. There is also a slot for an SD card, where you can store music and additional books if you need, although I dont see the need for it. I use my mobile phone to listen to music.

All in all, a very neat device, very hardworking and rugged (have dropped it, travelled with it jammed in my backpack for 1 week, swore at it, read it in the bog and in the dusty environs of Gurgaon, no problems) and is quite well readable in all angles and lighting.

And yes, you can read this in the bath, you have to be careful, of course, dont drop the thing into the bath, but then, you would not do that to a paper book either, would you? Some drops of water did splash on it, but a simple wipe took care of that. Only quibble? It just doesn't smell the same, but you can annotate and clip away to glory..

Oh!, the screen saver is just brilliant, the images that it throws up are very amazing, old authors, old wood cut impressions of printing presses, exotic and strange word definitions, very good. Good first impression. Anybody who is a logophile and/or a bibliophile would love this.

Technorati Tags: Bibliophilia, Logophilia, Kindle, Reviews

Apple Loses Its Innovation Edge

Aaman Lamba — Tue, 9 Sep 2008 14:52:39 EDT

Steve Jobs belied the rumours of his demise and released an array of Fall season ensembles in his Let's Rock! event in San Francisco. Unfortunately, there wasn't that much to offer, and left the faithful yearning for the traditional 'one more thing', besides sending Apple stock price (AAPL) down over 3%.

When Steve Jobs introduced the original iPod to the world on October 23, 2001, not long after another fateful day, he proclaimed, "With iPod, listening to music will never be the same again!" He could not have been more right. The music industry has gone from a lingering distaste for online music delivery to serving up 8,500,000 songs on iTunes, and the iPod still holds 73% market share.

Yet after the iPod and its many iterations, there really hasn't been that much zing. Every innovation has seemed incremental, almost something that should have been there in the first place, and we are still locked into the scenic walled garden of iTunes. The iPhone, for all its hype, brought little revolution to the mobile marketplace - carriers still rule the roost in every country where the iPhone is available, and people still over-pay for more features than they typically use in any given week.

Today could have been different. We are used to expecting wonderful things from the last icon of technology. We would not have been surprised if he had sprung a time travel machine on us (the iTime?). The yearning for good news in a rather bad year perhaps raised expectations beyond what the ivory towers could purvey.

Yet, we perhaps knew there was little great news in store. The rumors that had leaked were not hinting at any large rabbits hidden away in the hat. Even more disquietingly, they were not stamped down like errant knaves from the castle bearing news of the queen's infidelity.

We got 120 GB iPods, a slimmer eco-friendly Nano, earbuds, the 'funnest' iPod Touch ever - lots of games and the 2.1 software update for the iPhone. The big news of the evening was the Genius function, which auto-recommends songs based on your selection, either in your library on in the iTunes Store. That's a neat feature, but not very different from what Amazon has had all these years, and one is surprised it wasn't already built in.

Jack Johnson wrapped up the evening, and while that might be a nice touch, it smacked of half-hearted innovation, like there was no sparkle left in the wand, or perhaps they need a new star. One hopes Mr. Jobs has many years of creative life ahead, yet, a company cannot be dependent on a single icon. Microsoft seems to be making the post-Gates transition well enough, and while it might be too soon to tell, there is no clear succession defined at Apple.

Robert X. Cringely's proclamations aside, the synergy between Disney, Pixar, and Apple has not yet materialized into any grand design. The iPod may continue to outsell the competition, and the iPhone draw admiring eyes (though not many buyers, at least in India), but without a steady stream of ground-breaking innovations, Apple can all too easily slip back into the shadows of the tech-media space it occupied for many years in the first twilight of Steve Jobs.

Product Review: Google Chrome - The New New Thing

Aaman Lamba — Tue, 2 Sep 2008 15:47:07 EDT

Google seems to bringing order to its cornucopia of services, slowly yet strategically. Like all grand designs, the emergence of something big wasn't evident in the beginning, perhaps even to the creators. The basic structure remains the same - to provide convenient access to information through an unobtrusive intelligence layer. The services have been layered in, providing essential plumbing to what is evidently an operating system for the always-connected noosphere.

Another critical component was introduced today - the much-awaited Google Chrome web browser. While one might wonder what incremental value yet another browser might provide as an interface, it is the primary means of human-Internet interaction, and played right, could mean a consistent memory layer that brings the Google Mind ever closer to sentience. From a user perspective, there's little to write home about just yet, if one overlooks the relatively new process-independent tab architecture (IE 8 does the same thing, and IE 7+ separates the browser UI and tabs in terms of permissions) and the minimalistic interface. The pain of giving up essential add-ons and workflow steps might mean more than using the next new new thing, but Google is looking beyond the desktop client, even if the first release of Google Chrome is Windows-only.

In a few months or perhaps sooner, it is highly likely Google Chrome will be the front end of Android-based phones. The non-standard Windows UI used in Google Chrome makes sense when one visualizes a small scale equivalent on a mobile phone. The near-instantaneous startup is going to be handy for an always-on interface. Google might go further in terms of bundling services if it didn't have the ghost of Microsoft Anti-Trust in its rear view mirror. As it is, it allows you the option of changing default search engines from Google and Google applications don't seem to be running any differently within Chrome or other browsers, expect perhaps Google Reader. The most-visited sites are a nice touch when opening a new tab, and the ability to slide a tab over others is a neat touch. There does not seem to be torrent download capabilities and I strangely didn't see any auto-discovery of RSS feeds on a website. The setup told me it was importing my Firefox bookmarks, but I don't see them anywhere, and why leave out IE?

JavaScript and CSS rendering appear to be smooth, and performance is good. I noticed five chrome.exe processes in my task manager when I had only three tabs opened, ranging between 20 MB and 42 MB each in terms of memory usage, but a large number of page faults, and minimal bloat over an hour of running. The memory utilization was almost three times that in Mozilla Firefox for a similar load. One simple script in MovableType gave unexpected results, triggering a search when I hit the save button. Pages can fail to be rendered, with an 'Aw Snap!' error that blanks out the tab. Not a nice experience, to be frank.

Incognito Mode, or as it came to be known when Microsoft announced the feature in Internet Explorer 8 - porn mode - is invoked by Ctrl+Shift+N and removes pages browsed from the browser cache and history, and avoids cookies.

For the moment, I'm not going to be giving up any of my current browsers, and it remains to be seen if this new kid on the block lives up to its promises.

Photo Essay: Worldwide Photo Walk, Bangalore

Tanay Behera — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 10:47:06 EDT

Last Saturday morning offered perfect weather for going out and capturing a few moments of Bangalore city through camera clicks. I, along with other shutterbugs, made full use of this opportunity as we participated in the Bangalore leg of the Worldwide Photo Walk. The Photo Walk was held to mark the release of Adobe Lightroom, a photography software application developed by Adobe. Bangalore was the only city in India where this was talking place, apart from the other 192 cities across the world.

There was no planned agenda for the walk and it was quite informal. We all started the event at around 7:30 A.M. from Mayo Hall, one of the prominent landmarks in Bangalore. Then we clip-clopped on the Residency Road. On our journey we were free to capture anything and everything in our camera lenses.

I was in a mood to make some bio-scopic compositions, even though I was walking down a road heavily masked with glitz shopping malls. Bangalore's old memories are fading very fast, both in the physical environment and in the social atmosphere. That's a logical outcome of economic growth, so better capture those in pictures before they are reduced to dust.

Just a decade ago, anyone could walk down the narrow alleyways and sip a cup of coffee or tea for one rupee or so. But today rusted locks adorn the entrance doors of these neighborhood tea/coffee houses. The once sleepy get together places have given way to a cosmopolitan shopping juggernaut.

Something is definitely lost, for a few its for the better, while for the rest, its for the worse. The city's populace is no longer nostalgic about the remnants and with an urge to modernize fast, the Government and the builders have gutted the city's very soul.

Bangalore and traffic jams are synonymous. The intensity of the blockage varies with the time period of the day. Even though the day had just started, there were long queues of two-wheelers parked near the road.

Construction sites are a common sight but what really adheres to one's vision is the vibrant life visible on the streets. Like this one, a cobbler mending and polishing shoes, sitting on a tiled pathway by the side of the road, enjoying the cacophony of the traffic in front of him.

Today, the city that is bursting at the seams is home to people from so many different strata of life, each seemingly a different world of its own. Some enjoy food in the elegant and refined restaurants that have mushroomed in the cities and some are happy with the food that a make-shift stall owner provides.

Who cares as long as its food?

This way the walk continued and many eyes in the traffic were settled on me and few of my fellow shutterbugs. Since there were few foreigners in our group, the autowallas thought that we were tourists, exploring the city over the weekend and approached us with invites to take us on a paid tour of the city. It was around 11 A.M. that we finally decided to put an end to the walk. All of us gathered in the Mocha restaurant where many had late breakfast amidst passionate discussions about the snaps that each had taken.

All in all a refreshing way to spend four hours of a weekend, walking down the narrow streets and capturing life in pictures. By the way, were these snaps, Ok?

You can check the photos taken by all the participants in the event here.

The Apple iPhone 3G: How Steve Jobs Fooled Me

Sakshi Juneja — Sat, 5 Jul 2008 03:45:12 EDT

Undoubtedly the iPhone is one of the sweetest inventions in recent times. Well at least in my books. And I wouldn't be wrong in stating, countless others share the same view. Released on 29th June 2007 (in the US), in matter of weeks the world was gripped in its craze. I remember constantly eyeing eBay iPhone sellers, looking for that 'one' perfect deal. The temporary trauma that came along with my iPhone package still lingers - let's just say I still have nightmares about paperweight iPhones.

All that was then, the iPhone is now old news. What is in the news however is its rejuvenated version – the iPhone 3G.

The 3G model is yet to be released (a week from now to be precise) and I know tons of folks who can't wait to get their hands on this beauty. Yours truly included, I mean after all it does fall within my "all things sexy" category.

Besides all the new features such as the two colour options (Black/White), 16 GB option, 2 megapixels camera, 3G wireless technology, GPS mapping, App store and Microsoft Exchange, the most attractive bit of all is its marketed price; $199 for 8 GB model & $299 for 16 GB model. Now when converted into Indian rupees, the amount sounds easy on the ears and the pocket.

But if you go by this report you will realize things are not always what they seem, especially good things.

The iPhone 3G will cost Rs 20,000 in India - the costliest in the world.

The iPhone 3G will be free in the UK as it's subsidised by O2, a service provider; it's 1 Euro (Rs 70) in Germany, again subsidised by T-mobile and costs US$ 199 (Rs 8,557) in the USA, thanks to AT&T. The phone costs US$ 350 (Rs 15,050) in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and the Philippines. It is not available in Dubai. [Link]

And if like me you too are thinking of purchasing this baby for a lesser price via the ever-enterprising eBay or requesting your chacha's wife's grandfather's cousin's grandson to send you US-made maal – well then, my darling, you are in for a disappointment.

US buyers will have to purchase a service contract with AT&T before leaving the store; you cannot buy it online. The phone has to be activated within 30 days or the buyer will be penalized. You cannot cancel the two-year contract with AT&T. Either a cancellation fee of 175$ (Rs 7,525) will be charged or the phone has to be returned.

And for my buddies in US of A who are jumping with joy (and mocking us poor souls back home) thinking about the dream figure; here's a news flash for ya.

(Only) if you're "upgrade eligible" (log into your AT&T account to see if you are), you'll be able to buy the new iPhone for the discounted price of $199 for the 8GB version or $299 (INR 8,584.86) for the 16GB (INR 12,898.86) model. (AT&T is somewhat vague about the eligibility criteria, although your credit history and the time remaining on your contract are factors.) You'll also have to pay an $18 "upgrade fee."

If you're not eligible for the discount, you'll have to fork over extra for an "early upgrade"-$399 for the 8GB iPhone 3G or $499 for the 16GB model. Ouch.

AT&T also says that a "no-commitment" (read: no contract) iPhone 3G will be available soon, at $599 for the 8GB version and or $699 for the 16GB handset. Pricey, but hey- no two-year contract.

Unfortunately, AT&T won't offer the new iPhone on a prepaid basis, at least not at launch. [Link]

Ha Ha Ha.

On a serious note though, personally speaking, shelling Rs. 20,000 on an officially purchased iPhone isn't much. In 2006 I had bought an unofficial Sony Ericsson W900i for 25 grand and it didn't have half the features present in the 3G iPhone. Also when you compare it to high-Nokia models currently in the market, the price of an iPhone is comparatively quite low.

So it only seems wiser to buy an official piece, the only drawback – can you wait for another 3 months?

(*Picture Source : Apple Inc)

The World Congress of Information Technology 2008, Malaysia

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Fri, 6 Jun 2008 13:28:10 EDT

I had the honour of attending and speaking at the WCIT 2008 conference in Malaysia and here are some rather disjointed notes that I had while listening to the speakers. I tried to clean it up, but again, apologies for not being able to make this very professional indeed.

Monday

The conference center is big! And I got lost in the exhibition hall. Quite an impressive setup. So then finally managed to extricate myself from poking into the guts of various exciting electronics bits, went looking to find the plenary hall, and found myself sitting in the hall looking at an ant hill of activity. I could not imagine how on earth will they manage to fit 3200 people and assorted volunteers and managers into this hall but they sure did.

Typically, there was the media scrum when a Prime Minister arrives....We were welcomed by 40 children welcoming us in 40 languages representing 90 odd countries here, but the language used through out the conference is English. Curious, no? the prevalence of English in the world?

He also said that UK and South Korea are behind Malaysia in the World Competitiveness Index, and I can well believe it. Although checking the Global Competitiveness Report here seems like the results are different. Perhaps he is talking about this report. Anyway, mere quibbling. And now the PM has left and literally the front 1/4th of the hall has emptied! Some more speeches about WITSA.

Then Dr. Craig Bennett, Chairman of Intel, started talking about how we have a billion people on the Internet and now we have to get the next billion on the Internet as well. He said that four factors are important for knowledge based economic development

Physical access to technology
connection to internet and connectivity
content targeted at local population
education on how to use the tool

He said that a well educated teacher is the magic and not the PC in the classroom. He showed a video about a Nigerian school which has embraced technology but said technology again is not really the only answer.

He talked about taking a holistic viewpoint, what's the point of giving a $200 PC while the monthly connectivity costs are $250 per month in many countries, 100kb monthly cost in Japan is 6 cents, 50 cents in USA and more than 80 dollars in Sub-Saharan Africa. Now you can get an idea how tough it will be to get these people on the intranet or to roll out the broadband revolution to them (more about the exception being that of India later on).

He talked about how Pakistan is being used as an example of pushing broadband and network connectivity out into the sticks. 60mm dollars is the budget, rolling out in untouched areas in Pakistan, he invited a Pakistani chap to the stage who is the CEO of the public company which is helping to push this (didn't catch the name). Connectivity is a challenge. Satellite is way too expensive. Fiber is the only way. Rolling out fiber is tough, so tehsils where its not remunerative for private companies, this company gives money and offers seed capital, it helps to improve the business case for the private firm. This was a good step. The Pakistani chap said that Govt should not be involved that much in this business, put power to public private consortiums or just private firms, give them a stake in the business and then it will work. But I am not holding my breath, I want to know whether connectivity actually helps or would more investment in say better teacher training help?

He video conferenced a doctor from Brazil into us, how location differences for patients versus diagnostics versus doctors versus care had disappeared, and this tele-medicine actually is helping far more people than medicine and doctors were previously. Then there was some corporate stuff with some kids brought on stage and it ended. It was a bit too slick and the questions with the kids was too obvious and that left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. Such a senior chap shouldn't need such kind of gimmicks to play around with such an important topic, we are all adults, you don't have to take us to be children or idiots to play that game.

I was a bit impressed with what he had to say, but what he had to say was crucial (leave aside all the silly posturing and even more silly marketing of Intel stuff). His point was, throwing money at technology and expecting better performance from students was wrong, the idea is to teach the teachers to be better, that will provide better results than thousands of PC's and laptops.

Nothing much to note for the next few sessions. The post lunch session for the Ministerial panel was a bit interesting. Mainly because you could see how various governments approached this entire idea of information technology. You know what was the most disappointing? It was the Philippines MP. She came across as a complete Neanderthal, saying that in many parts of her constituency, there is no electricity power anyway, forget about PC's, and it was a whine. The Philippines government should really have thought that through. The Malaysian government minister and other ministers were smart, they obviously were pushing their countries and with due reason, telling us, the corporate folks, what we wanted to hear..., but Philippines? Pathetic. She is a blot on that country's face.

The next wireless broadband session made me go to sleep. Pure and simple, those two Romanian scientists, bright as they were, made me doze off specially when they started talking about antenna design, and specially after that excellent lunch.

Woke up to an excellent presentation by Professor Takenaka. He talked about how he was made the Minister for Finance in Japan by a certain Lionheart PM of Japan. Fascinating tale of how he took on the entrenched might of bureaucrats and financial institutions and won. And I well believe him, given some down sides, generally that time was brilliant, it still shows that even in a consensual driven society such as Japan, you can still have mavericks who hire mavericks who really make a huge difference! Brilliant fellow. Unfortunately he was not allowed to fulfill his destiny and do all that he wanted to do but there you go, he literally broke the back of the Japanese economic stalemate. I was personally quite impressed but I suspect that quite a lot were not as he was talking more about economics and finance than IT. The IT piece came way afterwards, a little bit and as an after thought.

Then we had Bill Gates in a hologram talking about Microsoft and then Dr. Zhang also, not very clear about what, was flagging badly by that time.... and then we went off back to the hotel, did some more emails and then some calls back home and then off to dinner, again, dinner was brilliant, and pigged out and came back and went to snore, i mean sleep.

Tuesday

The day started with perhaps one of the most interesting panel discussions I have ever attended. It was to do with how to produce innovation and creativity and what can be done to enhance it. These were the people there.

- Arnold Gay, Anchor, CNBC - Moderator
- Kamil Othman, Vice President, Multimedia Development Corporation
- Fritz Attaway, Executive Vice President, Motion Picture Association of America
- Terry Thoren, Chief Executive Officer, Rocket Fish Studios

You cannot get a better collection of people talking about the most creative of industries, motion pictures and a very educational and interesting debate happened. Terry said that the world is changing, Malaysia has twin towers now while USA no longer has it. Who knows what's going to happen in the future? He has severe distaste for politics but great admiration for tech, people, process, creativity, etc

Kamil went into deep details on how to build an innovative industry? Animation in Malaysia. Disappointing take up, long way to go, to make a Walt Disney, you need to start with one million children drawing in grade 8. You cannot create a flash laboratory, shove people in there and wait on the other side of the Lab waiting for Toy Story or Cinderella to drop out of the other side. It has to be started from the very basic levels, people cannot look down on the arts which they do at this moment.

Monetisation of opportunities and content is a challenge, how do you do it? look around you, all countries are pushing people to get educated and into the knowledge sciences, but not all people are thus inclined. Many people simply do not like mathematics or technology. Some people want to study arts, or paint or simply do not have the mathematical skills. What do you do to them? Those who want to write poems? How does he get paid? or fed?

There were conversations around how to create a movie or animated film, quite interesting to see how Hollywood and Silicon Valley literally took decades to develop, you cannot do that just by throwing technology at it. Quite thought provoking indeed. Perhaps one could question whether it is possible to force people to become creative? Or can you just provide the infrastructure and let them get on with it? or is it just let people be, and trust in them to come up with the goods?

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The next session had more ministers but I was quite interested and taken by A Raja, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, India. I have to admit, I was quite cynical at first knowing about Indian politicians, but was very impressed to see what he had to say about it all, how they are powering ahead with the licence's, what mistakes they made, how the process of governance is happening, who gets to approve what? and so on and so forth. Pretty good and well, I will think that what he is saying is right, because I have experienced the mobile phone revolution in India.

As usual, it has to be different. Rest of the world goes through scientific revolution, industrial revolution, then wars then dial up then broadband and mobile, India starts off with revolutions in 3000 years BC, then has fun, then goes into decline, then starts off with a revolution in Y2K and then the next revolution is mobile and mobile internet and mobile commerce is bigger now, how strange and unique... Very curious, loads to think about there. The technology trajectories of these two countries, based upon what Dr. Jiren of China said, are so different. One wonders what will happen in the future.

Incidentally, there was a gentleman from Saudi Arabia who made me think of the previous session. He spoke on about how much money has been pumped into the industry in Saudi Arabia, the emergence of knowledge cities, and the like. Not impressed at all. Not at all impressed. Setting up a knowledge city and throwing money at it does not solve the problem of creativity or having knowledge industries. For that, you need to have creativity at the school level. They have to inquire and challenge everything. Can you imagine something like that happening in Saudi Arabia? Which is the reason why I couldn't take it any more and went outside to grab a coffee. Perhaps the organisers should have kept coffee on tap, this was crazy, they dont want the participants to keep awake? dont they know we drink coffee by the gallon?

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The next topic was rather dry, Dr. Mobius talked about where the next hotspots will be. And I lost my notes on this lecture so this part is a bit vague. I remember him showing loads of graphs about where and when returns are made. It was an asset management view, so was a bit dry. Still, was a bit interesting, specially around the returns of the various sectors in the Asian economy. That is much that I remember... if and when I get my hands on his slide deck, and have time to read it again, will comment...

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For the next session, I went to the "Asia, the destination of choice for Shared Services and Outsourcing" session.

- Dato’ Narayanan Kanan, Senior Vice-President, Multimedia Development Corporation – Moderator
- Michael F. Corbett, Chairman of the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals
- Dr Ganesh Natarajan, Chairman, NASSCOM
- David Wong, Chairman, Outsourcing Malaysia
- Stephen Braim, Vice President Governmental Programs, IBM Asia Pacific

Very interesting, Michael spoke about the impact of the US elections on international outsourcing. I was, frankly a bit puzzled by that kind of emphasis. For two reasons. The first aspect is that the actual number of jobs which are dependent upon the classical aspect of outsourcing is reducing, and the second aspect is, did he really think that the elections will make a tiny bit of difference? Obviously yes, but I am rather disappointed that it was more American rather than International. Also, I was a bit saddened that there was no discussions about international aspects, taxation, technology which allows remote working, etc.

But overall, it was quite interesting, there was discussion about education and how that will help in various countries. What Malaysia is trying to do. What the IBM view was from the perspective of government initiatives and education and so on and so forth. But also, I was a bit disappointed that most people's perspective was the next 8 - 12 months, not more. Still, lets go to lunch, was feeling quite hungry now.

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Over lunch, we had a speech by Dr. Rowe, where he was talking about how the worlds of virtual reality and real life reality meet and how they work together. Quite an interesting topic and he spoke quite a lot about his own personal experiences and the like. But not much about real life applications. I then sent him an email afterwards, and this is what I said to him.

At ABN AMRO, we used Second Life to actually recruit, it was very challenging and interesting but it ultimately failed because of lack of regulatory frameworks. Ended up with 5.5 FTE dedicated to Second Life but then scaled back.
We also used a virtual world to help mentoring. Such as when we have just 2 IT employees in Uzbekistan, then how do I get the junior chap mentored? So we setup a virtual world where mentors and mentee's can congregate in a persistent state across the world. This helps in knowledge capture and better employee retention.
My friend from BP is using a virtual world to track every employee in complex and potentially dangerous plants. This location tracking and graphical display of every employee is used for fire, safety, evacuation and training purposes.

Second life and other virtual lives have become really challenging world and are throwing up some seriously challenging questions for us, again which have not been fully explored just yet.

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Unfortunately, I missed the next slot because we had to go and get powdered up for our session at 3. Not much to speak about in there, check out the slide deck. Also managed to miss out a large proportion of the next presentation from Dr. Pachauri because we were supposed to be in a room answering questions. But did manage to catch snippets of his talk. Quite interesting.

I had to take an office phone call so managed to miss out on the next one as well. So that was that. Nice dinner, watched a charity auction, observed some very nice and lovely looking ladies. This lady was standing 2 feet away from me. Very fragrant. Nice hair even.

Wednesday

This day was going to be challenging, specially since it was also the Champions League Final day.

The day started with me taking breakfast in the Trader Hotel Lounge, where I had been put up, its just next door to the KLCC so very convenient indeed. So took some pictures from the 34th floor lounge while having breakfast.

Here are the twin towers, at the base you can see the gigantic 6 story mall with two wings. It is absolutely stonkingly huge, that mall. Anyway, the twin towers, and the very well landscaped park around the buildings. The building on the left of the twin towers is the Mandarin Oriental where many other guests were also put up.

Then the day started with two debates on the future of the Internet. A deep discussion erupted over the net neutrality issue. To be honest, I have never really thought about it till I was forced to sit and listen to these two debates. Not that I have really firmed up my thoughts but the question is, who pays for the internet? It is my firm belief that nothing is free in this world, somebody will ultimately pay, either the taxpayer, stockholder, consumer, today you or tomorrow in the form of your child. Somebody has to pay. So this idea that the net is free is frankly stupid and more worryingly, it shows a childish view of the world.

Also, the idea that a communications network will or should be free is against human history. Do you think that the pigeon post was free to everybody? or the pony express allowed everybody to send stuff over? or how about the fact that letters still cost to send stuff to each other? Or the fact that we have public and private ownership over the postal system? Or the fact that we have regulations governing what can and cannot be sent over the posts? Or how about the fact that online classifieds are killing newspapers? Or how about the issue that emails are killing the postal system? So when we do not have any issues over that, why do we suddenly end up having an issue over the net neutrality aspect? Here is a good overview article. Very complicated matter, but I suspect it will end up like we have the health service. A Universal service provision which will provide some kind of a basic internet, which is slow and unreliable, while a paid for internet which is better and faster. Pretty much common compared to other industries, if you ask me.

Then there was a discussion about Silicon Valley, it started in 1940's, it took 10 years to know, 10 years to come, 20 years to investment, etc. etc. Takes a heck of a long time to start developing an industry. See what Taiwan did, took them decades to get to it but get to it they did. Now they are the champions, and almost every PC in the world has some Taiwanese components in it.

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Next session I had to miss, then popped into the Mexico session for a few just to realise that they were talking about near shoring. I mean, d'oh, get on with the programme, people are now in the 5th generation of out sourcing and we are still in the terminology of the 1st generation. Crikey! that made me so depressed that I went back to the room and started my calls. Also had a quick bite to eat in the room itself, couldn't’get out of the calls but went back to catch the next great debate.

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Not much to report on other than the fact that one of the guests (I told you, lost all my notes because my stupid My Documents folder decided that it wants to forget all about my previous history and start afresh to synch...). said that the adoption of energy efficiency standards by California means that the energy usage per citizen has now leveled off compared to other states. But if you think about it, the lesson from this is to start imposing energy standards more and more, get people challenged to be smarter about their energy usage. So while the usage will rise, but it will level off at some point!, interesting, no?

So I went looking for some data. What does this tell you? Well, it did make me go hmmmm. We are actually seeing a dip in the energy consumption per capita in North and South America, albeit from a relatively high level. Delving deeper into North America, Canada and Mexico are showing an increase while, very surprisingly, USA is dipping down and decreasing. How curious. 40 countries out of 134 countries actually showed a dip in energy consumption between 2000 and 2003. Some of them were obviously banana republics which were facing economic downturns such as Zimbabwe, or contractions such as Argentina, Ivory Coast, Bolivia, Eritrea, etc.

But what explains this reduction for countries as varied as Belgium, Brazil, Australia, Chile, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, UAE, United Kingdom and USA? Can it be that despite increasing populations, their energy efficiency is improving? Dont take my word for it, check out the data. It is from the IEA even, so would be ok as well. Population information from the United Nations.

The next topic was the most interesting one, so I will put up another dedicated post for it. Came out to grab a coffee before going back in and saw that the sky was cloudy, the KL Tower was nearly hidden under clouds. Unfortunately, all the photographs with the top of the tower hidden did not come out, but hope you can make out the onion dome in the back being hazy in the mist.

One of the living legends of the internet age, Dr Vinton Cerf, Vice-president & Chief Internet Evangelists, Google, spoke on the topic of "Tracking the Internet into the 21st Century". This was the final presentation of the WCIT and the entire hall was absolutely crowded, people were standing on the aisles waiting to hear that great man.

He talked about the future of the internet. Said that the internet penetration around the world is strange. Asia, Middle East and Africa are bad or low or both. Only 20% of the world is connected. He used the World Population Reports from the UN about the 2300 figures and displayed them, some interesting rises and dips. I presume he is talking about this report. See the graph on page 19 of the report. High scenario shows a horrifying 36 billion people on the planet, with a medium one of less than 10 billion. Bloody interesting report but this is not the place to go into it.

He talked about how only 20% are connected to the internet and more will grow. Incidentally, I found it much easier to observe him up on the main screen rather than watch him on the far left. Which begs the question, if this was webcast, then I wouldn't have traveled to Malaysia.... (theoretical question...). Which made me go off into a different train of thought.

My facebook, orkut, myspace, etc. accounts are nothing but very primitive clones of myself. I cannot be everywhere, so my primitive clones operate on my behalf. Just like my email system does and my voicemail system does. As a matter of fact, my home is also a sort of a clone. It has an address which is independent of me. People can communicate with me on an asynchronous basis and I can get back to them whenever. So when people are writing something on my facebook wall, are they communicating with me? or with my clone?

Say I have an active Second Life account. Is that me or is that my clone? Or both? I feed those clones with information and they act/react based upon my preferences. So I can be in another place via my robot/clone and get back information to me when it is convenient to me. I do not have to be face to face with you to get information. You can email/voicemail me and I can pick it up at my convenience.

If I communicate with my son online in Second Life via both our avatars while we are both across the world, am I still his father? to what extent? How about love? Can I show my love to him? via that medium? How does he know that it is me? Or if I was seeing Dr. Cerf across the world on a webcast, how would I know it is him? Just because somebody said so? identity problems galore. Does this mean that more friends you have, more your identify is confirmed? Like an amazon or ebay seller, more positive recommendations, the better is the identity and better is the trust. What do I do when I am dealing with a financial institution? Curiously, microcredit or microfinance rests on this premise, it lends money to people on the basis of guarantors from their community. So a person has to be social and know people and be trusted by them in order to get money. Bit different from my neural network Kohonen map based credit scoring model, eh? But I digress.

He talked about IPv6 (a network address for every device on this planet and then some, even some for your socks..), better search engines. He said something that I will come back to, he said that the monetisation and earning potential online will be less and the current business models will have to change.

He also talked about BIT rot, how on earth will you manage to open a Powerpoint 1997 file in Windows 3000? Forget about that old a problem, here is my problem. I wanted to dig out some research that I had done way back in 1990. I did not have the files here in London so had to wait till I got back to home and went to poked through my old cupboard. Besides the nostalgic kick, I finally found the floppy disks. 5 1/4 inch floppy disks to be precise. I have also operated the 8 inch floppy disk but well, the data that I had was in two formats, Lotus 1-2-3 and dbase. I remember sitting back on my haunches, looking at the dusty pile of floppies, and thinking back to those hours and days that I spent in typing in the financial data of the companies and did the basic analysis. Do you know, I even managed to calculate multiple regression on the damn things in there? Anyway, for all purposes, that data is now lost to me. I do not have a floppy drive anywhere near me, none of the 4 home pc's have it. I have an old laptop which has a floppy drive but it is 8 1/2 inch drive, not the older 5 1/4th inch drive. So I am stiffed.

Fast forward today. Financial institutions are supposed to keep data for up to 10 years. So your transactions and your records are supposed to be kept nicely and carefully within the firm for 10 years. Now the transactions are processed, on an average, via 10 odd applications. There can be many more depending upon the country and product but just think about it, 10 applications, multiple operating systems, multiple upgrades, multiple hardware requirements, multiple network systems, multiple servers, so many different types of technology stacks, and we have to maintain a record of this. Within 5 years, it becomes a major issue to keep up to date with technology, we are talking about 100's of years? No bloody way.

Museums are now struggling with electronic art. I could have taken those disks to a museum but they are also facing problems. Here's a great paper written in 2001 and the problem has become even worse now.

He also talked about the inter-planetary internet. That just blew my mind away but it needs much more thought before I can write more about it, its not fully comprehended yet. Anyway, he got a standing ovation at the end. I ran to attend his Q&A after getting distracted by an email, but still managed to get to the hall to ask him a question. I asked him, you have talked so much about what will happen in 2035 and 2300, the physical shape of the internet, the devices, the penetration rates, and and and. What do you think would be the value system, the monetary framework, the price formation or who will pay for it all? It was obvious that I had asked a wrong question immediately because it did not go anywhere fast. I did ask some follow up questions, but he is a great man, he had to rush off to meet somebody else.

This is my problem. I am supposed to think about what's going to happen in 5 years time in the financial world. This is what I am seeing currently. People who are in the 15-25 years of age category, the great unwashed herd who will be our future employees and customers, are not that well versed in value creation online. And why would they be? Look at what kids do online these days. He watches movies, plays songs, plays games, chats with people, participates in joint coding, and so on and so forth. Almost all of this is free or stolen. His email is free, his programming language is free, songs and movies are free, his video is from YouTube, his chatting is free via text and messenger, his voice is free over VoIP. So all these assets that these kids are using, they are all free at this moment.

So I am most certainly not surprised that they do not know the value of online assets. So when you ask them, how much are you worth? or how much will you work for? or how much do you wish to charge for your ideas? or how much funding will you need for your great online idea? no idea. And that is the issue that I am struggling with. In 5 or 10 years, the link between physical work, money and online assets will be inextricably broken. So how much would I pay a coder? How much would Microsoft pay a programmer when most online assets are free?

My son said something to me today that completely blew me away. He said that he will go create some online jewels and armour in World of Warcraft as birthday gifts for his friend who lives 5 houses down. No money, no nothing, just pure and simple virtual asset formation, entertainment and happiness increased but with no reference to money at all. Deeply worrying.

So to go back to Dr. Cerf, on what basis will anybody pay for a book in 2300? or a share in the company making Windows 3000? or the ability to write code? Or to create a powerpoint presentation? I do not have an answer, but I didn't get one either. I will be struggling with this as part of my job as well, but I am seriously not sure what the answer is. We saw some amazing valuation modeling during the internet boom. But they did put a value on an intangible asset, no? It was a bad value, but a value none the less. Also goes to the heart of what Mark to Market is all about. If this is all too philosophical, think about this, my son is happier getting a World of Warcraft spell rather than an intricately carved wooden box which I got for him.....Should I have gone to the local electronic fair in Kuala Lumpur and bought a user-id/password for him instead? How would I judge what is a fair amount to pay? I have no idea whatsoever. No reference points at all.

That brought me to the end of the conference. The last day, Thursday, was a trip to Cyberjaya and Putrajaya, the IT and administrative hubs of the country, but dont think that fits in here, so you can see some pictures here. I have also written another essay on my observations on Malaysia and that should be published soon as well. End of the day, fascinating indeed and perhaps it was appropriate that that brought my professional career stint with technology to an end, now its moving back into the front office. But technology will remain with me, either with my shareholder, customer or employees. Food for thought, will try to attend the next one in 2010 in Amsterdam.

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