Tech Mate

2006-04-29T02:59:00.000-07:00

Skype hits a century... a million times over

There was a time when no one knew what Skype was (in India, many still don't know), but it is now on the forefront of the revival of the Web. So, it is not too surprising when you hear that Skype now has 100 million customers.

For me, Skype is more than just a dotcom, wanting to make it big. Many ask what is the big difference between the 1999 boom and the current boom. For one, the current boom is for real. It is real because the Internet is finally being used for what it was meant for -- services that touch the human heart. No technology will ever be used just for its esoteric nature -- it is only how tech influences everyday life that will determine the Web's success.

Here is what I predict the Web will be most used for (in order of usage) soon:
1) Communication
2) Entertainment - downloads and broadcasting
3) Information gathering
4) E-commerce
5) Banking

As you notice, Skype is at the top of the category rated No 1. Entertainment already has iTunes as No 1, while Google is No 1 for information gathering. Amazon and Ebay (which owns Skype) are No 1s in the e-commerce business. Banking may not have a No 1, but it is a category that cannot be ignored.

Agree? Disagree? Write back!

2006-04-15T00:48:00.000-07:00

Google chugs along on track to world domination

I wait for the week when there is no news involving Google. After changing the world (well, almost) by its text, now we hear that Google has patented even voice search. As the Chinese say, "May we live in interesting times."

2006-04-07T03:31:00.000-07:00

The 100 Most Popular Laptops

I have an Acer Travelmate, so I was happy that it was placed at No 13 in Cnet's 100 Most Popular Notebooks list. The List is a list of the usual suspects -- Dell, Lenovo (formerly IBM), Sony, HP Compaq, Toshiba and Fujitsu. Of course, this is a US-centric list.

Conspicuous by its absence in the top 50 is Apple's Macbook Pro 2.0, which comes in at 59. The 1.83 version is almost out of the list at 96.

The winner, not surprisingly, is Dell Inspiron E1705.

Is your laptop in the list? Find out...

2006-04-06T07:50:00.000-07:00

A Bluetooth iPod?

How cool wil that be -- a Bluetooth iPod! Expensive, for sure, at least in India, but cool nevertheless. Stuff Magazine has the rumour details.

2006-04-01T09:15:00.000-08:00

Saturday Sermon
- The Weekend Blah on the .XXX top-level domain

It was in an issue of Mad magazine that I first read about the idea of legalising marijuana. It was revolutionary, even anti-establishment and rebellious, but logical. The moment you legalise drugs, they are no longer "forbidden fruit". For all you know, it might even lose its allure. Prostitution is something like that. If you legalise it, the market will take care of rules, regulations, laws will forbid unprotected sex, and even incidence of HIV may come down. In an illegal market, anything goes, and that is dangerous since the authorities adopt an ostrich-like sand-in-the-head attitude.

Just like prohibition achieves nothing -- in fact, it has a negative impact on society and the state -- talking of banning pornography is all bullshit. The notion is foolhardy, and implementation impossible. Which is why, I was a bit saddened by ICANN's decision not to create an .XXX domain for pornographic sites. It was the best opportunity for the world to cut down on paedophilia on the Web. And since politics makes for strange bedfellows, it was the US, Australia and Iran which negated the move.

A .xxx top-level domain would have meant better and tighter parental control, making kids safer, if not totally immune, from Web pornography. Tracking becomes easier in case of any legal trespass, and the market would corrected itself by becoming more disciplined. Alas, we have lost that chance. At least for the time being.

A .xxx extension also gives corporates a better chance to monitor employee usage of bandwidth, and therefore, at least theoretically, increase productivity. Nobody admits, but some time or the other, we have all accessed porn in the office.

Somehow, though, I get the feeling that corporates and parents (and horror of horrors, the media), are indifferent towards Net porn. For them, it is always something that happens to someone else's organisation or the neighbour's kids. Truth is, the danger is closer than we all think. And the sooner we realise it the better.

2006-04-01T04:21:00.000-08:00

iPod Nano? What's that?

When my wife gifted me an iPod 2 years back, I must admit I was honoured. Even the CEO of the place where I worked (he goes to San Francisco the same way we take the weekend off to a nearby beach) envied me. Today, there are more iPods in the office (and with my friends) I can think of. A 50-year-old female cousin of mine, who does not know the difference between a RAM and Ram the male sheep, is buying an iPod Nano tomorrow. In other words, the iPod rocks.

It is, no doubt, as much a mass phenomenon as Rubik's Cube was in the '70s and the '80s even though I seriously doubt it will go the Cube's way. But Cnet's story on iPod Nano alternatives makes for interesting reading. Jasmine France feels (and rightly so) that the iPod Nano, though easy to use, lacks an FM tuner, is prone to scratching (many iPod Nanos were recalled after it was discovered that their screens were brittle), and most importantly, is damn expensive. At least in India.

Before you buy that iPod Nano, I suggest you read the piece. Truly enlightening.

2006-04-01T03:54:00.000-08:00

Toshiba is first off the HD DVD block

OK, the first shot has been fired in the high definition DVD battle. Toshiba, which leads the HD DVD alliance, launched its high definition DVD player on March 31. Good news? Perhaps. Because, as we had mentioned in a previous post, this is only the beginning of a long-drawn out war. And since on both sides of the battlefield you have companies which have some of the deepest pockets anyone could ever dream of, it is not going to be a quick one either.

So, dear reader, brace yourself for one of the most confusing times of your lives.

2006-03-27T20:04:00.000-08:00

Saturday (oops, Tuesday) Sermon
- The Weekend (mid-week) Blah

Ok, so I clearly goofed by not adding a reminder on my scheduler. Trouble is that with so much stuff happening around us, remembering things is surely not an easy task. Call your parents, take your dog out, leave instructions for the cook, wash clothes, take them to the laundry, fill petrol, air for your tyres, watch the match, remember who scored the last 170-plus individual score before Gibss did in that match, get the anti-dandruff shampoo on the way home, and yes, what was that boss' deadline? There we go. Forgot. Again. Our brains, it would seem, has just too many things to take care of.

So, perhaps, we should forgive Microsoft for putting in 50 million lines of code for Windows Vista even if it forgot to go faster. Windows XP had 35 million lines of code, Win 98 had 18 and Win 95 had just 15. Admittedly, Vista will have all the things that you wanted -- parental control, search, better graphics, better networking capabilities, tabbed browsing, better data management, and surely better security, well, the works. So what gives?

The problem is that it will be slow. Damn, boring slow. And equally irritating, if not more, as Win XP with Service Pack 2. As a user, why should I be forced to buy a new machine with a new OS that will force me to buy more memory and a faster-than-ever chip, all of which which would mean more cooling, and shorter battery life. Not to mention the prohibitive price.

And that's a bummer. Logically, the more advanced a product gets, you would expect it to get more steamlined. Take cellphones. They are 10 times slimmer than a phone launched in 1996, but have at least 100 more features. And yes, they are 10 times cheaper too. Cellphones, by the way, demand as much hardware and software capabilities from engineers as an operating system.

But software giants have gone exactly the other way -- their products are heavier making them slower than ever before, and have features that most people just don't use. I'd rather have two versions - a "slim" or a "diet" version of any software for quick usage, and a "power" version for those wanting to use a software professionally. This way, I could go faster with better software, and professionals would have that edge anyway since, presumably, they will invest more in hardware, too.

I don't know a single person (and I mean it) who uses even 40 per cent of Microsoft Word's capabilities. So why should that person buy a full blown version as, say, a scriptwriter or an advertising pro? Since a home user (except gamers and telecommuters) typically use the machine for surfing or watching movies or listening to music, heavy, unusable software just does not make sense. Nor is it financially viable.

I would also like to believe that with such "diet" software, piracy rates would come down dramatically. People will be ready to pay for a stripped down "Office", rather than a bloated one. It is a win-win situation for both companies and users.

2006-03-27T07:03:00.000-08:00

Fujitsu breaks 200 GB barrier for laptops

Five years back, the IT administrator at the place I worked refused to increase my hard disk capacity from 512 MB to 1 GB because he felt:
a) All my data could fit in to the current hard disk; and
b) The management would never approve such wasteful expense on things just because they hold someone's fancy

It would have been okay if I was some floozie on the newsdesk, but I was the Content Head of one of India's most visited news websites, and part of my responsibilities included storing masses of data, including video and audio files.

I did not know whether to laugh at the administrator or at the management (in any case I laughed at both, and sent the administrator's email to Scott Adams who collects the world's funniest corporate emails to write books and earn millions. I later sent another funny corporate email to Adams, which you may find at the end of this post).

Anyway, the point I am trying to make is that the world, thankfully, has progressed enough. Fujitsu, which along with rival Hitachi, has belied physics to such an extent that it regularly breaks its own records, has plans to introduce the 200 GB laptop hard drive by the end of Q3. Good going.

Last year, Hitachi had introduced the Deskstar series of which the 500 GB model was the largest. With data consumption rising by the day, my guess is that those days of 30 GB laptops and 120 GB desktops will soon be history. Next stop? Quantum Computing? Reversible Computing?

And as promised here is the email I once received from the finance head of the place I worked. Laughter is a guaranteed side-effect.

"Dear Colleagues,
It has come to our notice that our Internet usage is eating into precious bandwidth. To prevent further misuse, I propose to ban all websites that belong to the following categories:
1) Pornography
2) Gambling, and
3) Games

However, we also appreciate that some of you may need such sites for business purposes. If that is indeed the case, the colleague in question should approach me or the IT head to ask for exemption from the ban."

I swear I am not making this up.

2006-03-25T07:42:00.000-08:00

Encyclopaedia Britannica versus Wikipedia

Without comment, I present to you this bit of news.

2006-03-24T06:19:00.000-08:00

Live life wirefree

Call me a sceptic, but the news about Intel Wi-Fi'ing Pune does not impress me. It has nothing to do with Intel, or Wi-Fi., or even Pune's general sluggishness. My grouse is that Indians, as almost a sub-culture among its corporate and bureaucratic elite, announce too many things, and deliver too little.

If I remember correctly, a few years ago, Bangalore was tipped to be India's first Wi-Fi city. It was a prime candidate -- it has a lot of techies, is perceived to be India's Silicon Valley, and surely has enough disposable income with its citizens for them to 'splurge' at Wi-Fi hotspots. It is 2006, and nobody is even talking about Wi-Fi'ing Bangalore, except Sify which has Wi-Fi'ed Bangalore a bit. In Mumbai, apart from the five-star hotels, there a few coffee shops owned by Barista that are Wi-Fi'ed.

To Wi-Fi a city, there has to be two things: The infrastructure to do it, and perhaps more importantly, a significant travelling population that goes around lugging laptops to meetings. Most Indian cities have neither.

I will be happy to be corrected since I'd love to learn more on this topic.

2006-03-22T07:03:00.000-08:00

The Martians are laughing

Imagine you a Martian, and you could see earthlings from your cubbyhole telescope shop in some crater on the red planet. Imagine you looking at them furiously working on their computers day in and day out. Imagine a revolutionary product. Imagine that revolutionary product never got replaced or updated for six years. Now imagine yourself laughing at those technologically-challenged earthlings who cannot even update a piece of technology that purportedly runs the world (or at least most of the computers that run the world).

On Earth, you need not imagine. Microsoft has announced that it will delay Windows Vista's retail launch to January 2007, six years after it launched Windows XP, its last operating system.

Are we neanderthal, or what? The delay is surprising because it was originally to be launched this year. Usually, when you have market-defining product, you'd want to get it out in the market as early as possible. But Microsoft says it has security issues, and its product quality concerns over-ride its commercial gains by launching early.

American opinion says Microsoft has lost the plot, especially since this will impact PC sales worldwide (why would you buy a PC now, only to upgrade it later?).

The Indian opinion is much simpler. Whether Microsoft launches Vista or not, piracy and Windows 98 still rule in India. I have several friends who still use Windows 95, and swear by it. To them, and to lakhs of others who have not bought a legal copy of any Microsoft OS, the slogan is: Ki pharak penda?

Sad, but true.

2006-03-21T08:02:00.000-08:00

G versus G, and G wins

It has been five days since a judge declared Google users' search off-limits for the government. While Google (and its users, and bloggers) are going to town about it "winning" the case, surely they also realise that this is not going to be the end of government interference when it comes to the Internet. In a way, it is a partial win for both Google and the Government, the two Gs -- Google will not give up search terms data, while the government will ask for its indexes.

Politicians are control freaks, and with the Internet, they would love it. The call for Internet users should be to forever block governments in their "evil" mission to control the Internet. If they do manage to control it, it will be the ultimate failure for the freedom of speech. All we have to do is look at China, where censorship is applied to, hear this, give freedom of speech to its people. This is somewhat like dictator-ruled North Korea, whose official name is Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The mind shudders.

2006-03-18T01:18:00.000-08:00

Saturday Sermon
- The Weekend Blah

In one of his many philosophical moments, the French emperor Napoleon told his cohorts never to interrupt an enemy while he is making a mistake. Messrs Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, respectively chairman and chief executive officer of Microsoft, must be laughing themselves silly after Sony announced earlier this week that it will delay its PlayStation 3 launch to November this year. It effectively means that Microsoft may just achieve the 10 million console sales target by that time with its Xbox 360.

However, the PS3 issue is not just about the console market -- it will define the future of the DVD, and therefore, the multi-billion dollar entertainment industry. It is no secret that Sony is still smarting from the BetaMax's loss to VHS in the videotape market nearly three decades ago. It now wants to be doubly sure of the Blu-ray format for high definition DVDs as opposed to the HD DVD format that rival Toshiba is promoting along with Sanyo, NEC and Microsoft. These formats are important because even a single-layer disc can store up to 15 GB of data, compared with the current 4.3 GB. A multi-layer disc can store up to 40 GB. Imagine where these formats will take content!

Obviously, it is a big-stakes game. Take a look at the worthies supporting the two formats.
Blu-ray: Sony, Apple, Dell, HP, Hitachi, Panasonic, Philips, Mitsubishi, LG, Pioneer, Samsung, TDK, and Thomson. Apart from these giants, Blu-ray is also supported by 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney and Warner Bros. And since Sony owns Sony Pictures Entertainment and MGM, their support is a foregone conclusion.
HD DVD: Toshiba, Sanyo, NEC, Intel, Microsoft, and the three studios mentioned above.

Obviously, there are heavyweights on both sides. But here's why the problem is more complex than the videotape issue: The gaming industry makes more money in the US than movies, even as home entertainment becomes cheaper by the day, it is finding new markets in India, south-east Asia and China. Both these industries mean billions of dollars to the world in terms of trade and employment.

My bigger problem is that of choice. Either of the two protocols will have to give up in the long run. Movie and gaming companies are not going to release DVDs in both formats, are they? And why should you and I be forced to buy the stuff that THEY want us to buy?

Not that India has a large DVD market. It is a market dominated by VCDs, so one may argue that the DVD war is of little consequence to this country. Not really. As our economy continues its boom phase, and prices of DVDs come down, the demand will go up. Today a DVD player is available for less than Rs 3000. If the hardware is present, there must be, even if it is a gradual shift, a demand for legal software, in this case movies and games. Therefore, the Indian consumer must look at the DVD format war with greater interest than he or she is right now.

2006-03-17T05:27:00.000-08:00

Talking of which...

Can someone please tell me why Bill Gates is so worried about the $100 laptop? One would expect some amount of dignity from the world's richest man, but no. Although I have been using Micosoft products all my life (and no matter what the Open Source guys say, the software are brilliant), but Gates strikes me as a spoilt brat whose father has given him an expensive Lady Godiva chocolate, but is angry that the neighbour's kid has got a Mars bar.

The $100 laptop, developed by Nicholas Negroponte's MIT Media Lab is openly backed by Google's Larry Page. And as we have seen in the previous post, Gates has every reason to fear Google's dominance. Instead of the swift taking over of the world that Oracle's Larry Ellison had once very bravely promised, Google has gone about its task slowly, but with mercenary precision.

It would be a fallacy to predict the outcome of Google-Microsoft war (by the way, where's Yahoo!?). Yet, the odds are greatly stacked in favour of Google. Anyone who has tried Windows Live services will tell you why.

I am about $52 billion poorer than Mr Gates, but here is a small piece of advice from one of your customers -- please do not underestimate the power of innovation, even if it means it uses a hand crank for power, and even if it means it was not developed at Redmond.

2006-03-16T06:30:00.000-08:00

Writely, stuff happens

Much has been spoken about Google acquiring Writely, the Web word processing firm. But Victor Keegan's in-depth article in The Guardian says more than just give plain Jane information about what could easily be the most far-reaching deal in Internet history.

Google's acquisition is important for various reasons, but to predict how Google will dominate how we conduct our lives in the future is an exercise in futility. To cut the crap, here is a list of services that Google already has (in no particular order):

1) Web Search - In English and in scores of regional languages, including five Indian
2) E-mail (nearly 3 GB of space by now)
3) E-commerce
4) Desktop Search
5) Blog Search
6) Book Search
7) Image Search
8) Directory
9) News
10) Blogging
11) Photo Editing and Sharing
12) Toolbar
13) University Search
14) Search on your Mobile
15) Scholarly search
16) Groups
17) Answers
18) Email Alerts
19) Specific Topic Search,
20) Translations,
21) Chat,
22) Maps (Earth and Mars), and now
23) A Web word processor

And this does not even include a Mother OS that it is rumoured to be working on.

Imagine...