Tech Tonic

First published in the Hindustan Times (Mumbai edition)

After nearly 24 hours of travel on a plane, ferry and bus, I thought it would be wise to ask the hotel to give me a wake-up call lest I get up too late to attend the keynote sessions at the Mobile Asia Congress in Macau. I needn’t have bothered. At precisely 6:30 in the morning I woke up to a loud sound that was something of a mixture between a boom and a buzz. I floundered out of bed and opened the wide windows of my room only to witness a grand scene. The Macau Grand Prix test drives had begun and Formula-3 cars were screaming along the ridge of a mountain outside my window - the same mountain I was cursing the night before for ruining my view of the riot of neon from the casinos in the distance. High speed mobility suddenly took on a whole new meaning as I enjoyed my ringside view with early morning tea.

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The first day’s keynote sessions were beginning to depress me. NTT DoCoMo’s CEO was talking about 4G trials in Japan while China Mobile’s Chairman announced that 8 cities would be trialling 3G by the end of the year and Beijing would have complete 3G connectivity in time for next year’s Olympic Games. On the other hand Bharti’s CEO was forced to showcase how his company was innovating to provide 3G like apps on 2G networks. Geniune mobile broadband, it seemed was just not in our “kismat”. As if almost on divine cue, I got a “mobile alert” news flash that the DoT had just announced the new 3G policy. I thanked the Lord and for the first time in a conference, actually bothered paying attention in the sessions discussing 3G.

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The speaker line-up at the opening keynote that I just talked about, is the best evidence possible of the peculiarity of the mobile phone industry. The operator - the guy who provides you an easily commoditized, utility like service - has the biggest clout in the industry. Imagine the premier global conference for …umm… ‘Home Appliances’ having the CEOs of the electricity companies as the big draws. Or say, a high-powered internet conference with the ISPs stealing the limelight! The outlook for operators though, will definitely get less rosy as standards like WiMax catch on and data becomes a carrier for voice as well. If my entire city is WiMax-ed, all I need to do is install Skype on my laptop or PDA and enjoy blazing fast internet and super cheap calls without even having a telephone number.

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The other thing thats different in the mobile world is that Google isn’t all powerful … yet! I asked an executive from JumpTap - which competes directly with Google to provide a mobile ad platform - why his company was even bothering to be in business ever since Google’s dominant online ad system got ported to the mobile. He said that many of his clients did in fact switch to Google, but quickly came back to him saying “You guys make Google look like Microsoft”. A compliment indeed. Google’s wireless business chief for Asia was himself gracious enough to admit to me that, in China, HE’s the tiny startup and Baidu.com is the overpowering giant with nearly 70% of the mobile search market share. But the G seems to have a bigger masterplan. It’s bidding for wireless spectrum in the US and seems intent on putting an end to the fractured world of mobile applications with its new development platform called Android. Watch this space!

First published in the Hindustan Times (Mumbai edition)

Everyone it seems, is intent on taking down Microsoft’s cash cow - MS Office. IBM decided to back Sun Microsystem’s pet project Open Office - a completely free, open-source version of MS Office - while Sun’s own Star Office began to be bundled by Google in its free-for-download software pack. Google for its part, got IT services giant CapGemini to endorse and evangelize it’s Web 2.0 take on Office called GAPE (Google Apps Premier Edition). The future of the online document is currently a slugfest between all these parties. Microsoft wants Office Open eXtended Markup Language (.OOXML) to become the global standard format for saving documents while the rest are pushing for the OpenDocument Format or (.ODF) at the International Standards Organisation which has the decision-making mandate. The ISO is currently gridlocked because there were more than the required number of dissenting countries against the Microsoft standard, in a round of voting earlier this month. India, which is represented at the ISO by the Bureau of Indian Standards was also a naysayer and there will be frantic lobbying in the next few months to get the BIS to take its final stand at Geneva in February.

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I haven’t bothered to install Microsoft Office on my relatively new desktop, purchased nearly six months ago. I’ve been banging out all my “Word” and “Excel” masterpieces on the completely free of cost and extremely user-friendly Google ‘Docs & Spreadsheets’. It started out accidentally, I must admit. On the first day of using the new PC, I needed to create a spreadsheet. Hypothetically speaking of course, I could have downloaded a pirated version of MS Office and a crack, but thanks to my (Exatt) “fraudband” it would have taken forever. I swear, the thought never crossed my mind but I’m just laying out the options. Piracy is evil! Anyway, I decided to check out the online options and the rest as they say is history. However, before you get inspired and start to uninstall, do analyze your usage. The online versions are fairly useless for complex documents with tons of images, tables, macros etc. and make a mess of charts, graphs and most functions beyond the basic ones. If your Excel usage borders on programming, then you definitely want to hang on just a little longer.

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Lest I come across as some sort of Microsoft basher, let me quickly inform you that I’ve tried most of the alternatives to Microsoft Office over the years and they’re all junk. I worked on Star Office for nearly a year in an organization that had both licensing and ideology issues and swore never to use it again. I used the absolutely free Open Office for nearly six months as well, but gave up after missing a very tight deadline which involved waiting for what seemed like six hours for a document to open. The other day, someone from IBM invited me for a demo of the latest version of Lotus Notes and my first reaction was “They’re still making it? Pray - why?” I know only one person who’s company still uses Lotus Notes. Needless to say, nearly her entire team interacts and exchanges documents using their Gmail IDs, with ‘Notes’ being used as nothing more than an intra-company “official correspondence” notice board for formality sake. Now if only Google gets a PowerPoint equivalent up and running soon, I will never have to download a cracked version of … sorry, I mean never have to legally purchase a licensed version of MS Office ever again.

First published in the Hindustan Times (Mumbai edition)

For someone’s who not even six months into the job, Shailesh Rao seems incredibly at ease. The new Managing Director of Google India made his first major television appearance as a panelist on the CNN-IBN special program called “Rules of the Orkut Age”, which was telecast over the weekend. You would think that Shailesh has little patience with the media after all the trouble with the Shiv Sena, Mayawati, murder cases and government discomfort about Google Earth. Well, not only did he agree to come on the show, he was also rather honest. He admitted for starters, that his company really had no idea why Orkut is such a rage only in Brazil and India and not even on the radar in the rest of the world. The panel was televised with a live audience comprising parents, teachers and schoolchildren. Rao was mobbed by the kids after the discussion was over and he looked a bit overwhelmed for the first time that day. Some of the children seem to be masters of the medium and made some pointed suggestions. “Uncle, when you click on that page, there’s one link in the corner that gives you only three options and there should be a fourth option for ..” and so on and so forth.

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My own use of Orkut, in a way breaks all traditional rules. I’ve put up my real picture and my actual contact details such as email ID and office address. I add ANYONE who asks to be added, EXCEPT people whom I know. Thats right, each and every “friend” of mine on Orkut is someone whom I’ve never met. That’s because, we have a large Tech 2.0 community on Orkut and we’ve decided to use it as a sounding board for the website and the TV show. All Tech 2.0 team members are online and are encourage to accept all friend requests. Tons of readers and viewers, all inherently interested in technology join the group and go berserk arguing with each other in the message board about which mobile phone is better and how they hate each other’s digital guts! They start their own opinion polls and put in requests and feedback. A lightly moderated community on a social networking site can be a terrific tool for anyone in the business of building an audience. As for the people I know, I add them on Facebook! Seperation of church and state ie personal and professional is essential in cyberspace!

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I’m not sure if this is directly related to any diktat from the Indian government but it seems like too much of a co-incidence. The tiny cantonment town of Wellington near Coonoor in the Niligiris has been blurred out by Google Earth. I was using Picasa - Google’s online web album service - to tag some old photos taken when my father was posted at the Defence Services Staff College. The program was not allowing me to zoom into the area, though the adjoining towns were clearly visible. This seems strange because although Wellington has a military facility, its an educational setup and not an operational base with weapons. Civilians can roam most parts of the town freely and officers from friendly nations also attend the one year course. Could this location be on a list that the government has given Google India? Well, the harbour, jetties and other facilities, for instance, of India’s massive new Naval base at Karwar on the coast of Karnataka are crystal clear in the satellite imagery. Obviously there’s some gray area here - and I’m not talking about the map of Wellington!

First published in the Hindustan Times (Mumbai edition)

Orkut has finally decided to acknowledge that it is a rage in India by announcing that it will conduct special Independence day polls on the site. Google’s social network has been getting all kinds of bad press lately, not to mention threats from the Shiv Sena, even though the party patriarch’s grandchildren are fairly active users. I’ve always wondered why Orkut is such a big hit in some countries (60% of the traffic is from Brazil and about 15% from India) but a complete dud in Europe and North America. Very few Indians use MySpace which rules the roost in the US though Facebook is apparently becoming very popular especially among those who’ve studied overseas. In fact the whole “social networking” thing is a bit crazy and no one knows who’s going to survive and more importantly what can be monetized and how. The original pioneers like Friendster, LinkedIn, Ryze and Classmates have rapidly been overtaken and specialist networks like Youtube (videos) Flickr (photos) and Digg (News) have just complicated the whole thing.

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The social networking scene in India is displaying classic “bubble” symptoms. President of Reliance Entertainment, Rajesh Sawhney recently told contentsutra.com that Big Adda, the ADAG group’s social networking site would break even in 3 years. That’s an eternity in the internet business and thus such a prediction about something that nobody in the world has figured out how to milk, is pretty ambitious to say the least. The Indian arm of Sequoia Capital recently invested in minglebox.com adding to its portfolio that already includes dating portal fropper.com. I’ve checked out all these sites and while they seem interesting enough, I don’t see the need to sign up for more than one or maybe two such services. The other day I was in Bhopal and introduced to a local internet entrepreneur who runs scratchmysoul.com which claims to be the world’s only people mapping site. The project is based on the intellectual property of Raghav Chandra who belongs to one of the most important offline social networks in the country - the Indian Administrative Service!

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“Desis” seem to have gotten the short end of the stick as far as cashing out on the social networking boom in Silicon Valley is concerned. Jawed Karim, whose father is Bangladeshi, was the third, ignored co-founder of YouTube and only got crumbs from the sellout to Google (a mere $64.6 million as against $326 million each, for the other two co-founders). Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg is facing a high profile lawsuit from a group of former Harvard colleagues who claim that he stole their idea. One of them is a young man called Divya Narendra, who reportedly works for a hedge fund these days. In both cases the desis seem to have been the technical whizkids who did most of the backend work while the smooth talkers laughed all the way to the bank. In fact Indians or people of Indian origin are yet to make a big impact on what being called “boom 2.0″ in the valley. Possibly the most influential Indian 2.0 in the valley these days is Om Malik who runs the Gigaom.com blogging network. Its core competence? Extensive news, information and analysis of the Web 2.0 phenomenon - circular ain’t it?

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FULL DISCLOSURE: There is a rather large official “Tech 2.0″ community on Orkut.com

Mark Zuckerberg seems to have given the Indian media the slip. Facebook PR assured me that he wasn’t giving any official interviews and it seems no one managed to win the TechGoss reward for snaps/info of him in India.

Well, if this was indeed just a holiday/spiritual tour, then history suggests the first thing he’ll do, when he gets back, is get embroiled in a controversy! Confused? Hear me out on this one:

1. Steve Jobs visits India in 1974 for some spiritual nirvana and bums around a bit. He goes back to Atari and (allegedly) shafts poor Steve Wozniak while working on ‘Breakout‘. The incident becomes part of tech folklore…

2. Jimmy Wales visits India in January 2008 and after an interview at IIT Bombay, tells me he’s headed to the Himalayas for a few days of peace and solitude. He comes back to the US and gets into a mess after (allegedly) trying to influence his (then) paramour’s Wikipedia entry.

(Image courtesy Gus Freedman of Wikimedia Foundation under CC-BY-SA license)

3. Google Founders backpack around India ‘like a couple of sophmores‘ in October 2004. They get back and Google is soon faced with an extended run of controversies.

So now that we officially have a ‘three-is-a-trend’ conspiracy theory, expect the Z to be fire-fighting soon (Does this count?) If he takes the advice of a Guru on the IPO as suggested by Joy of Tech, it would definitely be controversial …

Here’s the Featured Thread of the Week from the Tech Tonic community on Orkut.com

Here’s the Featured Thread of the Week from the Tech Tonic community on Orkut.com

Here’s the Featured Thread of the Week from the Tech Tonic community on Orkut.com

Here’s the Featured Thread of the Week from the Tech Tonic community on Orkut.com

If there’s one workshop I’m itching to attend, it’s a “DIY Case Modding” session. I’ve seen Parvez in action slicing through metal, though I don’t know of too many others who make a living out of it in India.

Ours is the generation, straddling the analog, digital and now high-def. We remember taking photos with film cameras, watching scratchy VHS tapes, later VCDs and listening to cassettes before making the changeover to CDs. Stuff is getting outdated faster than ever before and keeping up with involves constant conversion of personal media into newer digital formats for convenience, archival value and easy access. If Con-version 1.0 was about converting VHS tapes and audio cassettes, then 2.0 involves disposal of what was once cutting-edge. The problem is that all this involves engaging in some fairly monotonous tasks that will never get done in the regular routine and cannot as yet, be outsourced easily. They’re best left to lazy days, whilst watching sitcom reruns, test matches or mindless movies that don’t need full concentration. Typical summer vacation stuff! Now most of us don’t have the luxury of two whole months like the good ol’ days anymore, but if you do, here are some summer tech projects I recommend. :

Music:
Apple has officially overtaken Wal*Mart & Best Buy as the US’ number one music retailer and while India has been slow to catch on to the legal download bandwagon, the future is pretty bleak for CDs. “Ripping” your CDs ie. converting them to a friendlier digital format like MP3 is relatively easy. You can use a program like iTunes if you’re an iPod user or the default Windows Media Player for one-click ripping. If you’re connected to the net, these programs automatically pick up song, artist and album information. You’re literally a zombie, ejecting, inserting and replacing CDs and before you know it, the music collection is fully wired!

Video:
With the new high definition format, ‘Blu-Ray’ players and discs, trickling into the market, VCD is officially TWO generations behind the curve, even as DVD reigns supreme. As most people upgrade to big-screen TVs, VCDs will look stretched and awful. The only displays that will justify their existence are the ones on small portable media players such as the iPod Touch or the Cowon A3. Ripping VCDs though is much more painful than CDs. You have to pop the disc into your PC and open the MPEGAV folder, in which you’ll see many files with .DAT extensions. Typically, the largest sized file will be the movie while the rest will be annoying trailers that VCDs usually force on you. Rip the movie into a compressed format such as MP4 using a program such as Free iPod Video Converter available at jodix.com. The next problem is that most VCDs are spread over 2-3 discs, which means you have to repeat this fairly time-consuming process for each disc. After half an hour or so you’ll have three MP4 files which need to be stitched together. Yamb is one of the simplest programs for this and can be downloaded free at softpedia.com or download.com.

Documents & Photos:
This is most worthwhile one. Buy a basic scanner, and just put your head down for a whole day - you won’t regret it. On most flatbed scanners, you can arrange four or five photographs in the preview and select them individually for final scanning. Some of the higher end visiting card scanners are easier to use for small 4×6″ photos. Most scanners will save multi-page things like passports or contracts into a single PDF file - all you have to do is remember to ’scan as document’ and not as ‘image.’ Trust me, the effects on quality of life of this one-time painful task are immense. About nine months after the fun and frolic, when nasty surprises come your way (I’m talking about tax deadlines, whatever were YOU thinking?) you’ll be grinning like a Cheshire cat!

I would highly recommend outsourcing these tasks to your kids, especially during hot summer afternoons, when there isn’t much to do. If you have some to spare, do get in touch - don’t worry, I have considerable experience in exploiting underage labour for technological pursuits. I remember one particular summer vacation just after first year of college, when I wanted all my hand-written articles and essays converted into digital format. Having just turned 18 and with more interesting things to do, I decided to offer my 13-year old brother the task. About a week of 4-hours-a-day labour for 50 bucks. My brother couldn’t believe his luck: “FIFTY whole bucks AND I get to use the computer? All to myself? Which means if I type it out fast I can use the remaining time to play games? Deal!” Sigh. No wonder, the Indian IT industry was my calling as a journalist - I’d understood the business model way before its time!