Thought Garage

I use SiteGround to host this blog. Their service over the last year has been commendable. My blog was never down as per my knowledge. Whenever I access it, it is always available. But questions like was it really never down? Was it up all the time over the last year? always pops up, as I was not sure about it. I wish it was up all the time. But there is no way to know that. Then, I recently read about Site 24X7 , which can monitor my website availability and content for free . I signed up on their website, and entered by blog URL to monitor it. Today I received the first report for the last week. I am very happy to see that my site has been up all the time and available 100% of time. Now I know for sure. View Status Report : (Click on image to enlarge) How does it work? : The tool try to access your website at a configurable interval to check whether your site is available or not. You can configure this polling interval as you wish from 5 minutes to 24 hours.  ...

Jana-Gana-Mana, the Indian National Anthem composed by A.R.Rahman and sung by the best of the best of Indian Musicians. Vandemataram, the best of Indian Music Inspiration, composed by A.R. Rahman. Traditional and classical musicians objected the way it was visualized and composed, but was there any better visualization to touch an Indian heart. Was there any better visualization that inspires an Indian?  Truly an inspiring and undoubtedly the best of A.R. Rahman.

Windows Live Writer team has issued a new update to the Beta Window Live Writer, the desktop blogging application with the following updates. The following is a summary of the changes in the Writer 1.0 (Beta) Update: Tagging support Support for Blogger Beta Categories are sorted by name and support scrolling, plus improved support for reading categories from your blog Improved startup performance Paste is enabled for Title region and TAB/SHIFT+TAB navigation between title and body supported Insert hyperlink added to context menu when text is selected Title attribute in Insert Link dialog Custom date support for Community Server Improved keyboard shortcuts for switching views Change spell-check shortcut key to F7 Add ‘png’ to insert image dialog file type filter More robust image posting to Live Spaces Improved style detection for blogs  Fixed issues with pasting URLs and links Remember last window size and position when opening a new post ...

Cellular Phones have dramatically changed our life style, even before rich content applications arrived. Still in some parts of the world, mobile is still primarily used for voice calls and access in remote parts. Rest of the developed world, now with a wide variety of Content and applications, they are becoming the most dependable devices ever. A new life style called The Cellular Life Style is born and growing at exponential rate. Not convinced or can't believe the Cellular phone as the most integral part of our lifestyle, listen to the following podcasts produced by BBC and PRI in 'The Chaning World' series.  Mobile Phones : In these documentaries produced for the BBC World Service, we explore the influence of the mobile phone on lives throughout the world. From rural Africa to cosmopolitan cities in Europe, cell phones have changed the way we communicate – and how we expect to be able to communicate. Part 1 : Nick Rankin explores the history of mobile pho...

Digital Camera, A Video camera with DVD quality, a Digital Music Player, Video player,  an FM Radio, Ability to print your pictures by direclty connecting to a printer, Photo editing and sharing applications, WiFi connectivity, RSS reader, a full pledged Browser, an Organizer and a whole bunch of multimedia and personal information maangement applications.  Oh, we forgot, you can also make voice calls, SMS, MMS, IM ..... and all that you can do with a traditional cellular phone. This is not a list of my dream cellphone, but just a preview of features offered by Nokia N-Series N-93 Phones . N-Series phones also comes with WiFi, that means along with your carriers cellular network you can also use any hotspot to download or upload or browse web sites. Recently we have posted about printing capability of N-series mobile phone from Nokia . Yesterday, I watched a preview of N-93 Nokia Mobile featured on ABC News ABC News Ahead of the Curve Video podcasts s...

I don't know. May be just for academic reasons, because there is no relevance in practical life. I recently read some discussion about the performance of Ruby at Joel on Software . Wondering what the heck if Ruby is slower than C++?  There are 10s of programming languages which are slower than C/C++, yet they are being used widely in many different applications. You don't have to be the fastest and win 100m at the Olympics to live your life. You have a different set of ambitions and purpose. Don't you? I never thought all programming languages are created equal. Though, a given problem can be solved by many programming languages, I believe, not all are cut out to solve the same problem. New programming languagues have been created primarily because existing programming languages do not solve a particular problem well. For most, the reason is not pure computational performance . This is equally true for most technologies as well. Even when two programmi...

Recent buzz indicates that Desktop applications will be gone soon and Online counterparts rule the world instead. I disagree. I believe that online applications alone are useless and painful for some of the desktop counterparts. What we need is a smart desktop application or a browser plugin or a desktop widget that is totally integrated with an online application, its datastorage and an online interface. If you can replace your desktop application for your needs with an online version, most likely you don't need that desktop application in the first place. In a recent article in Business2.0 magazine (October 2006), Om Malik says in 'Online Apps -To go!': "What this means is that you'll be able to write your documents in Writely(who needs Word?), email them via Gmail(who needs Outlook?) and arrange appointments to jointly edit those documents via Google calendar(again who needs outlook?)." Before coming to any conclusion, it would be handy to know how blog...

Aaron Marcus, the founder and President of Aaron Marcus and Associates, Inc wrote an article " The 12 Myths of Mobile UIs " for Software Development Magazine and was published in May 2003. Its been more than three years since then and lots of things have changed in the Mobile world across the globe. So let us revisit those 12 myths and see if there is any change in the stand.  Myth 1: 3G is here! : The original article predicts that "The U.S. will be the last to get the advanced messaging, data streaming, multimedia and fast transmission promised by third-generation wireless standards. Japan and Korea, followed closely by China, are likely to lead the way, with Europe trailing second, as has been repeatedly demonstrated over the last decade in the telecom marketplace". Let us see how the top 4 US Carriers are doing in 3G as of today. Sprint-Nextel : Sprint-Nextel has the largest Mobile Broadband network covering 216 major Metropolitan markets and 486 airports. ...

Motorola , the No.2 in Mobile phones will be the No.1 to offer its Mobile phones and accessories through a Vending machine. The stores are operated by San Francisco-based Zoom Systems, which also operates iPod vending machines. Currently these vending systems are in the San Francisco International Airport and Macy's on State Street, in addition to more locations across the country. The vending machine-like "Instantmoto" stores will sell 12 kinds of phones and 18 accessories. Shoppers will be able to use credit cards to purchase mid- to high-end models, including the Razr and the Q, and can buy with or without a service plan for T-Mobile, Verizon and Cingular service. Using a touch-screen, customers can pick a phone's style, color and accessories, such as car adapters and chargers. Then go-online to the carriers website to register for the service. The machines are about three times the size of a typical beverage vending machine, so one can spot them easily. These ...

To fight with keyboard loggers (the spyware programs which record your key strokes) some banks started using Virtual keyboards. When using virtual keyboards, you will not enter your password using your keyboard. Instead, you will use your mouse to enter the password by clicking on the alphabets and numbers that appear as images on the screen. It seemed to have worked so far. But not any more. As per a news item , virtual keyboards are no longer safe, and trojan horse programs have been spreading that can log partial images of the virtual keyboards along with keystrokes without notice of users, enables to break the code. Unfortunately, only 6 of 30 anti-virus programs could detect the trojan horse program. A Spanish security company, Hispasec Systems, has revealed details of "Trojan horse" programs that can capture video imagery of an unsuspecting person's computer use. If the user enters a PIN on a bank's virtual keypad, the dastardly program is a witness. Gartner...

As per a news item, Nokia N-series phones will enable users print photos right from their mobile phones, by connecting them to printers through USB or a bluetooth connection. The software on the phone also allows to order prints of pictures directly from their mobile phones from Snapfish and likes. Software in four of Nokia 's Nseries camera phones will enable users to order prints of their pictures for store pick-up or home delivery from services such as Hewlett-Packard's Snapfish. The new software will add to the printing capabilities of the phones, which can already connect to certain printers over USB or a Bluetooth wireless connection. Nokia's software will allow Snapfish users in the U.S. to order prints from their online photo gallery directly from an N80 Internet Edition camera phone. They can already upload pictures to their gallery from a variety of camera phones, but so far prints can only be ordered over the Web from a PC. The N80 will ship in the U.S. bef...

At ' The Cellular Life Style ', we strongly believe that devices play a very crucial role in the success of Mobile in redefing the Life Style. It is fundamental and very important for users to think of Mobile as multi-utility device than just a simple phone. Once the Cell phone becomes a part of every thing we do, we want to do everything in our world with or on mobile. This explains why US mobile-is-just-for-voice lags far behind Europe's Mobile Life Style.  Our key question on the main page puts this belief in proper context: Would you like to carry an iPod, a Sony recorder, a Palm PDA, a cell phone, a digital camera, a gaming console, a GPS navigator, a jump drive, a laptop, …………….. OR a cool smart Cellular phone? Recent M:Metrics press release clearly substantiate our belief with numbers from various markets. M:METRICS: WILL SMARTER PHONES DRIVE CONTENT CONSUMPTION? released on 10th July, 20...

As per a Press Release by M:Metrics on 12th September, 2006, UK reports the highest percentage of Mobile Subscribers who use their Mobile device as their Music Player. At three percent, the volume of British mobile music consumers is higher than the Spanish (2.8 percent), U.S. (0.7 percent) and German (1.4 percent) audiences The report cites 'dearth of devices' as the key barrier for wider adoption of mobile phone as music player. So, I believe new phones like 'Chocolate' which is Music Player + Mobile, and rumoured Cell phone iPod from Apple are going to change the scene and we will see more and more subscribers dancing to the tunes from Mobiles. Read the press release here . You can also download a PDF version of the release. The report also includes data about Ring Tones consumption, and US leads the ringtones market with a 10.4% penetration followed by Spain with 8.9%.  Also Read how we are using Mobile Content and Applications. In US, SMS is still the mostl...

Business Line has an excellent article on Broadband network issues in India. With BSNL and MTNL not willing to share their last mile, private players are left with two choices: fork out a colossal amount and lay a fresh last mile network or haggle with the local cable operators. India had over 1.3 million broadband subscribers as on March 31, 2006 (still well behind the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's target of 3 million by December 2005) out of which 4 lakh belonged to private players. BSNL had 5.86 lakh broadband subscribers and MTNL over 2 lakh. As of July 2006, TRAI figures show 1.70 million broadband subscribers; analysts say the private-public sector proportion must be roughly the same as in March. Read the article here.

Its not uncommon to see Businesses and Entrepreneurs give away thier wealth for a cause once they reach a stage or age in their careers. You must have heard about announcements by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet and a lot many.  But it is not that common to see an entrepreneur start a business just for a cause. Springwise has spotted an Idea that calls for your full attention.  Click here to read the full idea . Business of Mobile services is believed to be a very lucrative business. And the very reason, this MVNO is setup to help the cause. Belgian Ello Mobile is a new mobile operator that was established with the sole aim of giving away 100% of its profits. Ello is a mobile virtual network operator – it uses an existing network. Instead of offering bargain-basement cellphone plans, the company offers its customers the chance to contribute directly to a cause with every call they make, and every text message they send. Customers can currently pick one of six p...

Its not uncommon to see Businesses and Entrepreneurs give away thier wealth for a cause once they reach a stage or age in their careers. You must have heard about announcements by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet and a lot many.  But it is not that common to see an entrepreneur start a business just for a cause. Springwise has spotted an Idea that calls for your full attention.  Click here to read the full idea . Business of Mobile services is believed to be a very lucrative business. And the very reason, this MVNO is setup to help the cause. Belgian Ello Mobile is a new mobile operator that was established with the sole aim of giving away 100% of its profits. Ello is a mobile virtual network operator – it uses an existing network. Instead of offering bargain-basement cellphone plans, the company offers its customers the chance to contribute directly to a cause with every call they make, and every text message they send. Customers can currently pick one of six p...

BBC World News produced a documentary on India vs China comparing head to head on different aspects of economic growth on the way to becoming Economic Super Powers of the 21st century. While China is growing and moving very fast, there are some people still believe that India has a better chance to become Super Power and sustain the growth rate. Many analysts are debating that China's silos development model can not be sustained in the long run and arguing that India's overall development, though little slower than China, can sustain in the long run because of the ecosystem that is being developed and being the largest democratic country in the world. More over, another clear distinction even mentioned in this video, India is pioneering innovation to differentiate in terms of Quality products rather than Quantity. Watch the videos uploaded at Youtube. India and China are due to reopen their land border this month, for the first time since an intense frontier war more ...

Read a news story on ABC News, posing an intriguing question "Who needs mobile Apps?"  based on analysis from CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment 2006 conference responses. Read it here . The article by PC Magazine, says consumers and carriers have too many choices of content and Mobile applications.  Over 300 exhibitors showcased their products in the conference. Irony is that Carriers do not know what consumers want, so they are in a dilemma to decide what will fare better and give them better margins. Consumers on the other hand are just waiting for their carriers to choose the best for them. Remember, that carriers still maintain the Walled Gardens, means that Consumers can not get what ever they want but can only choose from what carriers offer. But in reality, carriers are desperate to introduce new Mobile data applications to make a buck out of their networks, as voice is fast becoming a commodity and can no longer provide the margins they enjoyed. There were ...

Nope, I did not conduct any performance tests or conducted any surveys about the top search engines. I just read a blog posting at Marketing Shift that declares MSN Search as #1 as per Google search results. Curious and surprised to see that result, I searched again in Google, Yahoo and MSN Search engines for key word search. We have been waiting for a long time to have a search engine that give the results based on 'relevance' and meaning of what you are searching rather than the keyword as part of an URL. But the wait it still on. No search engine has any relevance. All look at the keyword in the URL and some other goofy algorithm to turn them up. So, the keyword in the URL still rules. Here are the results:  Yahoo just followed the suit, with little more amusement. www.search.com tops followed by overture and MSN Search. MSN is definitely above Yahoo and Google in both Yahoo and Google search engines. But let us see how much MSN believes in itself as...

Nokia recently announced that Yahoo search will become an integral part of the Nokia Mobile Search application on all Nokia NSeries Multimedia computers and Nokia S60 devices. Earlier in the year, Motorola announced to include Google search and Yahoo Go Mobile services on its Mobile devices.  These two announcements from the top two Mobile Device manufacturers and the top 2 search engines, surely are giving enought hints that they consider Mobile search as the next best thing to do. But I am wondering who makes money with these services and how? Customers will be happy to install or have them pre-installed on their mobiles so that they can search better and quicker whatever they need right from their mobiles. But how does Google or Yahoo make money from the search.  Will they display contextual ads just like they do oo the desktop?  Do they expect consumers to click on the ad to go to the website of the advertiser and purchase some stuff? Will consumers like t...

CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment 2006, the latest and first of its kind of conference that brings both Enterprise and Entertainment from the Mobile world together was held between 12th and 14th September 2006 right in Hollywood, Los Angeles CA. The show boasts of around 15000 attendees and 300 exhibitors from Wireless IT, Enterprise and Entertainment sectors. Have a look at the power line of Key note speakers here. It got all Key operators who are leading the Wireless Data markets, Verizon, Sprint Nextel, Virgin Mobile and also includes the latest  MVNO Helio, Sony in full attendence with two key notes one  each from Sony Pictures and Sony BMG Music, analysts from Accenture, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, News Corporations .... and whole bunch of presentations that can take the a whirl wind tour of the Mobile world and expose to new dimensions of the wireless content business. If you have missed the conference or want to have peek of what happened at...

The debate is open yet again between Wikipedia and Britannica. This time it is not between readers or proponents or bloggers but between the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales and Dale Hoiberg, senior vice president and editor-in-chief of Britannica. The Wall Street Journal Online invited both for this E-Debate over Email.   Check it out here . The Wall Street Journal Online also hosted a poll asking its readers to vote on the following question: "Does Wikipedia's open-editing approach yield better results than traditional encyclopedias?". At the time of writing, 2654 have voted with 56% says YES while 31% says NO. It is difficult to say who won the debate or whether the debate is finished at all? But just a little conversation between them without any one clearly making a point or proving some thing right or wrong.  I rarely visited Britannica online, though I referred to it a lot while in college. Mainly due to the fact th...

The following Six Indians featured in MIT Technology Review - 2006 Young Innovators Under 35  : (Click on Names to view profiles and how and why they deserve to be in the list) Ram K. Krishnamurthy  : Cooler computers Ashok Maliakal  : The floppy screen Prithwish Basu  : Networking Unplugged Anand Raghunathan  : Making mobile secure Sumeet Singh  : Faster defenses against computer viruses Jay Shendure  : The $1,000 genome The list of Innovators also includes my favorites: Jason Fried : Keeping online collaboration simple, ( 37Signals.com ) Joshua Schachter  : How tags exploit the self-interest of individuals to organize the Web for everyone. ( Del.icio.us ) Paul Rademacher  : The man who opened up the map ( Google Maps )

As per the inaugural  Mobile TV Diary Report released by Telephia on 11th September, 2006, Mobile TV Audience grew 45% to 3.7 Million subscribers in Q2-2006. Total quarterly Mobile TV revenues increased to $86 Million in last quarter which is 67% increase over the last quarter. As per the release, Subscribers are using  the 'Third Screen' primarily for news, weather reports and sports updates.  ABC news was the most watched TV Channel in Q2-2006 while the Weather Channel, Fox Sports and ESPN follows. The Weather Channel is accessible to 82% of the subscribers, but only 45% of those are viewing the channel. CNN tops in this category. CNN is currently available only to 18% of total Mobile subscribers, but 65% of those who have access to CNN are watching CNN. ABC News, the most watched TV on Mobile, is accessible to 78% of the subscribers and 55% of those users are watching ABC news. Read the original rankings by Telephia, 1. Mobile TV Channels Ranked by Share of Total...

Video on Mobile is hot. Many of us love to watch short video clips like movie trailers, high lights of games, personal videos etc., on Mobile. The president of MTV, Van Toffler, says MTV and its properties streamed more than 2 million videos on Verizon’s Vcast service in March alone. Listen to Van Toffler's key note address at CTIA Wireless 2006 how MTV is spearheading video on Mobile by launching several content formats world wide. And many main stream news studios like CNN and ABC are joining the frenzy by offering headlines and top stories as videos distributed on Mobile phones. They have already reached broad user base by video podcasts through iTunes and likes. And as per research by Jupiter 25% of consumers want to watch Live TV and video clips on their Mobiles but only 1% are ready and willing to pay the subscription fees. But that will definitely change with the content.  Jupiter also says that only 11% of mobiles will be Video capable in 2006...

When you buy an iPod or a book in the store in US, on an average you must be paying around 6% as sales tax.  Do you know how much Tax are you paying on your Mobile bill?  If you think, its about the same, then you are up for a big suprise and shock, unless you are in Nevada.  As per an article in Wireless Wave , a quarterly trade magazine by CTIA ,  on an average in US, you pay around 17% in taxes and fees on your Mobile bill. Nebraska being the most expensive with taxes and fees topping at 24.6% and Nevada is the lowest with just 7%, which is even lower than the sales tax of 7.1%. Do you know that you paid 3% of your Mobile bill every month to fund 'Spanish American War' fought in 1898?  You read it right, Spanish American War in 1898? Over a 108 years ago.  Its called, FET (Federal Excise Tax) which was originally introduced to fund the war in 1898, but was never repealed until five different US Circuit courts of Appeals have ruled in favor of customers recentl...

As per a report by Evalueserve  the Venture Capital market in India, which picked up some time in 2004  is now sizzling as VC Firms in India and overseas are flocking to setup Venture Funds to invest in Indian startups. Over 44 US-based VC firms are now seeking to invest heavily in start-ups and early-stage companies in India. These firms have raised, or are in the process of raising, an average of US $100 million each. Indeed, if these 40-plus firms are successful in raising money, they would garner approximately $4.4 billion to be invested during the next 4 to 5 years. However, VCs have been exclusively focusing on only a few sectors like IT, Telecom, BPO and Consumer Internet, the report cautions that that would mean a lot of money and too few companies. The report evaluates that a typical start-up in India would require $9 million during the first three years (i.e., $3 million per year) and even assuming that the start-up survives for three years, investing $2....