It's been five days since I watched Avatar( a paid preview on 17th Dec ), and i deliberately kept away from writing anything about it in form of review apart from one or two lines on the facebook & twitter.This James Cameron saga, at four years in making(discounting the 15 yrs he waited for the technology to catch up with his vision), and at over $230 million cost, is the biggest movie in term of ambitions, no doubt, but does it work?
Oh, it's a visual feast. The 3d experience is immersive. And for the entire length of 3 hours you feast in the vivid colours of Pandoran world, where the battle between good(US Co) and evil( native Na'vi) takes place, all over a mineral (unobtanium) which sells at $20 million a kilo. You get to see some new creatures, not created by God, but by a man, using the tools of computer generated scenery. About 70% of the movie is entirely the work of computers, and was shot in the same hanger where Howard Hughes ( Recently played by Leonardo Di Caprio in some movie) built his mammoth planes.
But in these past five days, not once have i thought about Avatar. Never has any character made any impression in my mind- i am niether happy, nor sad about the movie. And that is puzzling to me. To see the biggest film in history and not be excited or swayed by it, means only one thing to me- IT WAS CRAPPY. The visual effects may have been great, but it was devoid of that extra something that makes a movie great, a soul sort of...It was a soulless movie, full of technical perfection, but devoid of a compelling story.Maybe Cameron has saved it for the following two sequels to it.
It is likely to be a mega blockbuster..it took second highest opening in US history despite half the county keeping away from it (due to blizzard); and it has recuperated about $230 million from worldwide audiences in just these five days. A great flawed movie, lacking a soul!
Monday, December 21, 2009
Copenhagen Accord: A dissapointing beginning to combat climate change
The Copenhagen summit is drawing to a close with no major announcement forthcoming. People say that a new beginning has been made, but when isn't a beginning new? And when the whole world is sitting on a ticking time bomb, you are looking out for more than a beginning. The only redeeming point according to me was the coming on board of US of A. And Obama took the spotlight away from all the declaration, or rather the absence of it.
A non binding agreement for efforts towards reducing the global temperature by two degrees Celsius. A $30 billion loan over the next three years to developing countries for mitigating the effects of climate change, and a proposal to grow the kitty to $100 billion by 2020? or 2050?
Naah! the talk's a failure according to me. It was just a conference to convene another conference in November next year to be held at Mexico. The merry go round continues... Better they come out with an alternative before Kyoto expires(in 2012 actually).
A non binding agreement for efforts towards reducing the global temperature by two degrees Celsius. A $30 billion loan over the next three years to developing countries for mitigating the effects of climate change, and a proposal to grow the kitty to $100 billion by 2020? or 2050?
Naah! the talk's a failure according to me. It was just a conference to convene another conference in November next year to be held at Mexico. The merry go round continues... Better they come out with an alternative before Kyoto expires(in 2012 actually).
Google Universe ( Fastflip, Android, Navigation, Goggles & Gphone)
Google is a company on the move. At any point of time they have loads of products cooking in their labs.Many of them do not see the light of the day, or are pushed behind to allow a newer idea to emerge. Google Wave was a surprising product in that regard. Though it is too early to say whether it will succeed or not, but the euphoria and hype associated with the product is beginning to quieten down.Many of my friends who had managed to get the invitation to the phenomenon called wave haven't logged in for more than a month. It's too complicated according to some, pretty useless according to some others. Only time will tell if their endeavor to redesign the internet was successful or not.
Android was another offering from the stable of Google.A free source operating system for mobiles, it has got a decent success. The motorola droid in US(running android) has become quite a success.And with HTC, samsung and LG also in line to launch phones with android, it looks that it will pick up momentum and will pretty soon have developers joining in the bandwagon.
Then came the time for offering a navigation feature on the mobiles. Though this feature is available in all it's glory only in the US, this was a great offering where you could do a voice search for a location, and the mobile would guide you turn by turn using the built in voice guidance system. When other companies would charge a hefty fee for the same feature, Google decided to provide the feature free in keeping up with it's ideology, "Don't be evil".
Now comes the next major evolution on Google's part, a technology from the future. Now you can just capture any image from your camera phone and do a google search on that image. A small part of the augmented reality program where the internet and real life mesh together, it's only a beginning, but a beginning no doubt. One can imagine that google will keep pace with the technological development and will soon attach it's massive database in meaningful ways to the real life.The above two services as expected were designed with the android mobile operating system kept in mind.
Now comes the most controversial aspect of the equation- a phone bearing the brandname of google. It seems that google has supplied mobile phones to all it's employees, in a process called "dogfooding" , to test the phone. There's no official confirmation with regards to the launch of the phone, but details have started emerging. It's codenamed Nexus One and is made by HTC according to Google'd hardware specifications. And no prizes for guessing that it runs the latest operating system( Android 2.1).According to Gartner smart phones will outsell laptops this yearr & will generate more revenue($192bn) than laptops ($152bn) by 2012.And it looks like google has set it's sights on this market.Here are some photos:
There are reports that the phone is fast to operate and comes with an OLED screen with the same size as motorola droid.While it is a multi touch smartphone, still pinch to zoom features do not seem to work in this regard. Now how & whether google will launch the phone can be left on the shoulders of time only. But it is an interesting news. Wait for the next article on Google's next product: Chrome OS for net & notebooks.
Android was another offering from the stable of Google.A free source operating system for mobiles, it has got a decent success. The motorola droid in US(running android) has become quite a success.And with HTC, samsung and LG also in line to launch phones with android, it looks that it will pick up momentum and will pretty soon have developers joining in the bandwagon.
Then came the time for offering a navigation feature on the mobiles. Though this feature is available in all it's glory only in the US, this was a great offering where you could do a voice search for a location, and the mobile would guide you turn by turn using the built in voice guidance system. When other companies would charge a hefty fee for the same feature, Google decided to provide the feature free in keeping up with it's ideology, "Don't be evil".
Now comes the next major evolution on Google's part, a technology from the future. Now you can just capture any image from your camera phone and do a google search on that image. A small part of the augmented reality program where the internet and real life mesh together, it's only a beginning, but a beginning no doubt. One can imagine that google will keep pace with the technological development and will soon attach it's massive database in meaningful ways to the real life.The above two services as expected were designed with the android mobile operating system kept in mind.
Now comes the most controversial aspect of the equation- a phone bearing the brandname of google. It seems that google has supplied mobile phones to all it's employees, in a process called "dogfooding" , to test the phone. There's no official confirmation with regards to the launch of the phone, but details have started emerging. It's codenamed Nexus One and is made by HTC according to Google'd hardware specifications. And no prizes for guessing that it runs the latest operating system( Android 2.1).According to Gartner smart phones will outsell laptops this yearr & will generate more revenue($192bn) than laptops ($152bn) by 2012.And it looks like google has set it's sights on this market.Here are some photos:
There are reports that the phone is fast to operate and comes with an OLED screen with the same size as motorola droid.While it is a multi touch smartphone, still pinch to zoom features do not seem to work in this regard. Now how & whether google will launch the phone can be left on the shoulders of time only. But it is an interesting news. Wait for the next article on Google's next product: Chrome OS for net & notebooks.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
New Issue of Class Magazine
Brought out a new issue of our class magazine. As usual uploaded a copy of it on the site issue. It is available on : October Issue of i.mag.in (read Imagine)
Heartfelt thanks to the team samwad. Ankit Gupta as usual did a brilliant job of designing the magazine. What next?
Heartfelt thanks to the team samwad. Ankit Gupta as usual did a brilliant job of designing the magazine. What next?
Friday, November 6, 2009
Latest Telecom Figures: September(end) 2009
The number of subscribers crossed 500 million. The wirline subscribers continue to drop, as almost everyone is jumping on the wireless bandwagon. The subscriber base stood at 509 million, with 471 million wireless subscribers and 37 million odd wireline subscribers. Should wireline services be delegated to second place? Or should government try even harder to work on it? Atleast the market forces have spoken out loud for the death of wireline services. Let's see at what stable figure it settles.
The overall teledensity ( which is number of phones per hundred persons) reached a overall high of 43.50. This when it reached double digit only towards the end of September 2005. The figures mentioned in the telecom policy of 1999 have been fulfilled with a year to spare. What a success story!
Tata (26.7%), Bharti(16.8%) & Reliance(13.4%) had the lion's share of 15 million additions this month.
The rural density figure stood at 16.5(march, 2009) and the urban teledensity at 88.5(march 2009). This shows that companies have no option but to go to rural areas in search of the numbers- at least to the thickly populated rural areas. The size of India may put off some operators but it's high population density(393persons/ sq km) should see it through.
The urban centers would most probably see the shift towards VAS, with data services making up for the lost revenue. But what about rural areas? Will they also see VAS? Or services like GPRS, 3G, Mobile banking?? Who knows? The future is too much in flux, especially in the case of Indian telecom market!
Friday, October 30, 2009
Laws of the World ( Special emphasis on technology )
Humans are a rare breed. They are always on the lookout for the laws that govern the various relationships. We all know the laws of the motion, laws of relativity and various other laws in the realm of science. What about various laws of our world (with emphasis on technology)? Well here is a brief review of a few of the laws:
Moore's Law : This is supposedly the most publicized law. Founder of Intel, the semiconductor giant, Mr Gordon Moore postulated that computing power doubles every eighteen months. This has remained true till now, but is showing signs that it may not survive the decade.
Amara's Law : we tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.
Dunbar's Number : Tells us that we are human after all. We can atmost handle 150 active connections. That's the number of social relationships that the average person can effectively maintain before he/ she becomes overloaded.
Hawthorne effect : More to the point of human psychology, it states that subjects in a setting will improve aspects of their behavior being experimentally measured simply in response to the fact that they are being studied.
Hoteling's Law : Says that it's natural and rational for businesses to make their products as similar as possible. It holds true in the internet era also. For any company that moves toward aggregating ( innovate – proliferate – aggregate) stands a good chance to reap the profits.
- Jakob's Law : "users spend most of their time on other sites", and so you must be there too.
Pareto Principle: 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Originally stated for the manufacturing industry, the 80/20 principle has found to have held true across various situations.
Sarnoff's law : The value of a broadcast network is proportional to the number of viewers. Though it looks self evident, it's truthfulness holds true in the modern era when the communication has become two way ( Company to user & user to company )
Network Effect : When a product or service has more value the more that other people have it too. A phenomenon seen now days with facebook. The more value and more people it acquires, the more the number that want to join it.
Principle of least effort : The simpler( and easier) the solution, the more the people will like it. People tend to use the most convenient method, in the least exacting way available.
Gilder's law : This states that network bandwidth triples every 18 months.
Rule 34 : "If it exists, there is porn of it." Also Rule 35: "If no such porn exists, it will be made."
Pommer's Law : A person's mind can be changed by reading information on the internet. The nature of this change will be from having no opinion to having a wrong opinion.
The law of exclamation : The more exclamation points used in an email (or other posting), the more likely it is a complete lie. This is also true for excessive capital letters.
Metcalfe's Law : Metcalfe said the usefulness of a network improves by the square of the number of nodes on the network. i.e The Internet, like telephones, grows more valuable as more join in.
Wriston's law : Capital (meaning both money and ideas), when freed to travel at the speed of light, "will go where it is wanted, stay where it is well-treated...." By applying Wriston's Law of capital and talent flow, one can predict the fortunes of countries and companies.
Ogilvy's Law : If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.
Drucker's Law : You will achieve the greatest results in business and career if you drop the word "achievement" from your vocabulary. Replace it with "contribution" .
Technology is not a panacea.
Nobody believes that anything bad can happen to them, until it does.
- Eternal vigilance is the price of security.
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