Ideas are Cheap - Build your mobile
It’s that time of the year when proto.in fever spreads. And the ideaworm has got to me.
Inspired by Vijay Anand’s “Ideas To Toss” series, I thought why not start my own occasional series as well? I’m calling it the “Ideas are Cheap” series. The name is a take on the common proverb “Ideas are Cheap. Execution is Everything.”
So here’s the idea for today:
Can we have a business where the users can customize the hardware that goes into their phone?
This is not a new idea. We are just applying Dell’s business model to mobile phones. If Dell can do it for desktops and laptops, why can’t it be done for mobile phones?
The customization can range from how much memory you want, whether you need a camera or not, etc. to choosing the color and the type of body (candybar or flip or other form factors) and so on.
The range of customization possible depends on the capabilities and costs involved in the assembly process. For example, users may be able to customize the phone by having a name for a special button called ‘Mom’ (or ‘Dad’ or ‘Son’ and so on) that is hotwired to call you. You can gift this to your corresponding loved ones. The advantage is it becomes a wonderful ‘personal’ phone and becomes easy-to-use for technophobic people.
The implementation will be challenging. For one, desktops and laptops can be assembled because of the plug-and-play IBM PC architecture as well as because the operating system easily adjusts to changes in the hardware. AFAIK, mobile phones are not built that way as of today and requires some configuration in the software based on which hardware features are present and which are not (please correct me if I am wrong). Making the software easily adaptable will be a major feature.
The other interesting part is to build a factory that facilitates this. It is very hard to build a supply-chain system for such a factory.
The good part is that the technology could be built on top of OpenMoko - after all, this is the kind of ideas that FIC (the sponsors of the OpenMoko project) had in mind in creating a mostly-open-hardware and open-source-software mobile computing project.
Personalization is one of the buzzwords that is supposed to make the big moolah for companies these days, and allowing people to customize a device that they carry around all day definitely has potential.
End credits: This idea was part of a random discussion between Ramjee and myself.
On a different tangent, there are lots of ideas waiting to happen in the software. For example, it’s not only Apple that can do an App Store for their phone, this can be done for this platform too. Of course, we’ll have to start off a holy war of choosing that one linux distro…
Perhaps similar ideas can be done on top of the Asus EEE PC as well?
The meaning of Touch
While I was cycling today, I had an interesting thought.
I always have my ol’ iPod Nano with me while I’m cycling. As usual, if I want to listen to a song again, I click the left button to repeat, if I don’t like a song, I click the right button to skip to the next song. But while cycling, I have to do this without looking at it. It is possible because I can feel the click-wheel and it has a good feedback so that I know when the press has worked.
Compare this with the touch-screen rage - can a person use the iPod Touch/iPhone without looking? From my limited usage of a friend’s iphone, I do not think it is possible.
It makes me wonder which is really the “Touch” - the one I can use without looking (using only sense of touch), or the one that has a touch-screen UI (requires both sense of touch and sense of sight)?
Super Crunchers
Today, I re-read a book called Super
Crunchers: How Anything Can Be Predicted
So what is supercrunching?
Now something is changing. Business and government professionals are relying more and more on databases to guide their decisions. The story of hedge funds is really the story of a new breed of number crunchers - call them Super Crunchers - who have analyzed large datasets to discover empirical correlations between seemingly unrelated things. Want to hedge a large purchase of euros? Turns out you should sell a carefully balanced portfolio of twenty-six other stocks and commodities that might include Wal-Mart stock.
What is Super Crunching? It is statistical analysis that impacts real-world decisions. Super Crunching predictions usually bring together some combination of size, speed and scale. The sizes of datasets are really big - both in the number of observations and in the number of variables. The speed of the analysis is increasing. We often witness the real-time crunching of numbers as the data come hot off the press. And the scale of the impact is sometimes truly huge. This isn’t a bunch of egghead academics cranking out provocative journal articles. Super Crunching is done by or for decision makers who are looking for a better way to do things.
This is best explained by the chess example:
We tend to think that the chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov lost to the Deep Blue computer because of IBM’s smarter software. That software is really a gigantic database that ranks the power of different positions. The speed of the computer is important, but in large part it was the computer’s ability to access a database of 700,000 grandmaster chess games that was decisive. Kasparov’s intuitions lost out to data-based decision making.
(emphasis mine)
The book starts off with the example of Orley Ashenfelter, a Princeton economics professor as well as founder and editor of the Journal of Wine Economics who wanted to apply supercrunching techniques to predict whether a wine from a particular year would be a good wine or not. He ended up with the following equation:
Wine quality = 12.145 + 0.00117 winter rainfall + 0.0614 average growing season temperature - 0.00386 harvest rainfall
You can imagine the commotion that followed. The wine experts brushed off this theory and that numbers can predict the wine quality better than they can. After all, “Just as it’s more accurate to see the movie, shouldn’t it be more accurate to actually taste the wine?”
And yet, the equation did indeed make better predictions, especially with the prediction that 1989 and 1990 wines would be bestsellers.
Cut down that movie
How would life be if you could tell your computer to cut down a 3-hour movie to one hour?
Sounds impossible?
From what I understand of this paper called “Feature fusion and redundancy pruning for rush video summarization” by the people at the Vision Research Laboratory at UCSB, it is very much possible!
The basic idea is to find ‘distinctive’ parts of the video, for example, someone talking at a high pitch or lots of moving scenes which, intuitively, would be more important than a slow scene or repeated shots.
They consider multiple facets of the video such as speech, camera motion, significant differences in color, suppression of repeated scenes and of course, identification of visually distinct segments.
The caveat is that their test data set are drama “rushes” video which are raw footage including the clapboards, the color tones, repeated takes, etc. This is very conducive to such an algorithm, which could probably explain why they had such good results (details are in the paper).
But if this is the state of things today, I can imagine that around five years down the lane they would really be applying it to commercial movies and television shows. It is amazing on what can be done with a combination of mathematics, statistics and computers.
Interestingly, the final summaries were around 4% of the total video length. If this was applied to the 8-year long Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi show, I wonder how much it would be reduced to…
Update : Now Microsoft Research has done it for audio as well!
Always remember Carpe Diem
One of the hard lessons that I have learned this year is “Always remember Carpe Diem“. The corollary is that “If you don’t execute on your idea quick, someone else definitely will.”
For example, long back Vikram had this idea that there should be a company which takes care of odd chores such as electrical maintenance or plumbing, basically handyman work. Yesterday, I saw www.handiman.in on the back of an auto rickshaw. I came home and checked it out and it does exactly that. It’s a very useful service and seems reasonably affordable, at least for IT people. I’m sure lot of people in Bangalore will go for it.
Today, Mrinal pointed to www.indimeme.com, a TechMeme for the Indian blogosphere.
I started kicking myself.
I’ve had this idea for months but I couldn’t really move on it because I don’t have the knowledge yet, for example, about clustering algorithms. However, I did brainstorm it with a couple of friends and thought we’ll work it out. But a single person beat us to it.
There is a range of reasons why such a website is a good idea, probably the same reasons why TechMeme is indispensable too:
- Allows people to see what are the latest topics that Indian bloggers are talking about.
- Allows people to see the discussions across blogs, not just one blog
and its comments.
- Encourages the above type of discussion.
- The portal can become the gateway of the Indian blogosphere.
- For the website creator’s point of view, it can bring in a lot of visitors. And subsequently, advertisers.
- An indispensable website means the creator of the website is indispensable too. Just like Gabe Rivera is everything behind the scenes of TechMeme. (Let’s face it, we’re all replaceable in our workplaces.)
And so on.
Anyway, the only downside I’ve noticed about IndiMeme.com is that the clustering results aren’t good yet, but the thing is it is already out there. It has been executed. It needs refinement. And I’m sure it’ll get there.
I don’t know whether I should add this idea to my already-long personal ‘deadpool’. Sigh.
When I started thinking about this idea, I came across one paper called Mining blog stories using community-based and temporal clustering which explained how this is a special type of clustering that takes time into account. They call it:
“[the] Content-Community-Time model that can leverage the content of entries, their timestamps, and the community structure of the blogs, to automatically discover stories. Doing so also allows us to discover hot stories.”
I was thinking whether the same idea can be applied to an RSS aggregator and then I found that was done too as well.
I guess there are simply no low-hanging fruit left in this accelerated world.
I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Biking to Ooty
It all started on Monday last week when Lakshman tweeted if anybody was game for a weekend trip. Ashwin tweeted back saying yes.
Later they asked me over email. My reply was “Why Ooty!?”. They replied saying “It doesn’t matter. We’re going for the drive.” Two days later, we three were driving to Ooty on bikes at night.
My descriptions below are in twitter style as an ode to how the trip
happened. ( But of course, my usual writing style will resume after
this post 
)
We started off at 8 at night. First stop was some lip-smacking food at Kamat Lokaruchi:
9.10 pm : We’re on the way! 3 twitterers on bikes.
9.25 pm : Getting out of Bangalore is the toughest thing.
9.30 pm : @scorpion032 says 2020 will also be the year of the linux desktop.
10.32 pm : @cruisemaniac and @scorpion032 are tweeting away…
1.40 am : Taking a break.
2.33 am : Admiring the mysore palace…
3.16 am : Sleep getting to me… But we’re taking breaks and having fun. In Nanjangud.
3.20 am : Another break.
3.34 am : Listening to My Sacrifice at 330 am at 70 kmph on bike with the wind in your hair is something to be experienced.
4.10 am : We find a freakin’ coffee day in the middle of nowhere. Waiting for capuccino.
6.15 am : Mudumulai forest.
6.20 am : Animals! Elephant, deer, peacock, mongoose, eagle, woodpecker, … All right there next to us… Thank heavens the elephant didn’t think we were pesky…
6.45 am : Exiting Mudumulai forest.
My favorite photo from this trip (notice the clouds and the bike):
Barcamp Bangalore 6 Day 2
Day 2 of Barcamp Bangalore No. 6 (Apr 20 Sun) started off on a pleasant note because I just had to stop and admire the greenery of the IIMB campus.
Had an impromptu discussion on development on Nokia Phones with Ashwin and another person who worked in Nokia. Surprised to hear that it costs so much!
Then, attended a session on “Pattern Labs” who are trying to create a better knowledge base for GAP, a conglomerate of NGOs for sustainable development. What they’re trying to achieve was quite admirable and definitely needed, but for the life of me, I just couldn’t understand what they’re trying to do in this Pattern Labs and what kind of software they’re trying to develop.
This was followed by a 5-10 min discussion on Web 2.0 for K-12 education, it was interesting to note that there were few success stories where kids used a wiki to collaboratively write a poem using the “diamond pattern” they teach in school and were benefited by this approach.
Then Rajiv Poddar initiated a discussion on the legal status of VoIP in India and why there should be a correction. Basically, VoIP calls cannot reach a PSTN/PLMN i.e. landline or mobile phones in India. Why? Because it will hurt VSNL’s revenues. An equally relevant issue is that VSNL is the only gateway in India trying to control all traffic for no real reason. But why is VoIP important? Because it makes phone calls damn inexpensive and there are many innovations that can be done around it - right from system integration to enabling live voice discussions for a website, all at a low cost.
Rajiv equated this situation to the telephony space - the government was afraid that BSNL won’t make money, but once the space was opened, everyone now knows the story of the rapid growth of telephony and communication in India, after all India is the fastest growing market. It did more good than harm.
Previously I had known that there are some legal issues with VoIP but had never ventured to learn about it until I happened to walk into this session. A group called Voice of VoIP was created on the spot to take the discussion forward and see if something can be done about it.
Then I went into a session on Scoping, Closures and Objects in Javascript. The speaker Venkatesh Choppella was a professor at IIIT, Trivandrum and held a Ph.D in computer languages. I was mighty impressed that there are such lecturers out there! Interestingly, he teaches JavaScript as the first language for some of his classes at his university. I learned a bit about JavaScript and language theory.
Then, Vinayak Hegde had an interesting session on High performance websites. Again, the crowd had a lively discussion on tips and tricks right from something called “CSS sprites” to using YSlow, Minify, Expires Headers, ETags, and so on.
And in between all this, I met many people. In fact, when we were mingling, few of us decided to go to the Coffee Day outlet in the next building to get something cold. It was such a sultry weather. And there we found, Shourya and another college student (Jayanth?) playing guitars and singing Def Leppard songs!
There were some amazingly funny and insightful discussions going on as well, many of which I can’t write here, but I’ll especially remember Kushal Das’ stories. I never thought someone had the guts to pull off giving an Intel 865 motherboard to his girlfriend on Valentine’s Day! And they even have fights over GCC. Wow, that’s like a geek’s dream, right? Anyway, I wish him all the best, hope they’re together for a long time and more.
The day ended with a feedback session on the good, bad and ugly of Barcamp. Most people had suggestions and cribs but they said they got used to it once they understood the idea of how Barcamps work - it’s meant to be not organized and scheduled properly. Things should happen on-the-fly. And again, people asked for video archives of the sessions because they missed many due to the parallel tracks. Simple answer - get a video camera and record. If 4-5 people can volunteer, the problem is solved. The real problem is not enough people willing to do these things. Barcamp works only when everyone pitches in, whether you are initiating a session, volunteering or at least putting your name on the wiki.
There were more discussions, but in the end people agreed that the current format is great and nothing needs to be changed for number 7.
Bottom line: Adjust maadi. Don’t make it a “conference”!
There are only a few things that can get me high - running, passionate techie discussions, meeting new people, and interesting and insightful conversations. I had a good dose of all of these in two days, so BCB6 was simply well-spent time for me. And it looks like many other campers feel the same way as well.
P.S. If you want to be updated on when’s the next barcamp, just follow the mailing list and the website.
Why You Should Run
One fine day, I was running by myself. It was a few weeks before Barcamp Bangalore 5. I got an idea that I should talk about a non-techie topic at Barcamp since I’ve been giving tech talks for the past few years and I wanted a change of pace. I brainstormed many ideas on the reason for the talk, what to say and how to explain, etc. all during that one run.
Unfortunately I couldn’t attend BCB5. But I stored the notes in a safe place. And when BCB6 was announced, I wanted to be sure to talk this time around.
A few weeks back, Ramjee called me and asked whether we can talk about running. I smiled and thought to myself “Great minds think alike”. Or at least “Runners think alike”.
So I made a ppt and we landed at Barcamp on Saturday morning. We had never discussed the presentation. And we were going to give a session on it. Truly unconference style.
Note: The slides below have been modified to make it useful for a web audience. It has a lot more text now.
| DownloadBarcamp crowds are very inquisitive and so we didn’t actually go past half the slides, which is actually a good thing. Instead, we discussed a wide range of things about running right from finding good places to run to trouble with dogs.
In spite of the delays causing us to start at 12:45 (which means almost lunch time) the discussion went on till 1:45 and 90% of the 30-40 odd crowd were present till the end. When we went to grab what was left of lunch, lot of people asked us questions including how to avoid knee pain (tip: it’s the shoes). Since questions are always a good sign, I think it was a successful discussion.
We both still consider ourselves amateurs at running but at the end of the day its an activity we like and Barcamp is a perfect platform to talk about our passions.
Oh, and if you’re still not a believer, I’ll end with a quote:
Games require skill. Running requires endurance, character, pride, physical strength, and mental toughness. Running is a test, not a game. A test of faith, belief, will, and trust in ones self. So hardcore that it needs a category all to itself to define the pain. When game players criticize, it’s because they aren’t willing to understand, not because they’re stronger. Running is more than a sport; it’s a lifestyle. If you have to ask us why we run, you’ll never understand, so just accept.
– Jessica Propst
Update: SlideShare decided to make it a Barcamp spotlight presentation:
The online slides has had 1274 views and 116 downloads as of this writing (2008-05-04 Sun 10:04 PM).
Web dev frameworks vs RIA
How do traditional web development frameworks cope with RIAs?
By RIAs, I am referring to the Flex/Silverlight model (Ajax has a hybrid model in my view, so I’m not discussing that here since I don’t want to muddle up the question).
Coming back to topic, I see that the traditional web development frameworks are inside-out and RIA development as outside-in:
| Traditional web dev frameworks | RIA frameworks |
|---|---|
| Flow: controller ⇒ model ⇒ view (pages) | view ⇒ controller ⇒ model | Everything built into the framework. View is generated via templates. | View is designed separately and it’s what runs first. Backend is a bunch of web services. |
Question: How is this resolved practically?
For example, how do people using Django or Ruby on Rails actually write, say, Flex frontends for their websites?
Do they ditch their templates/rhtml? Do they design the RIA first and then the web service, or the other way around? … etc.
I couldn’t figure out the answer and since there are people out there doing it, I’m hoping the “hoosgot” i.e. lazy web gods will answer.
Last day at Adobe
As Jeff Atwood said recently in his entry on Choosing Your Own Adventure:
I’ve spent the last six months staring at this page trying to figure out what to do. With some trepidation, I’m now turning to page 10. Thursday will be my last day at Vertigo. I will sorely miss the camaraderie and the many close personal friends I’ve made at Vertigo. Vertigo remains a fantastic place to work.
Sometimes choosing your own adventure means closing one door to open another. And I have to close the door on Vertigo, however reluctantly, to fully and wholeheartedly explore the alternatives. It would be unfair to Vertigo and to myself to do anything less. I’m not sure what exactly lies on page 10. I won’t lie to you. It’s scary to trade the security of a safe, salaried job for the unknowns. But the way I look at it, if it’s not a little scary, then it’s not the right choice. Failure is always an option.
Just s/Vertigo/Adobe/g and that’s my situation.
It was not an easy decision to make. Especially considering the people I work with. In fact, I squarely blame my Flex teammates Sreenivas, Sameer, Raghu, Harish, Harpreet, Kaashif, Anirudh, Sujit, Annam, Ram, Jyoti and so many others for making this such a difficult decision.
There are two incidents that have stuck in my mind for the past few days. One is the recent internal tech summit we had at Noida where Adobeans got to showcase each others’ technologies and ideas. Second, the (internal) showcase applications that our team created using our data visualization platform. I was simply blown away. The enthusiasm, the energy and the ideas was so addictive.
It seems strange that I should leave all this behind. It seems stranger that I have no clue where I’ll be six months from now. But yeah, I have some ideas.
As Ray Bradbury said:
If we listened to our intellect we’d never have a love affair. We’d never have a friendship. We’d never go in business because we’d be cynical: “It’s gonna go wrong.” Or “She’s going to hurt me.” Or, “I’ve had a couple of bad love affairs, so therefore …” Well, that’s nonsense. You’re going to miss life. You’ve got to jump off the cliff all the time and build your wings on the way down.
What is NDTV’s online strategy?
I wonder if all of these are actually part of some game plan:
- ndtv.com
- ndtvtravels.com
- ndtvgadgets.com
- ndtvshopping.com
- ndtvlumiere.com
- ndtvmovies.com
- ndtvmusic.com
- ndtvgoodtimes.com
- ndtvcooks.com
- ndtvprofit.com
- ndtvimagine.com
- doctorndtv.com
- cricketndtv.com
- etc.
It looks to me like they’re trying to mimic Network18’s portfolio:
- ibnlive.com
- tech20.com
- storeguru.com
- buzz18.com
- cricketnext.com
- indiwo.com
- moneycontrol.com
- jobstreet.com
- commoditiescontrol.com
- yatra.com
- bookmyshow.com
- compareindia.com
- etc.
The reason why I say that is because Network18 seems to be putting in effort to make each vertical the best-of-breed in the respective categories. For example, MoneyControl, Yatra, BookMyShow, Tech2.0 are popular.
But many of NDTV’s counterparts don’t seem to have any value-add. That’s the impression I get when comparing, say, ndtvgadgets.com and tech2.com.
It’s interesting how these offline media businesses are venturing online and how they’re faring.
