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August 20, 2008
I was reading uber telecom/broadband industry blogger Om Malik’s article on how undersea network cables are much akin to the sea-lanes from the 1400-1800s in the sense that they signalled future economic hotspots and trends. While that’s not an incredibly prescient correlation, it is true.
Another interesting global correlation would be to have an interactive Google Maplet with custom layers.
- It would let the user review global cell/mobile phone network coverage areas, obviously this would overlap, so each provider should be a layer you can toggle.
- Offer the user a list of available network types. By this I mean - 2.5G/3G/3.5G/LTE/WiMAX. This should be a decent indicator of how evolved the network setup is within a given locale and its ability to broadcast location-based services.
- If one also correlated cell/mobiles sales information then not only would one get an indicator of network capability but device maturity as well. I am sure this information is available on a domestic basis in the major regions. Many high-end phones in a region with old network infra or vice-versa is not a high-traction environment for LBS or Mobile services of any kind.
- Another layer would be the same global approach - but instead of cell/mobile networks, this would cover the fiber running domestically within borders. I have no idea if there is a service that offers this information visually. If you take India for example, it would be advantageous to get a 10,000ft view of what current & planned fiber is being laid.
By having the above data regularly updated and visually represented, we not only cover the sea-lanes which indicate global perception & sentiment, but also identify fiber/wireless explosions in areas like Africa and rural India. Then not only will we see the digital sea-lanes, but the interstates & airways too.
Filed under: Innovation |
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August 19, 2008
Happy New Year all my fellow Zoroastrians. Here’s to a healthy & prosperous year ahead for everyone! God Bless!
Filed under: Personal |
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August 16, 2008
So, everybody following Phelps likely knows about the magical 7th gold he attained in the 100m Butterfly edging Cavic by 0.01 seconds. It’s moments like these you cannot manufacture and reaffirms your faith in human progress through the relentless pursuit of perfection.
Phelps is about as close as it gets to the adage ‘born to swim’ as this freeze from the Getty Images archive will attest to:
Anybody watching the replays on the seemingly endless camera angles would have to marvel at the speed Phelps’ hands surge into the touchpad to beat a seemingly ahead Cavic. In swim-speak, this is called a ‘half-stroke’ and it is a testament to Phelps’ preparation, pool awareness and will to win that he chose to go with the half-stroke vs. Cavic’s stretch option. Even if you watch the underwater replays in slow-motion, it blows the mind as to how fast Phelps finished that half-stroke to Cavic. The difference in frame-rate is amazing and explains why the optical illusion of Cavic in the lead was emphatically nullified.
I couldn’t help but draw an odd parallel to one of the football greats - Diego Maradona and his ‘Hand of God’ goal against England in the 1986 World Cup Quarter-Finals. If you watch it in real-time, it’s near impossible to pick-up on Maradona’s lightning quick hand-flick to assist the ball into the net. It put Argentina ahead and was eventually the difference in the 2-1 victory.
Maradona said:
un poco con la cabeza de Maradona y otro poco con la mano de Dios
Which translates to:
a little with the head of Maradona and a little with the hand of God
There’s no questioning the illegality of that goal and Maradona’s ethics when it comes to that act. But it is funny how champions always assess opportunities in a most sub-conscious way mortals cannot even begin to understand. It’s not as though this ability falls into their laps, it is really a result of their relentless preparation and training. At that moment, they didn’t need to consciously think of anything, they just did it because they’d walked this road before. They found a way to win.
This photo (Heinz Kluetmeier/Sports Illustrated) really captures the improbability of it all:
They both had a choice, fortune favored the more prepared mind.
Filed under: Sport |
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August 15, 2008
Just wanted to wish family, friends, colleagues & business associates a happy independence day! May we all continue to grow in the year ahead. Cheers!
Filed under: India |
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August 14, 2008
National Geographic (awesome photos) ran a story on Iran and focused on the country’s legacy, people & culture. The Iranian people are fiercely independent thinkers, and place a serious premium on honor. Reading this cover story triggered a lot of thought into where Iran is today and how it can move forward by looking deeper into its past and not just acknowledging it.
There is no question that humanity advanced significantly when the Persian empire was at its zenith. Before the Magna Carta, there was the Cyrus Cylinder, the world’s first charter of human rights.
Cyrus Cylinder:
Before email, Peter Drucker, planes, trains & automobiles - the Achaemenid Dynasty established a doctrine that allowed them to rule over a land-mass that began with Macedonia in the West and stretched into the Indus river valley, or what is known today as Pakistan. Much of the known world, remained united under this umbrella for approximately 200 years. At the core of the doctrine, was a pragmatic process of delivering regional independence, religious freedom & a preservation of leadership in exchange for loyalty to the empire.
This legacy was interrupted by Alexander the Great, who was greatly influenced by the Persian model and exercised it during his short reign of the region. Persia was back in the driver’s seat with the rise of Parthians and then the Sassanids, who coined the term Iran and ruled over the largest empire on Earth as Rome declined. In summary, for about a 1,000 years (550b.c. - 650a.d.) they remained one of the most influential empires in existence. Then came the Arabs, the rise of Islam and the transformation of Iran into how we know it today. An Islamic nation with deep ties to its heritage and identity.
The cover story in National Geographic ends with a line that I identify with very much:
Inside every Iranian, there is an emperor or empress.
There appears to be a natural tendency for every Iranian to seek comfort & pride in their past as a benevolent & innovative superpower, regardless of how suppressed & vilified it may be today. The Persian identity isn’t muddled, and it certainly isn’t divisive. The Cyrus Cylinder would have permitted a difference of opinion with the United States on cultural, religious & sociological issues.
The rise of the China clearly makes that very clear - a nation unified in thought and comfortable with its cultural legacy can set its own terms. China differentiates itself from other asymmetric nations by quietly abandoning historic faux pas and embracing new approaches. It’s prepared to fail on a micro level if it has to, as long as the macro goal is reached.
However, a confused Iran is one that cannot fulfill its potential, and the world is lesser for it. Iran is not Western. It is not Eastern. It is not Arab. It is not European. It is Persian, and the day it figures that out, I don’t see the planet having any issue with it.
Full Disclosure: While I am certainly Indian by birth, I am Persian by blood. I am a Zoroastrian, my forefathers came to India about a 1,000 years ago when the Arabs invaded Iran. We didn’t want to convert, and thus we came to the shores of India to preserve our faith. India has taken care of us, and we of them. It seems that India learned more from the ‘Cyrus Cylinder’ than Iran has.
Note: This is an opinion piece. I will not be lured into any political or religious debate. I simply think Iran can be better than it is now and some of the answers lie within the people.
Filed under: Personal |
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August 13, 2008
So FaceBook’s new UI got pushed out to me with a letter from Zuckerberg verbosely proclaiming their commitment to usability and neatness blah blah.
Cutting to the chase, I have to say that the new interface delivers for me. It’s definitely a huge improvement in information management and keeps everything a heckuvalot more contextual. It took about 3 minutes for me to turn from skeptical to appreciative. I am sure others will have varying perspectives on this.
One of the clear drawbacks of this interface is that it is less “festive”. The older layout clearly had more commotion which translated to a user feeling that they were in an active network. This interface is more elective and that might actually translate into FB seeing fewer page views or atleast slow-down perceived growth.
I really like the “Boxes” section on any given profile. That used to drive me nuts… watching endless applications swimming around people’s profiles for no apparent reason.
On a personal level, the new UI gets me what I want - access to my wall, messages, status updates and if I want, I can add an application as a tab. Again keeping it neat. Unlike a lot of the other social networks, the one thing I enjoy about FB is the technical discipline and focus on information architecture. They executed beautifully on FB-Chat with their Erlang-C++ hybrid, “dark launching” wisely to see if anything collapsed. They also have an excellent design in place for their photo storage to tackle their 100M+ photo submissions a week along with figuring out a way to avoid depending on CDNs like Akamai to deliver frequently accessed photos. I am not sure if the ‘Haystack’ concept went live yet, but it will be interesting to see how that executes.
In keeping with that caution and concern, they have prominently offered a “Back to the old Facebook” option. You would expect FB’s young development team to be a bit more rambunctious, but they are far from it. They put the users first and always have a fall-back option. In my belief, as long as they continue to keep that discipline within their ranks - they are always going to be in a position of value. OpenSocial and other initiatives on open development platforms would have never been a top concern to me because content is king and since FB and MySpace are the prime custodians of it, no Open platform is going to magically take that away just because it makes vendors happy.
This was me on a forum in October 2007:
I don’t see what tangible advantage a 100% Open Source version of Facebook
would be to Consumers and Vendors when they have no control over the Ad
Engine or Consumer Data.
How does any community profit from this other than the founders? And if
there is a way to profit - would that method be something you cannot
accomplish with Facebook today?
The key “value” and “asset multiplier” for a social network is not the
technology stack. It is the people and the social graphs they build. If that
social graph is not “open”, then there is no tangible advantage to the
Community.
Source.
Keep it up FB, someday maybe you’ll wake up and do FaceBay instead of pushing weird ads for laptop batteries to me :).
Filed under: Innovation |
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August 12, 2008
Series TItle: The Mendis Remains Encrypted Series
Prediction: 1-0 India. Run-fest.
2-1 Sri Lanka, not a run-fest except in the first Test. A listless Indian performance.
Expectations:
- Mendis plays carroms with the Big 4 and loses. He does not. Dravid & Laxman in particular were really clueless. Tendulkar didn’t appear to have any issues with Murali or Mendis, but never sustained an innings.
- SRT goes past Lara for the Test Run Record. My theory here is that Tendulkar would have preferred to break the record @ home against Australia, so the incentive was diminished. Now more than ever, it takes a larger & larger stage for the Big 4 to perform.
- SRT dominates MM like Lara / Pietersen before him. That’s a point he has to prove. Clearly he is comfortable with his legacy and sees no point to prove. I disagree. I continue to hold Lara in a brighter light.
- Kumble will struggle in Lanka - the rust comes off slower now and the “snap” off the wicket is gone. Atleast this was confirmed. He really was a sad sight.
- Vaas will suck after 3 overs. Fernando, Malinga loss will hurt them - this attack has no pace… he sucked most of the series, not impressed.
- Expect Ganguly to do well on a slow & grimy pitch. His performance in this series will likely result in him being dropped and Yuvraj getting an extended run. I think this is the end of the line unfortunately.
Questions:
- Does Laxman still have it in him to play entrenched innings on slow pitches in adverse conditions? Yes & no. He seemed to have more fight than the other 3, but nothing like what it was <2004.
- Will SRT remain injury free for a historic test season ahead? He’s hurt the elbow again. And predictably dropped out of the ODI series. Smart choice, but seriously, SRT is getting increasingly fragile & self-doubting. He was in a good place there for a while, I hope this injury doesn’t off-set him too much.
- Will Murali continue his downward spiral or find a new elixir? Murali was still very useful (Murali & Mendis sent down 324 overs in the series). But this is nowhere near his peak. Those days are gone.
- Will Dravid regain any sense of fluency with his batting again? He was going well for that 68 in the final series… it seems that the minute his strike-rate drops below 40, the probability of him failing jumps dramatically. He was moving along smoothly at an SR of 45 but he just clammed up. Really annoying.
- Will Ishant learn how to bowl on slow n’ low wickets? He was learning. And then he got injured. Generally speaking, his potential is obvious but his consistency especially on the line is useless.
- Will Sangakkara ever have a bad home series? It was looking like a bad series until that match-winning century that put the game out of reach for India. He stepped up when it mattered, as did Jayawardene. Both the Jayawardenes.
India need to regroup and figure out what the way forward is to put on the best show against Australia. I am not even sure if the BCCI cares about what the Test series results are. The wicket-keeping department & Dhoni’s return will help. This doesn’t preclude us from not finding a decent backup.
Parthiv and Karthik were sub-par. Karthik should never play a Test again. Ganguly needs to let it go and retire. Laxman & Dravid are needed. SRT needs to figure out what his goals are, I think he needs to retire from ODI cricket. T20 & Tests are what he should focus on.
On the bowling front - Kumble needs to figure out if he still has the will to bowl… quite frankly the captaincy hasn’t been innovative or adventurous. Yes, he got no support from the batting line-up, but the field placements, bowling changes could have been more prescient. Why does Tendulkar never bowl anymore? Why didn’t Sehwag bowl more? Why didn’t the tail contribute more runs? And was Mendis really that hard to pick when Sehwag & Gambhir seemed to be productive against them? Gambhir shut the door on Jaffer with this performance. And Sehwag’s 201 out of 329 is likely to make a 100 best Test Innings Ever list. It was awesome match-winning batting.
I think Kumble said it right - “We may not have bowled well, but we bowled with heart.” In that was the story in a nutshell. The big 4 just didn’t bring their full hearts into this series. They just didn’t step up. Perhaps the occasion was too modest. Clearly for our two openers, both under the age of 30, hunger wasn’t a problem. Perhaps there is a lesson there.
Filed under: Cricket |
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August 11, 2008
Abhinav Bindra just made history for our country by winning India’s first individual Olympic Gold medal. He beat Zhu Qinan of China 700.5-699.7. Jai Hind!!!
This is awesome and may it be the first of many to come in this century. We may not have the most focused sports program on earth, but we certainly have the capacity to compete at a world-class level in:
Archery, Shooting, Diving, Gymnastics, Middle Distance Running, Judo & Wrestling. The next generation can focus on sprinting, swimming, cycling and other higher-octane disciplines.
If we only devoted 1% of GDP to sports not named Cricket, there is a pretty good chance we could break into the top 10 medal winners within 3 Olympic cycles. 1.1BN people fielding 56 Olympians is just not logical.
In other news, props to Jason Lezak on sinking France in the 100M Swim Freestyle Relay. That was just an insane final leg by the American to keep Phelps’ dream of 8 Golds in a single Olympics alive. Tremendous emotions there.
Filed under: India, Sport |
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August 9, 2008
One of the Kings of Comedy, Bernie Mac, passed away today. Way too early, and just when he was starting to enjoy himself. While he’ll never be in Cosby or Pryor or Carlin’s league, I do think he was highly underrated.
He was old-school, talented, kept the themes simple, HBO-only, politically incorrect and had the fiercest eyes in the business. A great career that was only going higher.
Thanks for the memories Bernie. Video has strong language, and if that isn’t your thing, don’t click it! The first 3:10 is what BMac was all about.
Filed under: Unexpected |
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August 9, 2008
So I am currently watching the Olympic opening ceremony (which I will comment on shortly) and a stunning Nike ad comes on themed “Courage”. It’s a superb collage and obviously the ad agency that did this, hit it home… and then left a URL at the end.
So a couple of seconds later I went to it…. and sure enough Akamai was serving the video and clearly lots of people joined me in helping to choke the video stream. I can’t play the stream more than 5 seconds at a time.
CDNs have room to improve, clearly.
Filed under: Innovation, Sport |
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