blogs
12 Things I Learned By 42 That I Wish I Knew At 22
Submitted by hari on February 1, 2008 - 2:20pm.
My, how time flies. Seems just like yesterday that I was a 12 year old kid, going for long bike rides in Sherwood Forrest, the subdivision just around the corner from where I lived. Playing with William, Edward, and my little brother, climbing in the tree house, looking forward to Brent coming over to visit. Those were all good times and my only dread was finding out that we were having liver for supper.
The Untold Story: How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry
Submitted by hari on January 10, 2008 - 2:07pm.WIRED MAGAZINE: ISSUE 16.02
01.09.08 | 9:00 PM
The demo was not going well.
"I Love You Daddy ..."
Submitted by hari on November 6, 2007 - 11:27am.Neha came to me this morning, gave me a hug and said "I love you daddy coz you have lot of dollars!!".
Man! She's already a WOMAN!! She turns 6 next month.
iDiot (me) buys iPhone!!
Submitted by hari on July 1, 2007 - 11:39am.Title says it all... Review to follow....
Update July 2:
iPhone is fun to use as you all know by now either by owning or test driving it. I really haven't read any issues with the phone or service since launch except for minor activation issues.
I wanted to wait for iPhone 2.0 because it lacks 3G. I couldn't resist and bought it 24hrs after launch (hence called myself iDiot!!). Well, EDGE isn't that bad. Sure it takes 30 - 40 secs to load NYTimes.com, but I don't think I'd use iPhone to read news from websites like these even if it supported 3G. EDGE, in my opinion is good enough to browse not so graphics intensive sites to get information and not to sit and pass time browsing.
iPhone Sales Estimate
Submitted by hari on June 25, 2007 - 8:12am.The following table shows estimates for unit sales of the iPhone.
Fiscal Year Fiscal Year
Ending Sept. 2007 Ending Sept. 2008
================================================================
American Technology Research 250,000 **
Bear Stearns & Co. 650,000 **
Credit Suisse 1.7 million 12.3 million
Pacific Crest Securities 800,000 4.8 million
Piper Jaffray & Co. 1.2 million 8 million
"Who Moved My Cheese?"
Submitted by hari on February 15, 2007 - 9:19pm.AOL at this moment is not in a good shape in the market it operates in (this is no secret). I feel there’s a lot of potential in the organization to get back to the heights it enjoyed not long before (in internet time, it was loooooooong ago). What are the chances for the revival? It all depends on the management. At this time the management doesn’t have the capacity. Unfortunately there is no “Steve Jobs” who left AOL to come back and plan a revival. Steve Case did you say? Well, same first names don’t mean anything. He doesn’t have the same persona as that of Jobs.
There definitely was an attempt to revive the company. I feel management forgot the need for strategy. Management thought they had one. “Good luck, bad luck, who knows” is not a strategy, nor turning around 180o and facing other side is. A weak leadership created powerhouses across organizations that had their own agenda and everyone got involved and thought they had strategy. Technical people should not be involved in making business decisions or setting direction.
AOL Broadband: Tried partnering with Covad and Verizon (?) to provision broadband ended in losing money for every customer they signed up. So the strategists didn’t do their homework before they got into this venture?
AOL TotalTalk: VoIP initiative was a big blunder. It seemed like AOL wanted to get its share of the lucrative VoIP market. They thought they could bundle Skype and VoIP phone features in one. This attempt was made assuming they got the broadband subscribers (I doubt if they had capacity to make this assumption). I feel AOL was not in a position to compete in highly competitive market and didn’t price it right.
AOL MusicNow: How can whoever got involved in this venture (to buy failed business from Circuit City) ignore iPod which dominates MP3 market? There are two options if you can’t fight: join hands or run away. AOL opted for the later by winding up the business (selling it off to Napster). Sure there were challenges dealing with DRM and Apple. This is the homework that should have been done before they made the move.
MapQuest: This is one of the lifelines for AOL. Lack of vision resulted in falling behind to competition. This is the only cash cow AOL has that has the potential to grow and lead. Poor decisions and basking in limelight without thinking about the future resulted in its catching up with competition. It had the potential to be on every GPS system, but because of poor decisions and lack of vision resulted in lost opportunities.
Netscape: Do I have to say anything about this 900-pound gorilla? I hope someone would realize at least now and perform the last rites of pulling the plug and putting it to sleep.
AOL Products: There are wide range of products: AIM, Mail, Calendar, Address Book, Parental Controls, etc. One right move was to strategically market Parental Control product that AOL prides in. But, there too AOL didn’t study the competition. McAfee and Symantec who are the big players in the industry are finding it hard in the OS market dominated by not so secure Windows, as Microsoft has its solution for its own crap (this is a different topic for another day). Parental Controls that were part of Classic Client were a hit not because it is state of the art (in technical perspective it is!!) solution but for the non-technical parents who liked it as it came bundled with their dial-up service.
If you look at individual products most of them are inferior to the competition. They lack in features, technology and soon would lose their dominance to the competition.
My view is that these are not state of the art products! Disagree? Then how did AOL amass so many subscribers and has a huge market share? Let me explain. AOL had the first mover’s advantage when it entered the market and once it picked up the critical mass, it dominated. Other examples:
• Hotmail has over 250 Million users. Microsoft made a quick move and grabbed the opportunity by buying it and integrated MSN chat with Hotmail and created the effect of critical mass.
• Dell is market leader in selling desktop computers online. One reason is first mover’s advantage. It’s a different story after that, optimized business processes and cut down costs and yada, yada, yada.
Unlike mobile phone market where you can call anyone on any network, online messaging/chatting is different; critical mass played significant role and AOL definitely has advantage in this area. I feel it wouldn’t be not long from now when mobile phones and messaging converge (the fight already started), AIM might lose its dominance unless AOL makes a strategic move. Is anyone at AOL thinking about this at all? I doubt it. Even today, I feel that the management is content based upon the subscriber numbers and the brand name and clueless about the future direction.
I didn’t touch other brand names AOL owns (Tegic, love.com, Moviefone, etc.), as I don’t have details about how they operated.
I hope this answers the question “Who Moved My Cheese?” and I apologize for the long answer.
End Note:
Reusing the title of the famous book “Who Moved My Cheese?” by Spencer Johnson M.D. If you are in between jobs, this is a must read.
Amazing Brain: Facial Recognition
Submitted by hari on February 12, 2007 - 9:35pm.Or is it your brain tricking you? An interesting article in NYTImes on how brain interprets patterns as faces.
Faces, Faces Everywhere
More than a decade ago, Diana Duyser of Hollywood, Fla., received a religious message through an unlikely medium: a grilled cheese sandwich she had made herself. As she gazed at the brown skillet marks on the surface of the bread, a familiar visage snapped into focus.
iWant iPhone!
Submitted by hari on January 10, 2007 - 9:19am.The phone I longed for is almost there. I wanted a PDA phone, but none that are available now have features that I want. At some point considered Sony Ericson P800/900. It is too expensive and it doesn't have all the features and I have to struggle with it to seamlessy work with Mac OS X.
Finally there's going to be one. iPhone. It is really cool just like any other apple product. And it has features that are really useable. Features that I wanted in PDA/Phone:
Neha turns FIVE!
Submitted by hari on December 20, 2006 - 10:19am.Neha turned 5 yesterday. She had Christmas party yesterday at school, so they celebrated her birthday on 18th. And we celebrated on 19th (yesterday) at home. Couldn't wait until the weekend 'coz it's the weekend of Christmas.
She was so happy to see her friends at the party and couple of the kids were so happy to see PS3. They were playing running around and with the toys but David became restless when he saw console. He got so excited, he didn't want to leave the family room. He couldn't wait for others to finish eating pizza. And Thomas joined him and took turns to play racing game.
Victim of AOLocaust
Submitted by hari on December 13, 2006 - 9:14am.I got the dreaded email "You are required to attend the mandatory meeting....". At least this relieved the pain (of going through series of cuts since August). Hoping that package is decent and how much worth it is depends on how soon I get a new job and pocket the rest :-) , that's something to smile at the least.
Can't say it was fun working here with all the re-orgs and booting, but enjoyed my stay.
IBM to double India headcount to 1 lakh
Submitted by nimmy on December 5, 2006 - 10:39am.Bangalore: Moving forward on its commitment to increase investments in India, the `Big Blue' IBM proposes to double its headcount in the country to about 1,00,000 over the next four years. IBM's current headcount in India is around 50,000, an increase of over 100 per cent in past two years. IBM has been adding 1,000 people a month for past few quarters and is likely to sustain the growth momentum in the next few years.
iPod sales growth over the years
Submitted by hari on December 1, 2006 - 2:04pm.In 2002, Apple sold nearly as many iPods in its winter quarter (219,000) as it did the first three quarters.
In 2003, Apple actually sold more iPods in its winter quarter (733,000) than in the first three combined.
In 2004, Apple again sold more iPods in its final quarter (4,580,000) than in the first three.
In 2005, Apple maintained sales of more than 4 million iPods in every quarter. In the winter quarter, it still blew out nearly 3 times as many: 14,480,000.
PS3 - Performance of a supercomputer at the price of an entry-level PC
Submitted by hari on December 1, 2006 - 1:07pm.Research firm iSuppli said its recent PlayStation 3 (PS3) teardown analysis shows that the PS3 is an engineering masterpiece that sets a new high mark for computing price/performance – even when considering it is more expensive than its nearest rival, the Xbox 360 from Microsoft.
"With the PS3, you are getting the performance of a supercomputer at the price of an entry-level PC," said Andrew Rassweiler, teardown services manager and senior analyst for iSuppli.
Finally got my hands on a PS3
Submitted by hari on November 30, 2006 - 2:26pm.No.. not at the store demo kiosk. A friend (Bob) who got lucky last week while at Best Buy gave it to me!! The graphics are too good. Played Ridge Racer 7 and the response is stunning!! You got to experience it to believe.
The setup is simple, though I had hard time working with the on-screen keyboard using controller (SIXAXIS what they call it). Wireless setup, patch updates were straight forward. There are no startup delays or BD loading issues, The system boots in about 8 secs and the OS recognizes BD disk instantaneously and loads the movie or game in no time.
Raise children to understand and value for money
Submitted by hari on November 28, 2006 - 1:18pm.Whether you want to encourage and develop habits and skills that will help your child not only earn money, but to become more responsible with money or you desire them to become rich - here is a good advise.
Examine your own beliefs and feelings about money. Do you believe that earning an income is a privilege and challenge; a good thing that can help you achieve your dreams and goals, or do you see it as a “necessary evil” to getting through life? If your thoughts tend toward the latter, you’ll have a hard time convincing your child that building wealth is a good thing. It's difficult to instill positive financial values that will help your child achieve success if they come into conflict with your own. Carefully think about your attitudes toward money and where they came from. No matter how you feel about money, it's good goal for a parent to assist your child in growing up to be a financially responsible and secure adult.
