Subbu's corner

2011-10-05T20:15:00.001-07:00

The man who had the mind of an engineer and the heart of an artist.

10 technology areas/products to watch out for in 2011

2011-01-02T20:41:00.000-08:00

I have been contemplating to write this post for while now. Here are my predictions about 10 products/technologies/areas to take off big in 2011 not in any particular order:

1. Gaming Systems
Apple has enjoyed the success of the iphones for the past 3 years. I think its now time for them to come with a breakthrough again. I believe apple will come out with an awesome gaming device/platform for Home gaming in 2011. I m hoping for this gaming device/platform to revolutionize the home gaming industry like the Nintendo Wii. Microsoft's Kinect is also something we need to watch out for.

2. The rise of the Android
Apple led the way for the new era of tablets through their ipad in 2010. In 2011, I m hoping to see more android based tablets which will be much cheaper than the ipads. Android is already accelerating faster than the iphone/ipad these days. I am also hoping to see more cheaper android phones in the market in 2011. More people will switch to smartphones. Smartphones are the new cell phones. There will also be more applications on the android (already almost every app on the iphone is there on the android).

3. Web/Internet TVs
We saw google TV, Boxee box, Roku come up in 2010 but none of them took off. In 2011, I m hoping to see more players in this area. Again, we need to watch out for apple in this domain. If they have a good app platform on their apple TV (similar to the one they had for the iphones), they have a good chance to win this market. Apple TV is only 99 bucks.

4. Cloud Computing
2010 was already the year of cloud computing. 2011 is going accelerate that big time with big established players trying to acquire smaller companies in the cloud computing area. C'mon looks like these days we only need a LCD touch screen and a graphics processor on a computer or a smart phone. Everything else can be outsourced to the cloud. Google, Salesforce, Oracle are a few companies to watch out for in this space.

5. Social Networking
Everybody knows the facebook these days. Facebook has about 500 million users today. In 2011, they are going to grow even bigger. I still dont think Facebook will IPO in 2011. They are not ready for the wallstreet yet. Twitter, which is the new age RSS feed will attract more people and even try to make some money this year. Either Foursquare or Gowalla will get acquired by one of the established players in 2011 and the location check-in space will be consolidated. Facebook will become big in the location space.

6. Electric Cars
Almost every automobile maker is offering electric cars these days. 2011 will have cheaper electric car options.
7.Coupons everywhere
We already saw the rise of Groupon in the coupon marketplace in 2010. With Groupon declining a 6 billion offer from google, there is something we need to learn. The coupon space is exploding not only in the US. China and India are the next big targets for the companies in the couponing space. I believe there are going to be more consolidations (acquisitions by bigger players) in this area.

8. The rise of Seed Investments and Incubators
If you had a web startup 5 years ago, you probably could have raised a million-5 million in the first round of funding from Venture Capitalists (not that you needed that much money to do a web startup). A couple of years ago and until last year, that money reduced to half a million from angel investors. In 2011, there are going to be more seed stage investments, which could range from anywhere between 5K to 250K. Startup Incubators are going to play a major role in helping bootstrap startups and helping them secure seed stage investments (or runway). This area is going to explode in 2011.

9. More 3D movies and 3D TVs
There will be atleast twice as many 3D movies in 2011 compared to 2010. More TV manufactures will come up with cheaper 3D TVs. Already LCD TVs have replaced the picture tube TVs. LEDs were like the new LCDs in 2010. 2011 will see the gradual rise of 3D TVs. Eventhough people don't like to wear a glass and watch 3D TV, people will eventually buy 3D TV if the price of a 3D TV is comparable to a LED/LCD TV. There might even be some 3D tablets in 2011.

10. AI will be perceivable and gradually enter our day to day life
If we haven't already realized, Artificial Intelligence plays a significant role in our lives today. From our phones to the cars, AI is everywhere. 2011 will see some amazing AI products especially in the web and mobile technology space, especially in search and knowledge managment.

Right Action at the Right time?

2010-09-15T22:56:00.000-07:00

Some of you might have heard about Diaspora – the privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network (www.joindiaspora.com). Did the founders of Diaspora do the right action at the time, then?

Back in April, Four NYU students posted a project on kickstarter claiming to build an open source facebook. (This was around the time when there was a lot of anti-facebook sentiment floating around in the press with regard to user privacy and how facebook handles it. These students wanted to raise $10000 for their project but with the help of media PR raised $20000 from 6500 backers. Note that these were pure donations with no strings attached (http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/02/diaspora-project/). Talk about luck or right action at the right time or whatever - the diaspora guys have it. They were then invited to San Fransisco by Pivotal Labs (who provided free office space to them).

Can this be called "right action at the right time"? Because the diaspora founders proposed this idea and started fundraising at the right moment, when there was an anti-facebook sentiment floating around!!!

Of course, one may call this pure luck or what media PR can do for any idea...

Today the diaspora team has released the code for the first open source version of their social network. They plan to launch the alpha version of the social network in october. You can learn more about Diaspora's philosophy and how they plan to be different from facebook from http://www.joindiaspora.com/2010/04/27/kickstarter-pitch.html

Diaspora is Up - wait... not quite yet!

2010-09-15T21:58:00.000-07:00

I spent some time this evening playing with Diaspora installation from their source code (from http://github.com/diaspora/diaspora) (for those of you, who have not heard about diaspora read this http://subburama.blogspot.com/2010/09/right-action-at-right-time-or-is-it.html before continuing) and I was successful in getting diaspora up and running on my system in about half hour.

Here is what the diaspora team claims to be implemented in their blog (http://www.joindiaspora.com/2010/09/15/developer-release.html) and I have embedded my comments (in italics) next to each claim

# Share status messages and photos privately and in near real time with your friends through “aspects”. - Does not seem to work

# Friend people across the Internet no matter where Diaspora seed is located. - Does not seem to work

# Manage friends using “aspects” - Works partly (I can move friends between aspects/groups)

# Upload of photos and albums - Creation of albums work and upload of photos does not seem to work (I tried with png and jpg file formats)

# All traffic is signed and encrypted (except photos, for now). - Yeh, looks like they have this

With regard to their source code, I think its pretty neat that they are using good coding practices and using rails 3 and mongoDB, which is the cutting edge.

Diaspora seems to look like a facebook copy except for the colors.

Diaspora also has this feature called Aspects, which is like Groups. Imagine you creating groups on Facebook and adding friends to different groups on facebook (this feature is currently available in facebook).

Diaspora allows sharing of updates only to specific groups. In other words, say you share an update with the group (or per Diaspora, its 'aspect'), only people in that group see that update. I m not sure if facebook has this feature. But if facebook decide to implement this feature, they can do it pretty easily.

Based on my experience in following Diaspora so far and looking at their technology, I think its far from being a facebook killer primarily because there is no compelling reason for the 500 million folks to leave facebook and use Diaspora other than the anti-facebook sentiment wave that's going on now.

5 reasons to use Twitter

2010-05-14T16:01:00.000-07:00

- Get real time information on the things going on right now. For example when Michael Jackson died, the news propagated on twitter much quicker than the traditional news media.

- If you follow some key people (or leaders) in your field of interest (be it web or sports or medicine or whatever), you may get all the interesting ideas that they share with the rest of the world at your finger tips. Twitter is becoming the new blog for these people to share ideas. Sometimes by following the people in your network, you get to know what they are upto in realtime.

- Establish thought leadership through micro-blogging. Say you want to be a leader in your field, you need establish that by some means. Perhaps people have been doing that by writing books, giving speeches, writing blogs. But all those take more time out of your already busy schedule. Through twitter, you can microblog and share your thoughts rightaway with just 140 characters.

- Twitter is a information or news aggregator or the next generation RSS feeds of your favorite news websites. Every morning instead of going to techcrunch, mashable, slashdot to get technology news, just follow them on twitter.

- Since no tweet is more than 140 characters, its easy to skim through 100s of tweets in a few minutes and pick the interesting ones and dive into the details. Its like reading the headlines of all the news articles

Minimum Viable Product - Automate only when needed (especially for Market Place Businesses)

2010-05-12T20:40:00.000-07:00

These days, most entrepreneurs seem to like to start a marketplace business on the web. (A marketplace is something which connects "people who need" with "people who have" or in other words buyers with sellers).

Recently I have been talking to a lot of people from the entrepreneurial community who are bootstrapping some kind of a marketplace business and one interesting fact I observe is that most of these web entrepreneurs (90% of whom are also creative non technical entrepreneurs) seem to be in the mindset of building a web application of their ideas rightaway with all the features. People seem to have forgotten what a MVP (Minimum Viable Product) needs to be.

I agree that these days building a dynamic web application is so cheap, but still are we not forgetting something here? Isn't the fundamentals of bootstrap or lean startup is to demo, sell and build?

The idea I would like to convey here is "Automate only when needed...Do it first manually and understand the pain points. Your MVP (Minimum Viable Product) need not have automation".

To explain this, I would like to give you a simple example of a idea of building a web startup like Craigslist (again a marketplace business) where people post items for sale and connects buyers with sellers. This is how I would bootstrap this marketplace business:

(1) Create a simple static website which looks like the listing page of the marketplace where you list the items posted by the sellers. You can use drag and drop websites like weebly or snappages to create this listing page or even it could be as simple as a wordpress blog.

I know the question that pops up in your head: But I need a user login mechanism to allow my sellers to post their items. Well do we really need this? I mean, do we really need this now? Isn't that just automation.

First test the concept manually. See who are your potential customers and if they are willing to pay for your service.

(2) Just have a button next to every listing on the static listing web page created in step (1) and attach the button to a static html form which allows the seller to type information about their item for sale and upon hitting submit, the form contents are emailed to the entrepreneur. You can use form builders like wufoo to do this.

(3) Now at the backend, manually look through the emails and the entrepreneur connects the sellers with potential buyers.

The idea is to do all this connecting sellers-with-buyers manually behind the scenes so that neither of them know that this process is being done manually. All they know is that the website is damn slow in providing responses. But hey, if you connect the sellers with the buyers and if they are happy, they will come back to your website. Remember, your business is not the website but the service of connecting buyers-with-sellers.

At a point where you really start feeling the pain of the manual process, then start working on automating it.

Even better if applicable sometimes just carry out the whole process through email conversations (ignoring steps 1 to 3 altogether).

In the process of doing it manually, you build relationships with customers, understand the pain points which need to be automated and best of all you spend less money/time validating your idea. If you don't get traction of your idea when you did it manually, find whats the problem with the idea/execution. Don't focus on automating the concept.

Always remember to take the right action at the right time.

The ideas I have mentioned here could be extended or applicable to any kind of startup.

Related Posts

http://subburama.blogspot.com/2009/12/demo-sell-and-build-so-easy-that.html

http://subburama.blogspot.com/2009/12/how-to-quickly-build-websites-to-sell.html

Waterfall or Scrum???

2010-02-20T06:43:00.000-08:00

Some thoughts to help folks decide on Waterfall or Scrum for their project management:

Waterfall method of project management/development involves well defining the problem statement, followed by requirements analysis, design (architecture) followed by implementation.

On the other hand, Scrum based Agile development involves not spending much time in planning or trying to get the overall big picture or defining the overall architecture in precise terms. Agile methods are Lightweight and are considered to be people-based rather than plan-based.

Few characteristics of Scrum process are the following:
- Self-organizing teams
- Product progresses in a series of week-long or month-long sprints
- Problems are solved only for that specific sprint.
- Team is fully shielded from external influences so that they can concentrate on development (no more regular meetings)
- No status reports but a short Scrum meeting daily where team members meet face2face and give their verbal status reports and scrum master tracks the project (this is not a problem solving session)
- Highly skilled team members in their respective areas

Few advantages of Scrum are:
- Completely developed and tested features in short duration
- Simplicity of the process
- Self-organizing
- each team member carries a lot of responsibility
- combination with extreme programming

Now lets talk about the disadvantages of Scrum:
- Undisciplined hacking (no written documentation) (which can be somewhat mitigated by modular programming)
- Since Agile crucifix relies on solving today's problems first, there is no clear big picture of the problem/solution at any point and this could involve a lot of refactoring every time. This might also lead to a compromised or hacked solution or redefinition of problem statement many times to meet the implementation needs.
- Knowledge monopolies - This is because of the absence of documentation and only few people in the organization would know anything and everything about the solution. If they leave there might come a situation where the solution need to be re-written. This could lead to dictators. On the other hand, this is what human psychology wants because this leads to job security =).
- Experienced folks or talented young development staff may not be interested in working because the dictators could be hoarding uninteresting tasks to the team members most times.
- No proper resource management which leads to compromising on the skills of the team members: Since SCRUMs or Agile rely on short sprints, things are not planned beyond the sprint term and when a need arises and if the resource isnt available for that need, its not always easy to find a resource.
- Team members may not have the big picture and direction in their career in the long term as they proceed along the Scrum methods..
- Customers get fed up with never-ending, continuously changing solution.

I m not against agile methods or Scrum methods... What I think is best is a mix of waterfall and agile scrum methods where waterfall is utilized in identified in problem statement, architecture definition and design definition AND Agile SCRUM method is utilized in Implementation and product releases.

Or, one could always adopt their own rules which are nimble and agile .... There are no rules... All rules are meant to be broken..

6 traits of a good job

2010-02-09T21:13:00.001-08:00

Here are 6 traits you need to look for in the good job. Just like employers interview employees, the employees should also interview their employer before taking up a job offer:
1) First Class Boss: Everyone's got a boss. The first and foremost thing one should look on a job offer is their boss. This should be one's motivation to work in the first place. The Boss should trust the employee and the employee should trust the Boss. The boss should also demonstrate good qualities of a leader because only if the boss is a great leader, employees can grow!

2) Knowledgeable Mentor: Sometimes, mentor and boss are the same and sometimes they are not. The mentor is someone who is a good teacher.

3) Friendly Peers: This is what will motivate you to go to work every day. These are people who we hang out (work) with daily. Trust is an important factor here. You should also look forward to be learning from your peers and your peers should be learning something from you. Your peers should respect you and you should respect them. Your peers at work should be really your friends and your team should be like your family.

4) Work Fitting in the big picture: This is the work you do on a daily basis for which you get paid $$$$s. What is the big picture and how well the daily tasks fit in your overall career strategy or passion.

5) Work life Balance: Life without balance is just like a machine.. After all why do we work? To live a better life.. So if there is no time for fun, whats the point of working. Hence, work life balance is very important.

6) Stability in Organization: If your company is on the verge of bankruptcy, then you are better off looking for another job... Again this comment should be taken with a grain of salt. Your boss,mentors,peers and work play a major part here. More than these, its your loyalty which plays a bigger part.

Bottom line, you should love what you do. It should be more than just for money and it should fit in your overall agenda in life.

Feel free to post your comments on the above thoughts...

Steps in designing user interfaces for the web

2010-02-07T10:00:00.000-08:00

In my experience on designing user interfaces for the web, I generally follow the following steps:

1) First I do story boarding (on a white board or piece of paper) with my concept. Say its a website, I try to draw every single page and all the features and icons (the icons wont look good here but this is just to brainstorm). Before implementing any idea, I try to form a user-group (group consisting of my friends and maybe even potential customers). If I don't know who exactly the customers are, this is the step I try to find them. After all, if there are no customers who might pay for our product, then whats the point of doing it.. =) . I show them the storyboard (paper/pencil mockups) and ask for their suggestions. I don't necessarily change my design to cater all the suggestions but I atleast note them down. This step helps me to flush out any obvious holes in the design.

2) Then, I do some basic wireframing (I have found balsamiq.com to be the best wireframing tool) so that the paper/pencil drawings are captured digitally. The advantage of using wireframing tools is that it helps me get two steps closer to reality. After creating the wireframe, I ask for inputs from my user group.

3) Then, I grab icons and interfaces from the web (close enough to what I envision my user interface is going to be) and create a photoshop mashup. I dont design the icons/fonts/interfaces from scratch but just create a mashup using whats existing. Sometimes I just copy bits and pieces from existing designs.. Isn't there a saying "Good artists design, great artists steal =). This photoshop mashup would have colors/fonts/icons/layout, very close to how its going to implemented. I m not a guru in photoshop, so I get help from friends of mine who know photoshop or sometimes I even go and hire a cheap photoshop designer and I sit with him to transfer the ideas in my mind to photoshop. I show the final photoshop design of all the pages to the user/customer group and get their opinions. If I m not satisfied with a particular color/font/icon/layout, its easy to change them at this step. Now I m one step closer to the final product. I freeze the design/layout/font/colors/icons at this step.

4) Now that I have frozen the design/layout/font/colors/icons, I go ahead and implement them (code them).

Infact I would recommend you to skim through this blog post I wrote a while ago for non-technical entrepreneurs to help them build websites to sell their products.
http://subburama.blogspot.com/2009/12/how-to-quickly-build-websites-to-sell.html

ipad versus ipod touch/iphone .. a bigger display.. thats it!

2010-01-28T06:11:00.000-08:00

Apple's Ipad looks very cool but personally I m very disappointed with the ipad and here why:

Yes, it runs on apple's own A4 1 GHz processor probably based on ARM (they probably wanted to maintain more secrecy with their devices this way) but the device is nothing but an itouch/iphone with a bigger display. It only runs the same OS as the iphone/ipod touch.

No webcam (cant do video chats), No flash support and No multitasking (cant have two apps open/running at the same time. Almost every smartphone that has come after the iphone supports multitasking. Say for example you want browse or read books but keep skype or IM open in the background, can do that without multitasking?). Netbooks have webcam, have flash support and can do multitasking. And I don't agree with apple's statements that netbooks are slow (netbooks have the same old boring user interface - yes I agree with that).

I like the one touch power feature of the ipad similar to the iphone (which netbooks lack).

Most of the stuff they demoed yesterday on the ipad were just software (everything could have been a app on the iphone/itouch). The app store for books (ibooks) .. cmon is that a breakthrough? Why is it better than the kindle? Maybe people would still buy this ipad just because its got the apple logo.. As one of my friends pointed out yesterday, maybe apple can sell ice to the eskimos.

Overall, the ipad did not keep up to the hype. Apple spent more than an year working on the ipad and all they could do was just a bigger screen (ofcourse they are trailblazing their own A4 processor for the first time on their ipad.. Probably soon, the iphones would follow this trend). In all honesty, they could have powered their ipad with Intel's ATOM, this way its X86 and could have easily run their regular mac OX or a lighter version of mac OS.

To the many folks who know me as someone who iconizes Steve Jobs, that has not changed a bit with the release of the ipad. If the news of the tablet was not floating around, probably what apple delivered yesterday would have be mind blowing.. The media kind of played a big part in screwing up that image. Apple competitors - you have got a second chance to beat apple.. Now don't don't screw up again.

I was following this live blog by endgadget yesterday from the apple's ipad event: http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/27/live-from-the-apple-tablet-latest-creation-event/

Here is another Apple iPad launch day roundup: everything you need to know http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/28/apple-ipad-launch-day-roundup-everything-you-need-to-know/

Here is another good collection of ipad related news on the web: http://bagtheweb.com/b/Ld5LDj9zBkQs

My friend Patrick wanted me to post this really cool video with Hitler and ipad on my blog :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQnT0zp8Ya4

In the end, there was so much hype going on and people like me expected a bit more from Steve Jobs.

17 features the apple tablet could have

2010-01-26T18:05:00.000-08:00

17 features the apple tablet could have: (this list is based on my thoughts as well as what I have read on the web so far and inputs from my friends) (will be adding more features as it pops up in my mind till tomorrow morning =) )
- ereader
- games
- video/movie player
- web cam
- multitouch
- regular iPhone apps
- app store for books, magazines, newspapers
- light version of mac OS
- USB / FireWire port similar to macbook??? (my colleague/friend Dave's maybe prediction)
- wireless
- 3G or 4G
- Expandable memory??? (my colleague/friend Dave's maybe prediction)
- 3D graphics
- Handwriting recognition
- speech recognition
- Virtual keyboard
- real keyboard (probably sliding keyboard)???

What will be the apple tablet be like?

2010-01-25T00:25:00.000-08:00

As the day of the apple tablet release is nearing, there are so many rumours floating about what the tablet would be and what it's core functionality would be. I thought let me document my thoughts too before the device arrives so that I can brag if my thoughts become true.

The apple tablet could be like Lenovo's hybrid laptop/tablet or a hybrid handheld/tablet. Or it could be like MSI's laptop where the keyboard area is replaced with another display for ebook reading with an option to load a virtual keyboard if needed (this virtual keyboard area could just used a e-ink based display to save power consumption).

My most probable guess is that the apple tablet will be an iPhone with a bigger screen and better processor and more memory/storage, better graphics card with 3D support for better gaming experience. It will have all of the features of an iPhone like multitouch, GPS, WIFi, one touch power on, etc. The operating system will be a hybrid of a mac OS (which means you can install any application, like flash for example) and iphone OS. It will have ability to run all of the existing iphone apps. It would also serve as an ereader for books, magazines and newspapers and even for textbooks (which the college crowd would love). It would have better handwriting recognition and also maybe better voice recognition. It better have some kind of an embedded webcam so that it enables users to do video chat and maybe even take pictures if needed. It would be better if the tablet also has USB or firewire ports just like a macbook.

With respect to the ereader functionality, the question that still ponders me is that whether would that be just yet another app on the app store or would it have an e-ink mechanism (static display without need for screen refresh) to save power consumption (the device could also have the regular LCD display mechanism when not used for reading books). Another question that ponders my mind is whether iTunes will start selling magazines, newspapers and ebooks (or even chapters of books) just like songs? News Corp's Rupert Murdoch would love the idea if iTunes enables newspaper companies to sell Content.

With respect to enabling better gaming experience, another question I have is whether the tablet will have enhanced hardware improvements (maybe an attached game controllers which just slide from the side? (so that it feels like holding a gameboy while playing games) or maybe 3D or even holographic display makes sense for gaming and maybe even for watching movies) or would it just be the kick ass software that would make the tablet THE gaming device. Because rumors are that it could have both.

I cant wait to see if apple comes up with a novel user input mechanism or interface, which just blows our mind (similar to how the multitouch on the iPhone blew our mind when it was released). Would the tablet have a scroller wheel on the sides (similar to a blackberry) for easily traversing between apps,content, etc? One million dollar question I have is whether the tablet would have some significant hardware improvement over the iphone/macbook or would it be some bad ass software on the tablet that would blow our mind (because most of the innovations mentioned above could be just as well done in software without any hardware improvement)....we shall know in 2 days.

What happens in Vegas doesn't stay in Vegas - CES 2010 postmortem

2010-01-12T00:58:00.000-08:00

I m kind of disappointed by this year's ces compared to last year's. During last year's CES, LED TVs were new and they were kind of like becoming the new LCDs. 3D technology were coming to the home in the form of 3D TVs. This year I went to CES in hopes to see more tablets, the new halo market created by the buzz of apple tablet, which is slated to release in the end of January. To my disappointment, I did not see too many tablets, which I thought would replace the current netbooks.

At CES 2010, the main attractions were 3D TVs (like last year), Ereaders/ebooks (I m yet to see a clear distinction between the two), netbooks, iPhone accesories (this was by far one of the most innovative areas), wireless charging technologies (like last year).

Apple was all over the place at CES. Infact apple Inc. did not even have a booth at CES (apple stopped coming to CES long time ago, since they started their own macworld to release their products. Probably CES was too inexpensive for the release their products). There was a big area called ilounge at the LVCC north hall where almost every exhibit was an iPhone accessory. Among iPhone accesories, there were iPhone covers with solar charging pads at the back of the cover, USB battery packs, iPhone covers with embedded battery packs, wireless charging stations, kinetic chargers, acoustic headphones, to name a few. Most of these were present at last CES too but the number of companies investing in selling iPhone accesories truly amazed me.

There was a section with mobile apps exhibits but none of the apps impressed me. Every app in this section had some form of hyperlocal thing in them. Most of them were iPhone apps with a few apps for blackberry and very few supporting android platform as well. CES even had a apps for innovation contest for mobile apps. One mobile app worth mentioning is this YourApps / premierappshop (www.premierappshop.com). This one seems to be an alternative app store for apple iPhone & doesn't need apps to go through apple's app approval process. From what I understand I think it uses the bookmark feature of the iPhone's safari browser.

Among netbooks, the most innovative ones, worth mentioning are a keyboard-less netbook design by MSI with dual screens with the second screen acting also as a virtual keyboard and the hybrid tablet laptop (where the tablet can be detached if needed) by Lenovo.

There were ereaders all over the place at this year's CES (I wouldn't call them an innovation because ereaders are not something new, they are just now becoming a commodity). Every ereader was the same and the only difference between the kindle and the ereaders at ces is that the non-kindle ones can read more ebook formats. To me that's not an innovation. Marvel technologies had this ereader with dual screen, one powered by TfT and another one by eink, so that one could use the ereader as a ebook and a netbook. The main advantage that kindle has over these ereaders is the price point of kindle.

There were quite a few companies demonstrating wireless charging power stations. I think most or all of these use electromagnetic induction way of power transfer for charging. On the mobile accesories side, there were companies retailing wireless charging pads for iPhones and blackberries. These charging pads are priced around $100. Futon Innovation stole the pride by showcasing wireless power charging proof of concept at office, homes and even inside cars. One thing all these wireless charging technologies require is to place the device to be charged in very close proximity to the charging source (by this I mean you have literally place the device on a charging surface). The only advantage of these present day wireless charging technologies is that they replace the power cables. Today, to transfer data, we dont require cables anyway. Maybe these technologies are good for office environment, but not for regular consumer use. Someday in the near future, I hope to see a way of charging my iPhone from my hand through an app. I guess I m asking for too much.

There's nothing much to write about TV technologies, except that every manufacture on the floor has a 3D TV now. Too bad these still require glasses. Even content providers are planning launch 3D content sometime this year. Direct TV is leading the herd. Yes, we can watch ESPN on 3D soon. There's an estimate of around 50 3D movies to be made this year.

On the handheld side, every phone manufacture (nokia, RIMM, samgsung,motorola) have new additions. To me, every handheld looked like nothing but an iPhone clone. Being an apple evangelist, I might be a bit biased in my opinion, so I m not going to comment on the handhelds, except that each of these handheld had their own app store. I m thinking whether having an app store per handheld is the right business model or whether the app stores should be carrier specific, but I guess that's not question that's going to be answered in the near future.

Last but not least, intel demonstrated that every device is going to be powered by a computer in the future. I think it's not too ambitious. Intel's recent core i5 and i7 processors on 32 nanometer technology is brilliant. On the mobile front, intel has a new app store called the AppUp center to enable people write apps for netbooks.

More details about CES products with pictures and videos to follow in a followup blog post.

Demo, Sell and Build - so easy that an engineer can do it

2009-12-19T16:25:00.000-08:00

One mantra I have learnt in the past years is "Demo, Sell and Build". I first heard these three words from Bijoy Goswami (founder of Bootstrap Austin) and it sounded like a good concept but I did not care about it much. Later when I tried to build a couple of products myself without selling it first, I started learning the meaning of those three words in the hard way. People around me were telling me that I m an engineer and I don't have the sales expertise to sell the product and I need to hire a good sales man to sell my product and in fact I even started looking for a sales person. Then I figured out that its not a problem with sales, but its a problem with the product itself. I should have built the product after getting the customers and built the product for them and not the other way. Then, the product sells itself.

I no longer believe in the statement "Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door”.

Its a myth when people say that engineers can't sell. Infact engineers are one of the best sales people if they talk to the customers first before building the product. Sales is not that hard.

Say you find there is a problem. Follow these steps.

1) First talk to the people who face the problem and ask them more feedback about the problem and ask them why they think its a problem and is there anything they do currently to solve the problem (or work around the problem, even if it may not be the best solution).
2) Then, ask them what they think would be the best solution (yes before you provide a solution, ask other people who face the problem). Then see if this is the same solution that you have thought or if not, see which one is better (your solution or the solution that you heard from the people who face the problem). Infact ask them.
3) Once you zero in on a solution, then ask them if they would be willing pay you for solving the problem and if yes how much. If they say yes, there you go... you got your first customer. If you cannot cover the cost of the product with just one customer, go and find more customers. If the people who face the problem are not willing to pay for the solution, then see if there is someone else who may be willing to pay for the solution (or maybe the traffic., but before this ask the people who face the problem, whether they will use your solution for sure.. Maybe take a survey).
4) Once you found your customers, then build a demo of the product and show it to your customers and ask them if they would pay right away or get some guarantee from them for paying for your product.
5) Then build your product.
6) Remember you have already sold your product, and you already have a few customers and getting more wont be difficult anymore.

See, I said selling is not that hard.. So easy that an engineer can do it.

Website building 101 for non technical Entrepreneurs

2009-12-16T13:26:00.000-08:00

As I thinking about what topic to blog on today, I came to remember something that happened recently.

Recently a couple of my friends with marketing backgrounds, who wanted to sell their product through the web asked for some tips to find the best technology for their website and asked for few developer contacts. Instead of writing emails to each of them, I thought I would write it as a blog post..

I m gonna start with things to do for creating a website targeted to a business selling a product but later will add ability to integrate social media to their website (as in user forums, etc).

Step-1) First gather the list of features you want in your website. If you are selling a product, you might want to include some kind of graphic describing your product or maybe a youtube video describing your product. Then you might want a section describing your company and yourself (the about-us page). Then a contact form so that people coming to your website could could you. Then some way to sell your product (like a shopping cart?)

a) For the graphic describing your product, you may first draw it as a flow chart in a software like Microsoft vsio or even Microsoft powerpoint.

b) For the video describing your product, shoot the video from a handycam or camera and edit it using your favorite video editing software (I m not going to talk about video editing softwares here, but you can find a lot on the web). Then you can upload the video on youtube.

c) For the about-us page, just have the description in text (maybe a powerpoint would do).

d) For the contact form, you might wonder, this would require some programming.. Not really. You can use web services like prefinery.com (this is not really a web service targeted for contact forms but you can surely use it for that) or aweber.com or wufoo.com (HTML form builder and its free). In fact you can create any kind of forms using these services without any programming experience. You just have to creative enough to be able to get your requirements done using the available form tools (almost every thing can be done using these form tools.. If you are creative, you can even build a shopping cart using these form tools).

e) For the shopping cart part, ask the question: Do you really need a shopping cart to sell your product? Can you get an amazon account (amazon.com) and list your product for sale there and link that to your website first to see if you get traffic? This way you don't have to figure out the logistics of selling (especially the shopping cart and payment collection). I think Amazon charges just over 8% as commissions. So if you don't like that, look for other e-commerce sites which charge less commissions and list your product for sale there and link back to your website. Or you can look into Google Checkout (checkout.google.com) to collect payments and sell your product. Maybe once someone pays through google checkout, you can mail them the product (or email them if its somekind of an online product). All these require no programming experience.

Now that you have done steps (a) to (e), you might have put all of them together in the form of a website.

Step-2) Use a website mockup software like balsamiq (http://www.balsamiq.com/products/mockups) to create the mockups. Watch the 3 minute video in the balsamiq website and you will know what wonders it can do and you can use it. First decide how may pages your website need to have. Then, you can take screenshots of your graphics, youtube video, about-us powerpoint page, web forms and place them in the appropriate pages using the balsamiq mockup software (this is one of the best mockup softwares I have used). Try to do as much as possible in this stage (the layout, fonts, color, etc) because this will reduce your web designer cost by a great deal. You can also draw the mockups using paper and pencil but this is more advanced and scalable (you don't have to look for an eraser when you have to make changes). You may also look into tools like Omnigraffle or Microsoft Vsio. Or do a google search for web mockup softwares and I m sure there will be plenty. In my opinion, balsamiq is the best.

Step-3) Once your mockup is complete using the balsamiq software, now its time to implement it on the web.

Here are some resources for drag and drop web site creation.

These two are the simplest ones among most drag and drop website creation softwares I evaluated.

http://www.weebly.com/
or
http://www.jimdo.com/

If you need something more advanced (as in a CMS), try this: http://www.typeroom.com/

If none of the out of the drag and drop solutions fit your needs, you may need to hire a web designer who can implement the mockups (you have created) in html. This is when you have to think about whether you need a content management software like wordpress, drupal or joomla. For the most part, I think it could be done in simple html itself (but you can use something like wordpress to do this too.. Infact you may even use the basic wordpress template). Remember: the forms, shopping cart, etc are mashups using other web tools (forms using prefinery or aweber or wufoo and shopping cart with amazon or google checkout) and should just be link backs to your website (Don't try to do these from scratch.. just link the forms/shopping cart to the ones you have already created in step 1-d). Anyways ask your web designer for the best opinion.

You can use websites like crowdspring.com or elance.com or odesk.com or even talk to your local web designer to implement it in the website. This should not cost more than a 3-4 hours max of the designer's time to implement. If not, then you are not using the right smart web designer. Ofcourse, I havent included the cost/time to design your logos, etc but c'mon, ask the question: Do I really need the best logo to sell my product? Whats the objective here? Is it to have the best website in the world or to sell the product?

Step-4) Now say, you want to add some sort of social media to your website as in people should be able to login and post reviews and comments and participate in discussions (as in a forum). I would strongly recommend that you use facebook or twitter for that. You can make your website as a facebook connect or a twitter connect website where people can login using their twitter/facebook id (if the users don't have one, link them to twitter/facebook to create one) and post content to their twitter feed/facebook feed and you just pull those feeds to your website. Say you can have the ability to just add comments to the product you are selling (not like a forum but just a stream of comments), then look at this service called http://js-kit.com/ and the techcrunch blog post on this at http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/11/29/quick-embed-code-to-add-comments-to-any-site/ . I think this commenting service is pretty cool and as I said earlier in the forms section, you just have to creative to use it as per your needs. This is not the best social media integration to your website but you can build something like this in less than 5-10 hours max atleast to start with. Because remember your main objective is to not build a social media website but to sell your product. This would do the job.

Make sure you remember one thing: Say you are trying to sell a product or a service, the website is not your core business. The product or the service you are creating is your core business. The website is one of the many channels/means to sell your core offering. You could sell your product or service through email, face to face, word of mouth, facebook dan page, amazon, eBay, website but in the end all that matters is whether someone pays for your product or service. No one is gonna pay a premium just because you have an awesome website...

Try these steps the next time you think about build a website for selling your product or service or even just like that and let me know how it goes. Good luck!

Is it time to get on the android bandwagon?

2009-12-15T10:11:00.000-08:00

As a technology enthusiast and as a person who missed the iphone app bandwagon in the first year and half, I have been pondering with this question of whether to get on to android over the last few months. So, I thought I would share my thoughts here...

First let me disclose that I have an iphone and I just started writing iphone apps myself. However the iphone app market seems extremely competitive such that, so far every single idea that I come up with has already been done as an app. Plus I ask myself the same question that John Nash asks his friends at the bar scene in the movie "The Beautiful mind" - "Why should everyone compete by all of us going for the blond? Instead can each of us go for her friends (may not be as pretty as the blond) but atleast we have a chance of getting laid...". This is the basis of Nash's theory and equilibrium for which he was given the Noble Prize. I m asking the same question to myself - "Should I compete in an overly crowded iphone app market or should I start learning and developing in the android platform so that I get on the game pretty early."

Today, according to Androidlib (Androidlib is a website to browse android apps on the web http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/07/finally-a-decent-website-to-browse-android-apps-androlib/), there are little over 20000 apps in the android store (http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2009/12/15/android-market-20000-apps/). Five months ago, there were 10000 apps in the android store (http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2009/09/07/android-market-now-over-10000-applications-strong/). Does this mean that more developers have started getting on to the android boat and I better hurry up? Another interesting observation from androidlib's data is that there are about 37% of paid apps right now versus 35% of paid apps, five months ago. This tells us that not many people are writing paid apps. What does it tell about the revenue? Nothing!

Well, the main question to ask here is - "Are developers writing android apps making money?". Revenue could be in the form of paid app downloads or ad revenue. Do the android developers get any of these forms of revenue and if so whats the split up? I don't have the answer to this question. However, one comment I have is that Google has been the smartest dude in the world with making money with ads, so if your intention is to develop free apps and just make money with ads, then maybe android is not a bad idea. While you are pondering over your decision to write android or iphone apps,keep asking, "Do I want to generate revenue from ads or from paid apps?" and do your research accordingly. This is what I have been asking so far to myself.

A few negatives with respect to android:
1) Recently I was speaking to friend, who is an apple evangelist and is also developing iphone apps and he mentioned that one of his android-developer friend recently complained that no none seems to be downloading his paid app in the android store.

2) Another interesting observation that my apple evangelistic friend made was that android could have the same problem that Macintosh faces over windows interms of adoption.

3) Another big problem that I see with respect to adoption of android is that Google needs to come up with some creative hardware. C'mon lets be honest.. The HTC phones suck! Think about a high school kid or a college kid who wants to impress his girlfriends. Will he guy a cool iphone or a HTC phone (which is not cool at all). I don't have any problem with android.. but just the phone. With google's Nexus One (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/12/nexus-one-google-phone-picture/) (whenever it comes to the market), this might change. Maybe the Droid is already changing this. But what if next year apple comes with a holographic iphone or a iphone as small as a nano with a expandable screen and keyboard. Now thats what google needs if they have to compete with apple.. a better hardware (not just creating a new phone with a bigger screen and slider keyboard.. I m talking about a totally out-of-the-box feature). If there is any chance that this could happen, then I m going to totally jump on to the android bandwagon right away. No questions asked.

A few positive reasons for jumping on to android:
1) The argument towards jumping on the android bandwagon is the programming language.. Its Java, which can be applied anywhere (even in the web with the google web tool kit) and plus it would be great thing on your resume to be a good java programmer. Thats a positive one compared to objective-C which is a ba*tard child of Smalltalk and C from NeXT. Who in the world except apple uses objective-C and from my experiences programming in Objective-C, I had a steep learning curve. However, I got to give to it apple. Their interface builder (this is like the GUI Visual basic used to have where you can drag and drop your UI elements like buttons, text-boxes and design your UI canvas) is awesome. I havent used the debugger in android so I can't compare but Xcode's debugger is pretty cool.

2) Recently a friend of mine gave an awesome idea for apps on android. He asked me to just copy the best selling app ideas on iphone and port it to android. The probability that they will sell in the android is very high. Well, I will take that. That's what I will be doing if I m jumping on the android bandwagon.

Other phone platforms to consider:
There are also other phone platforms like the Symbian OS, Blackberry who have their own app store and app platform. I haven't done any research on this. But I know that most of the corporate market is held by Blackberry and the question to ask is if these guys were to move to a different phone, what will they switch to. If your company is currently supporting blackberry, if they switch, will they switch to iphone or android-based-phones? Maybe the blackberry could start supporting android. In that case, the whole conversation changes.

There is also a new kid in this neighborhood called moblin (http://moblin.org/) which is a mobile platform (similar to android) and is evangelized by Intel to promote their processors' entry into the mobile industry (netbooks at present). Moblin is a C/C++ platform.. Should you start developing for moblin? Maybe if you want to well ahead of the curve in moblin (sure - moblin is going to have users). I leave the decision to you. If you already a good C/C++ programmer, maybe you should start on moblin.

Anyways, keep munching on these thoughts and share your thoughts as well...

Business plan by answering 6 questions... So easy that a cave man could do it

2009-12-14T18:34:00.001-08:00

Creating a business plan could be as simple as answering the following 6 questions: Why, What, Who, How, When and Where on your idea. Try this once.. it has worked for me!

1) Why - Why do I need this product? Can people live without it? Is there a real problem that I m solving? Is it a necessity or a want? We define the problem here. If you can't answer this question, then go find a problem first.

2) What - Whats the product? Here we go into product management. This is where we define the solution (or the product).

3) Who - This is the selling part. Who is my customer? Who is my user? The users and the customers may not be the one and the same. For example, in google, an average Joe is the user. The local business down the street who advertises on google is the customer.

As part of this question, try to find out your competition also.. Some people say that they don't have any competition.. Hell no! Everybody has competition. Even the mighty google has competition. Sometimes the competition may not be direct but it could be a substitute competition. Say for example, when someone invented the email, what was the competition at that time? Paper mail, phone, fax, radio, etc.. To find about competition, research.. research.. research.. Use our mighty Google as much as possible.

Once you understand your competition, you should have a pretty good idea about your product and the market.

4) How - How is the product going to be built? How will the solution be implemented? This is the second phase of product management. This would answer questions like: Can I build the product myself? What kind of resources do I need to build the product?, etc..

Now as a part of answering this question, its time for some math. Do a income statement and a cash flow statement for your product. Don't worry its very simple. Just Open Excel and calculate the Cost (cost of building the product and selling it, if any) and Revenue (for example, it could be as simple as: # customers x price paid by each customer). Now Revenue - Cost = profit. Do this for a year or 2 years or till you break even and start making profit (if you don't start making profit from Day 1.. If you sell your product first before building it, you should have profits right from day 1). Be very honest when you do your finances.

5) When - This is very crucial because answering this question plays an important role in product execution. Can I build the product in my lifetime? I want to invent the next search engine which is much better than google.. Can I do it? If we understand our strengths (if you don't know your strengths yet, I suggest you go to http://www.strengthsfinder.com and take the Strengths Finder 2.0 test.. it will help you understand your strengths much better), and know the constraints and resources (could be money, time, people, skills, etc..), then the answer to this should be straight forward. How long its going to take to build my product? This is the step where you work your product timelines.

6) Where - This is not a very important question, although understanding the answer to this question helps us plan well. Where do I get my product built? Can I do it locally or do I have to hire someone from a different state or do I have to get some help overseas? These are all the questions that would get answered here.

Now you have a business plan for your product ready by just asking Why, What, Who, How, When and Where.

The next time you have the Big idea, ask these questions.

If there was a well connected public transportation, I would have been home by now

2009-04-19T13:22:00.000-07:00

I recently polled many of my friends about the pros and cons of living in Austin (many of them who moved to Austin from other cities). One of the biggest cons seems to be the terrible traffic in Austin during peak AM and PM.

Many of these people whom I polled have big, guzzling autos, two per family at least. You see what happens next. Hideous traffic. Building more freeways never solves that...it just gives people more places to fill up with cars.

Based upon currently projected growth rates, the Austin area could become one of the most congested in the nation by 2025.

If you ride the bus, you waste a lot of time waiting hours when you need to go somewhere. You must be poor [paradoxical, considering the cost of a car] or stingy [paradoxical, considering the cost of gasoline].You have to ride in dumpy, old buses. You certainly can’t get a date. These are some of the false judgments people make about the small minority of Americans who still use public transit.

Ironically, politicians and planners make the same judgments. Like most Americans, they drive. They love transit, as long as somebody else is using it.

I come from a country with a population of a billion people, where public transportation is the biggest of mode of transport. Some of my best travel experiences have taken place inside crowded, non-air conditioned buses and trains with my fellow passengers. Every time I travel, I made a new friend by sharing a conversation with a local passenger. With public transportation, you save money, and you make a lot of friends. Plus you get to where-ever you want.

Apart from just saving the environment, public transportation could save the purse too. While actual costs vary from place to place and depending on fuel prices, after some analysis I’ve have some cost estimates due to driving. While multiplying the average cost per mile of 48.5 cents per mile (based on what IRS uses) by 2.9 tillion yearly vehicle miles traveled (VMT) estimate for 2008 in the US (source: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/tvtw/08dectvt/index.cfm), we get total yearly cost of driving to be approx. $1.4 trillion, which is about 10% of our 2008 US GDP (14.3 trillion). Sit back and think for a second: one of every 10 dollars in America is spent on driving. Should Americans be spending that much on transportation? Only 9% of total U.S. work trips use mass transit, compared to 38.8% in Europe.

Public transportation could take about twice as long as driving. Even so, it’s useful time: you can work on your laptop, watch a DVD, read a book, or sleep. Think about a public bus or train which provides WI-FI, in some cases even a small cafeteria kiosk (where you can get breakfast, snacks, coffee and sandwiches), magazine kiosks.

Even after the public transportation system is in-place, like in few American cities, people still use their cars. Worse thing is even couples going to the same work place don't seem to ride-share (I see that all the time at my work). Maybe cities in the US (which have good public transportation system in-place), should start charging fees (some roads have tolls which indirectly does the same thing) from people who don't use public transportation system. Cities like London charges a fee for some motorists travelling travelling within those parts of London designated as the Congestion Charge Zone (CCZ).

Maybe the next time you take your car, you will pause for a second and at-least think about using your feet (you burn a few calories plus saved the planet and your purse).

(Image sources: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_jQ2O0DsVS68/RyXbHaSAFcI/AAAAAAAAApM/ILVuTZOOu1A/s400/91%2Btoll.jpg
flickr.com/photos/whiskerbox/355090329/)

Social networking - the next web 2.0

2009-04-16T23:18:00.000-07:00

I still remember the day (sometime in 2004 or early 2005 when I was still in grad school) when my cousin sent me an email with a link to join facebook. I thought "yet another dating website scam- damn these sophomores are jobless" and I just ignored the email. At that time I had a profile at Orkut (which I still have) - a social network (owned by google) not so popular in the states (Orkut is very popular in India). After a year I joined facebook.

I was never a big fan of social networking. I joined linked-in when I graduated and started working and wanted to be connected to my colleagues at work. I joined facebook because I had a few friends in facebook around the time I joined and thought it would be really cool to have a presence in the online world, especially in facebook. As of today, I have a twitter, facebook, orkut, myspace, linkedIn, ning accounts. I joined twitter a couple of months ago when I first heard about it at a austin local meetup. I actively use only my twitter and facebook these days and login to my linked-in to add new connections.

In a world where emails, phone numbers, physical addresses are subject to change, social networking websites are a good place to keep connected.

I recently heard from a serial entrepreneur that if he wants to hire or interview someone, he would certainly check their profile, connections, references in linked-in and then their social life in facebook/twitter.

Among the social networking sites, one of the reasons facebook has grown rapidly in such short span is because of user-created applications (just like how iphone has become very popular because of the apps), Even after you join facebook, there are lots of things you can do and not just write on a wall or scrap (which was the only thing you could do at orkut). You can share photos, tag photos, take surveys (although I Still think certain surverys are so lame). LinkedIn, MySpace or Orkut serves merely to connect people. Twitter grew because of the niche value its offering.

The final question that ponders me is how do sites like facebook/twitter get venture funding and whether they really have a business and revenue model. All these sites are trying to do right now is attract more users. Maybe, at somepoint people will become so dependent on them. At that time these sites will figure out a way to make money (acquisition probably?). Remember, When google started, they did not have a business model other than allowing other websites to use their search feature. Can anyone imagine a day without google these days? Maybe facebook and twitter are trying to follow the footsteps of google.

Now some facts about social networking:
- Thirty-five percent of US Web users aged 18 or older have a profile on a social network such as Facebook. This number has grown from a mere eight percent in 2005.
- In general, it seems the number of adults who use social networks declines with age
- Seventy-five percent of online Americans aged 18 to 24 years old belong to a social network; 57 percent of those aged 25 to 34; 30 percent of those aged 35 to 44; 19 percent of those aged 45 to 54; 10 percent of those aged 55 to 64 and just seven percent of those aged 65 and older.
- Sixty-five percent of online Americans aged 12 to 17 years old use social networks.
- Fifty percent of adult social network users have a profile on MySpace, the survey found, while 22 percent have a profile on Facebook, six percent have a profile on LinkedIn.
- Eighty-nine percent of the adult Web users surveyed said they use their online profiles to keep up with friends, 57 percent said they use them to make plans with friends and 49 percent said they use them to make new friends.