Not So Excited About the Apple iPhone - A Critical Mass of Idiots

Apart from the "oh-so" design, what is so special about this phone? They were waiting for a perfect rollout of their iTunes store with music videos and songs so that it becomes a compelling proposition for Apple to sell a device which could play their wares on their hardware. It is a win-win situation for the telecom companies and Apple.

I'm not too confident this is the right thing at the right time - will one billion cellphones change? Not overnight.

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Entrepreneurship as a Competitive Advantage

Immigrants are behind 25% of the startups created in the USA between 1995 and 2005. The existence of so many start ups in America is no accident, and immigrants do not simply go to America and create enterprise. Rather, many go to America because they can create enterprise.

Good article.

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Blogger/Booger - What's The Difference?

You are Time Magazine's Person of the Year, Your Life Goes On

Time Magazine, in a break from tradition, and in a year of transition, selected You as their person of the year. You, as in, us citizens, us bloggers, us Youtubers, us citizen soldiers, us whistleblowers. Contrariwise, you know it's a bubble when 'the Beast with a Billion Eyes' outflanks the Tehran Don.

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The Ugly American Redux, No More

Numerous reactions to the U.S. Elections - my own, on America's "macaca moment" is evolving in my cranium.

For now, a gem from HuffPo:

The ugly American mark two is dead. Overnight six years of glib European identification of "American" with right-wing fundamentalism is over. The gun-toting, pre-Darwinian Bushite, the Tomahawk-wielding, Halliburton-loving, Beltway neo-con, damning abortion as murder and torturing Islamo-fascists has been lain to rest, and by a decision of the American people. Americans should be proud and the world should take note.

Yesterday's result could hardly have been more emphatic. George Bush's election wizard, Karl Rove, said he would make America's midterm elections "a choice not a referendum". He would ask them to choose a congress not vote on his boss. The electorate did both. In a high turnout the majority rejected the tenets of the religious right and of "big government" neo-conservativism. They expressed concern over the corruption and warmongering of Washington and the state of their economy in Bush's hands. For the Republicans there were no consolations.

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Family Zone

 


Bamboo, Dee & the kids at Infosys 

The Kids At Infosys

 

Visiting Tomorrow 

Monkey See

 

Who's Your Daddy? 

The Last Supper Of The Virgins

 

Provenance unknown, but well-composed, and a clever interpretation of the classic picture. 

Desi Advertising At It's Worst

  

Aayan on M.G. Road, Bangalore

  

Kolkata - A Classic Scene

  

Windows Vista Readiness

Don't buy PCs or Laptops for a while:) And don't forget your notepad.

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Call Centers: The Great Data Theft - Channel 4's Dispatches

Channel 4 exposes some holes in the big cheese of Call Centers. The great boom in the Indian economy owes a great deal to the call centres, BPOs and other associated industries - which could come down like a house of cards if these companies decide to up sticks and move out, en masse.

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Wisconsin farm has third rare white buffalo SOMETHING BESIDES A COW!!!

Only in Wisconsin would cows be news:)

SOMETHING BESIDES A COW!!! -
MILWAUKEE - A farm in Wisconsin is quickly becoming hallowed ground again for American Indians with the birth of its third white buffalo, an animal considered sacred by many tribes for its potential to bring good fortune and peace.

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bLaugh Blogging Truths

Apple's new iPod pricing and features

Apple's not-news announcements earlier this week didn't change the world, but some new features were introduced to the iPod line (of which I have a 5G one), and you can now buy movies at exorbitant prices that will only play on your PC.

ahas this interesting table comparing the new iPod prices to the available memory:

1) What’s the new iPod pricing scheme?

iPod shuffle 1GB: $79 ($79 per GB)
iPod nano 2GB: $149 ($74.50 per GB)
iPod nano 4GB: $199 ($49.75 per GB)
iPod nano 8GB: $249 ($31.13 per GB)
iPod 5G 30GB: $249 ($8.30 per GB)
iPod 5G 80GB: $349 ($4.36 per GB)

By storage capacity standards, the 80GB iPod is the best value in iPod history - under $4.50 per Gigabyte, and the cheapest top-of-line iPod Apple has ever introduced. Even the 1GB shuffle is only slightly more expensive than the now discontinued $69 512MB iPod shuffle.

I wonder when these prices will reflect in Indian stores.

The movie pricing and restrictions make this another way the industry refuses to recognize the ability to reach out to customers and make this a viable channel. bittorrent is the killer app - and they don't want to accept that.

Some thoughts on a viable solution for utilizing bittorrent as a sales channel coming up...

Like iTunes for Digital Comic Books!

While looking for a good free CBR/CBZ reader, I came upon Comic Rack, and I found nirvana. Comic Rack is a reader that builds XML libraries like iTunes complete with covers and meta data for the files. The software is in early development, but is something to keep an eye on if you're looking for a good reader/database program

I like CDisplay, but this will be worth checking out..

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Beginning Google Maps Applications with PHP and Ajax

PHP and Ajax are literally on a roll. You see websites pop up all the time with fancy ajax effects. Did you know that Google Maps is also a heavy user of Ajax? This is a review of a good book on Google Maps which explains the various ways in which Google Map API can be used to create and integrate user interactive maps on ones personal website

It's a review, but still a good pointer to a book one shall scout out

Prediction: PHP+Ajax is going to go head-to-head with Adobe Flex

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I Hate Summary RSS Feeds

I subscribe to over 200 RSS feeds that I check daily, earlier with Bloglines, and more recently with Netvibes It's the easiest way I've found of handling information overload - my use of multiple computers both at home and at office means I'm never going to be using a desktop-tethered software for handling RSS.

One thing that gets me, though, and it's not the fault of the software, is the number of producers who have cryptic one-line summaries for their feed entries. and I'm expected to click on or right-click/new tab-window and find out if it's worth digesting - I mean why do RSS and not give me the whole shebang? Traffic is important, but I can't believe it will impact your traffic that much to give me the whole story - if I use it, I'll link to you, so you get your backlinks. Why put me through the rigmarole?

Desicritics has all full-text feeds, and we don't seem to be hurting for traffic. I've actually found our traffic increases and we have a number of referrers from netvibes, etc.

Most of the short-feed bums are media-types, like the New York Times, and Slate. It's funny Slate doesn't get it, being such a pioneer.

Give it all to me, baby!

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