Thought Garage

Zyka Restaurent in Atlanta GA. I have never seen such a crowd in any of the Indian/IndoPak restaurents so far. It just reminded me my days at Bangalore and made me instantly homesick. I visited Zyka in Richardson, but it was quite different. The differences are quite striking with the Zyka in Richardson,TX. First and foremost is the crowd. In Atlanta You have to wait atleast for 15 minutes at any point of time to get a seat. Many people easily give up their search for seat and eat standing or take home. In Richardson, there is no such problem. I never waited for more than a minute to place order. Seating is always avaialble. It is slightly bigger, looks like. But there is far lesser crowd here. You see people come of the shells and be truly Indians for some time. I mean... you know. While getting to the counter to order or getting an empty table, if you wait in line like an obedient child, you are good to stay in line forever. I mean, quite frankly there is no line. Pe...

Some times it doesn't make sense to buy just one. Or quite expensive to buy just one. Found at a Old Navy outlet in Grapevine,TX. Perfect Tees, now 2 for $10. Or $10.50 each. Is it a typo or perfect marketing trick to get rid of their stock? 

Its like a DEMO conference showcasing the Indian Technology and Innovation. Proto.in is organizing first of its kind 2 day conference on 20th and 21st of January, 2007. Chennai is the natural candidate for such a conference, as it demonstrated its enthusiasm and committment to bring ideas to life with similar conferneces earlier, like Blogcamp. I picked up this image from WebYantra, showing a diaspora of Indian startups. Mobile Mondays, Blogcamps, BarCamps.... and now Proto.in..... India is heatingup with Innovation and exuberance of startups. The place to be in, without any hesitation what so ever. Technorati tags: india , proto , startup , web , inspions

How do you read a blog on your mobile? If you access the actual URL of the blog page right from your Mobile, your Mobile will not be able to display the content properly. The 2/3 column layout, large images, too many ads on the page, just don't fit on your small screen. And if you haven't subscribed to Unlimited Internet access (or as people call it Unlimited Data Plan), then you will be paying access charges for downloading all those ads and images, which you may not be interested at all. So then, how can I can read blogs on my cell phone? RSS feeds comes to rescue again, atleast to an extent. ( Read more about RSS Feeds at What is RSS and Why it is better and safer than Email for content delivery  ). RSS feeds just contain the blog posts. Nothing else.  No banner ads. No photo galleries. No background images. No layout designs. Just plain posts. But RSS feeds are formatted as XML documents, which your mobile phone can not re...

Science Fiction movies in Hollywood are pretty close to reality in labs. I remember watching The Minority Report . Wall-sized displays, gesture recognition, and seamless information convergence. Tom Cruise calls up and manipulate video footage and other data in mid-air after donning a special pair of gloves.  Its an intuitive touch-free interface.   Watch a similar intuitive interface, whick works on multiple touch sensors and eliminates the traditinal interface from the picutre. Wow! Jeff Han is a research scientist for New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences . Here, he demonstrates—for the first time publicly—his intuitive, "interface-free," touch-driven computer screen , which can be manipulated intuitively with the fingertips, and responds to varying levels of pressure. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 09:32) Watch the video here. Wonderful discussion on The Minority Report Interface here. The Minority Report ...

“This is a great moment in history, when we can say to you, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, turn on your cellphones.’”, Paul Freeman, the group’s music director, told the audience beforehand. And that triggered the birth of a new style Musician called ' CellPhonists '. Audience went on to play ringtones on their cellphones at defined moments, signaled by the Conductor at the world premiere of the Concertino for Cellular Phones and Symphony Orchestra by David N. Baker in Chicago. Watch a NYT narrated Slide show of the concert here. Scores of cellular phones trilled and twittered, beeped and burbled all at once inside a concert auditorium in this community outside Chicago. The orchestra onstage was unfazed. The composer was delighted. On Sunday, in a perverse commentary on the scourge of modern concert halls, the Chicago Sinfonietta played the world premiere of the Concertino for Cellular Phones and Symphony Orchestra by David N. Baker, a professor of music at Indiana ...

Whole Mobile world is buzzing about highly personalized Advertisements delivered on mobiles. If noise levels at the recent conferences is any indication, many are very serious about it.  Chetan Sharma wrote an interesting article " Sell Phones: What will make mobile advertising tick? " that delves into the details of Mobile advertising and what makes it tick. Here are some excerpts from the article that gives a headsup: According to Dentsu, mobile advertising revenues for 2006 will be approximately $373M or close to $3.8 per subscriber (for the year). By 2009, this number is likely to scale to over $6/sub/year. It is apparent that due to the availability of context, immediacy, and personalization , mobile has significant advantages over the other channels as an advertising medium. By 2011, global advertising industry will be close to $600B. Can mobile start to increase its revenue share from its current levels of less than 0.2% to 2-5% by then? Source: Always On Real-Tim...

 My first impression is Thumbs Up!! Wonderful !! Guruji.com a new search engine from India, is challenging Google in bringing better results for local search . Guruji.com is attempting to bring much better and relevant search results than popular search engines like Google and Yahoo for local search in India, much like what baidu is doing for China. Google does not offer Local Search in India, YET. So Guruji.com is attempting to fill that gap along with providing better search results for Indian content. Learn about the new search engine and its recent win of $7 million from Sequoia Capital  from CEO & Founder of Guruji.com, Anurag Dod in this podcast interview, Is Guruji the new Google for India?  by Kiruba Shankar  at podtech.net. Sounds quite interesting. Isn't it? I just gave it a try to see whether Guruji can beat Google and pull out better search results. After trying a few searches particularly in Bangalore,...

Satellites deliver UV index via SMS According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 60,000 deaths are caused annually by excessive exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation. In ' Satellites help ensure safe sunning ,' the European Space Agency (ESA) reports that a new service using its satellites can deliver the UV index to your cellphone via SMS. The Happy Sun Mobile (HSM) service also will advise about how to protect you and send you details about sea surface temperature and sea water transparency if you plan to dive. So far, the service is limited to Sardinia and Tuscany, Italy, but several operators will start to use it next summer. Below is a screenshot of what you could see on your cellphone if you have access to the Happy Sun Mobile service. (Credit: Flyby , HappySun service provider) [ Source : ZDNet ] Yobbos? Just hit E for Eject SPECTATORS at this summer's Ashes Test at the SCG may be able to use mobile phones to have troublemakers kicked out. Cricket Austr...

In his keynote speech at the Symbian Smartphone Show in London, the company's chief executive, Nigel Clifford, told delegates that the dawning era of the smart phone represents a shift "as profound as the Internet and PC were in the 1990s." Clifford suggested that the popularity of smart phones in the developed world and the "leapfrog economies" phenomenon in developing countries--in which expensive wired infrastructures are bypassed in favor of wireless--would create a situation where there was a "smart phone in every pocket." "It will be a great relief to be liberated from the laptop," he added, citing poor laptop battery performance as a key reason. [ Source: CNET News] Looking at the current sales of Smartphones and market predictions, Smartphones are actually outrunning the desktop/laptop sales. And in the world of Mobiles, Smartphone will be ultimate choice of handsets. Read more on why Smartphones Will Rule The Markets   at The Ce...

Symbian's Nigel Clifford forecasts the death of PC, as 'dawning era of the smart phone represents a shift "as profound as the Internet and PC were in the 1990s." Clifford suggested that the popularity of smart phones in the developed world and the "leapfrog economies" phenomenon in developing countries--in which expensive wired infrastructures are bypassed in favor of wireless--would create a situation where there was a " smart phone in every pocket. " Demand for smart phones and personal digital assistants is continuing to grow rapidly, according to the latest statistics from Gartner . Smart-phone sales have already increased by 75.5 percent in the last year to 37.4 million units, and will grow by a further 66 percent during 2006, according to data released last week by the analyst firm. And, Informa Telecoms & Media is predicting that the smartphone segment will be the fastest growing part of the mobile handset market in 2006 and will con...

This week it is all about new 3G handsets. Two of the leading wireless carriers in 3G space Vodafone and NTTDocomo have released a whole bunch of new handsets, that are expected to spur the growth of mobile content consumption this christmas season and days ahead. We can clearly see the trend towards music downloads and video downloads on the mobile phones. Vodafone : ( Read the press release here ) 24 Vodafone live! with 3G handsets, all offering Mobile TV services 14 Vodafone live! with 3G handsets offering Vodafone Radio DJ, Vodafone’s innovative music service 6 3G broadband consumer handsets from Motorola and Samsung, allowing faster access to multi media services such as mobile TV and full track music downloads, faster download of music and video files and high speed download of emails when the handset is used as a modem for the PC. NTT DoCoMo : ( Read the press Release here ) Unveiled 14 new handsets. Key features of new handsets released by NTT DoCoMo Advanced Em...

Washington Post ran an article " For India's Traditional Fishermen, Cellphones Deliver a Sea Change " by Kevin Sullivan  last weekend revealing the impact of cellphones in the lives of Indian fishermen. Very interesting.  Watch the video of the story available on the page. Few Excerpts from the story: The cellphone is bringing new economic clout, profit and productivity to Rajan and millions of other poor laborers in India, the world's fastest-growing cellphone market. A convenience taken for granted in wealthy nations, the cellphone is putting cash in the pockets of people for whom a dollar is a good day's wage. And it has made market-savvy entrepreneurs out of sheepherders, rickshaw drivers and even the acrobatic men who shinny up palm trees to harvest coconuts here in Kerala state. "This has changed the entire dynamics of communications and how they organize their lives," said C.K. Prahalad, an India-born business professor at the University of M...

While going through the net I came through this great idea, how about locating a parking spot to people who are ready to pay a little more for the service. It sounds very interesting and www.spotscout.com has already come up with a service. I am sure driving around searching for a space to park while going to a meeting or an interview is never fun, that's where this the idea clicks. This is how it works. Registered users post the location of a parking spot they plan on leaving, as well as a price, for that information. Other registered users could search for soon-to-be-available spaces in a given area. Users can search for this information from their Mobile phones capable of browsing internet or from desktop computers. When a user finds an available space and agree to the price, SpotScout withdraws the money and put on block. When the user actually arrives and picks the spot, transaction is considered complete and money is exchanged electronically. SpotScout takes 15% of the...

Many of the Web2.0 companies must be wondering why Google did not buy them or frantically scratching their heads on how to get there to be the next YouTube. Here is an interesting and quite a funny post from GapingVoid, " Top Ten Reasons why you didn’t sell your Web 2.0 company to Google for $1.6 Billion ".  This post kinda explains why you are not You Tube, YET. 1. You already sold your company. For a lot less, to somebody else. Ouch. Ouch. Pain . 2. Instead of giving your company an easy-to-spell, easy-to-talk-about name like “YouTube”, you decided to give your company a name that [a] nobody likes and [b] nobody can spell. Robert Scoble explains. 3. Your company probably isn’t even worth $1.6 million , let alone $1.6 billion. Heck, $1.6 thousand would be considered “not bad” in some books… 4. You’re still working at Starbucks. So you went from dotcom entrepreneur in 1999, to a penniless barrista in 2001, to... ummmm.... still a penniless barrista in...

Helen Keegan ( Musings of a mobile marketer ) compiled the latest Carnival of Mobilists (#48 ) . Carnival of the Mobilists exposes you to the very best posts of the previous week, all written about mobile and gathered together in a central place. My favorite highlights from the Carnival #48: Rudy at m-trends explains why flat rate data plans are needed to make Mobile 2.0 a reality Anders atAbiro discusses what is actually meant by Mobile 2.0 ..a lovely history of the videophone and its role in the media from Patrick at Mad for Mobile Phones and .. thoughts on 12 business models in mobile [tags]carnival-of-the-mobilists[/tags]

Boeing has decided to unplug its inflight broadband service, Connexion.  But before they unplug, they made it free. Scott from The Mobile Weblog  reports that "starting October 2 until each carrier unplugs the service, Connexion will be free of charge. That's right - all you can eat broadband in the air on long -haul flights". He received this communication from Boeing in an email. [tags]Connexion, Boeing[/tags]

I strongly believe that Mobiles have and are dramatically changing our lifestyles. And many people across the world have changed their life styles to embrace Mobile as an integral part of thier lives. In otherwords, these days, our lives more or less almost all the time depend on Mobile phones. There were many reports and books that corroborate that belief. Recent reports from UK's Carphone Warehouse conclusively establishes the fact that Mobiles have and are changing our lifestyles dramatically. The Mobile Life Report 2006  (PDF): How mobile phones change the way we live "Over 16,500 people were asked what they think about the mobile phone and how they use this ubiquitous piece of technology." "It is hard to believe that the mobile phone is now 21 years old. This is a generation, a whole section of society. People born since 1985 have never known life without a mobile phone." The Mobile Life Youth Report 2006 (PDF) : The impact of the Mobile Phone on the...

When I first posted my visualization of  features that will be part of today's mobile phone, many of you agreed, though with little hesitation and suspicion. Some of you were even reluctant to agree that even some of them will be part of mobile at all. But there are so many of us who believe that if not all, most of them will be soon part of mobiles. For example, read, what Bose , the best known brand for Sound Quality says in its October Newsletter article ' Dial M for Music: Todays Cell Phones Go Way Beyond Hello " about  today's Mobile Phone. "Can you guess which of these is not on the feature list of one of today's most popular cell phones? Actually, the phone in question has all of these features ... and many more. For example a voice recorder, 25 polyphonic ringtones, Bluetooth wireless connectivity, a video recorder, Web access, streaming audio and video capabilities. And it all fits into an impossibly compact package. It wasn't that lon...

Its always an amazing and adventurous feat to drive through the traffic in India. See this video, how so many drivers make their way through the traffic, with so precise coordination that there was not even a single jerk by any of the vehicles. The flow is almost like a fluid. Isn't it just the precise coordination? However, I bet we will be fully tired and exhausted even to drive for 15 minutes in this traffic. You have to cover all 360 degrees on the road to move. You never know what comes across. Technorati tags: india , traffic , inspions

I recently read an article at ' Mobile Opportunity ', discussing about the Smartphone market. The myth of the smartphone market : Who will buy smartphones? And what are the “killer” features? It is quite an interesting read infact. But I disagree to an extent the conclusions and predictions made about the Smartphone market.  I will quote only relevant text here for discussion.  Read the full article here , Update (21st October, 2006): Posted More news reports from Gartner and Informa Telecoms & Media about current sales of Smartphones and predictions until 2011 in Smartphones Will Rule The Markets . Both sources reported that Smartphones are the hot selling devices and will continue to grow. Symbian’s Nigel Clifford forecasts the death of PC, as Smartphones take over. Read more at my recent post Smartphones Will Rule The Markets .  Back to the article, now. The main reason why Smartphones or converged devices will be the future, is it is so painful to do otherw...

Guy Kawasaki recently visited Mumbai to speak at IBM conference. He took some interesting snapshots of Mumbai as well. But Guy is not  Guy Kawasaki unless he writes 10 points about Mumbai. And he did not  disappoint me. He wrote a 10 point highlights of his Mumbai trip, ' Mumbai Guy '. It is quite interesting to read through the list. One thing any foreign visitor immediately notice in India is the striking differences between rich and poor and traffic conditions. The contrast in living conditions for the very rich and the very poor is eye-opening—and I didn’t see the absolute extremes of either “Traffic safety” is an oxymoron. Luggage isn’t tied down on roof racks. People ride on top of trucks. I saw a family of four on a motorcycle. Having said this, I saw no accidents. Speaking of traffic, it can take two hours to travel fifteen kilometers there. If you have a choice, try to arrive on Saturday or Sunday. Speaking of arrival, I’ve never been t...

Source: http://www.bharattextile.com/newsitems/2001582 The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has recently revealed that India has emerged as the second largest cotton producer in 2006-07 by overtaking the US, industry sources said here on October 03. China is the leading cotton producer and was followed by the US, but since 2002, cotton production in India has expanded phenomenally and sustained it for four seasons in a row. USDA estimated Indian output at 4.572 million tons, while the US itself will produce 4.430 million tons showing decrease from previous year's 5.201 million tons. China, India and Pakistan account for half of the world's cotton production and two-thirds of world cotton consumption while Pakistan itself is the fourth largest producer and third largest consumer of cotton Technorati tags: india , usa , cotton , china , pakistan , inspions

What is important and what exactly you want to have on your Mobile? Rate your preferences on a poll that I created on ZohoPolls and let the world know what you think. What do you want from your Mobile? Mobile Phones offer a wide variety of utilities and applications right on your Mobile. But not all of them make sense to each of us. So, rate according to your relevance and use of each utility and application below. For more about Mobile phone utilities, applications, news and how a mobile phone can change your lifestyle, visit The Cellular Life Style http://zohopolls.com/Murali/what-do-you-want-from-your-mobile [tags]Mobile-Life-Styles, Mobile-Applications, Mobile-Devices, Poll[/tags] Technorati tags: Mobile Applications , Mobile Devices , Inspions , The Cellular Life Style , Poll

What is important and what exactly you want to have on your Mobile? Rate your preferences on a poll that I created on ZohoPolls and let the world know what you think. What do you want from your Mobile? Mobile Phones offer a wide variety of utilities and applications right on your Mobile. But not all of them make sense to each of us. So, rate according to your relevance and use of each utility and application below. For more about Mobile phone utilities, applications, news and how a mobile phone can change your lifestyle, visit The Cellular Life Style http://zohopolls.com/Murali/what-do-you-want-from-your-mobile Technorati tags: Mobile Applications , Mobile Devices , Inspions , The Cellular Life Style , Poll

When I first read this on SMS Text News , I thought the Overhead Projector allows you to connect your mobile phone directly to show the Mobile screen. It serves the same purpose but slightly differently. Instead of directly taking output of Mobile device, it capture the mobile screen just like we see it and then projects it like an image. Just like an Old and traditional over head projector which you use to project your hand-written paper in a class room. Only more powerful to capture the screen of a mobile device.  Nevertheless quite useful for capturing snapshots of your mobile phone and making presentations. Source: http://tomshardware.co.uk/2006/10/02/project_a_phone/ Project-a-Phone, a company that makes products for projection of cell phone screens, today announced the launch of the ICD-5000 Image Capture and Display system . The ICD-5000 allows cell phone owners to display the content on their mobile screen to a computer, monitor, or projection screen. Much like de...

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. In part-1 , I discussed about the first myth ' Myth 1: 3G is here! ', and found that the myth is still a myth. In this part, I will try to address the remaining myths. Myth 2: Features are everything : This is quite complicated and difficult to assert any view. I disagree that it was a myth when the paper was published to an extent. Users always wanted more features on thier mobiles. While it is beyond any doubt that users not only want features, but they want a simpler and intuitive interface to use those features. Feature or killer apps are going to drive the demand for mobiles and services. So f...

Almost everybody carries a mobile phone these days. There are around 2.1 billion mobile phone users. US alone has around 217 Million users.  Its a good news for many reasons.  One reason is these cellular phones help you identify traffic congestions in real time. And this solution is quite inexpensive to deploy widely. No, I am not talking about cellular phone users contacting FM radio stations or traffic monitoring centers informing about traffic congestions.  All cellular phones announce its location information in almost every message they send to radio towers. This will essentially help in maintaining connection when you are moving, in technical terms, a handover.  And IntelliOne engineers found a way to combine this information coming from 1000s of cell phones and decrypt the hidden message, that can tell a lot about the traffic congestions. Interesting? Ofcourse, it is.  Well, then read ...