Thoughts of A Lively Mind

Attending Proto.in - Jan 18 & 19, 2008 in Chennai, India

I'll be in Chennai on Jan 18 & 19, 2008 attending Proto.in - will be scouting for companies to partner with my employer for the enterprise market. You can get more info on Proto here. Vijay Anand and team at The Knowledge Foundation have been working real hard on making Proto a success - I look forward to seeing this latest version play out this week. Here are Vijay's posts on the subject on the Proto.in blog: The Business Track The Technology Track The Proto Jingle The Speakers - including my friend Gokul Gopalakrishnan!

How addicted to Apple are you?

62%How Addicted to Apple Are You?

Girls with a gadget craze - the new India!

Girls with as much (or more) of a passion for gadgets than guys in Surat, Gujarat (the diamond capital of India). Reading this article in the Economic Times today was really amusing... this is the new India!

Gems don't lure any more to Gujju girls-Entertainment-Media / Entertainment / Art-News By Industry-News-The Economic Times

So what has triggered this passion for gizmos among girls? While some opine that it's just a way of flaunting your latest possession, others believe high level of exposure could be the catalyst. Says Pooja Shah, 28, a resident of City Light Area, "Media, today, has become a window to the changing trends outside the city."

Technorati Tags: gadgets, India, surat

Google picks up another major piece of the content generation puzzle: Feedburner

With this acquisition, Google will now practically own the feed generation and management market as Feedburner is the preferred method through which most bloggers (including me) process their feeds. A nice fit when integrated with Google's Webmaster tools and Google Reader apps. Here's what Tech Crunch has to say about this: $100 Million Payday For Feedburner - This Deal Is Confirmed

Feedburner is in the closing stages of being acquired by Google for around $100 million. The deal is all cash and mostly upfront, according to our source, although the founders will be locked in for a couple of years.

Technorati Tags: Feedburner, Google, blogging, newsfeeds

What's your nerd rating?

Opera Mini 3.0

I'm a few days late on this - Opera Mini was released on November 28, 2006...

I use Opera Mini on my RAZR V3 and its a great browser - much better than the built-in browser that Motorola provides. I've just upgraded after reading this news via OSNews - lets see how the new version is.

Opera Mini drives social networking from mobile phones

Opera Software introduces Opera Mini 3.0

Technorati Tags: opera mini, opera, RAZR, Motorola

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Tiny Projectors the size of a sugar cube - using Lasers

BBC NEWS | Technology | Projector size of sugar cube made

A video projector that is the size of a sugar cube has been created by researchers
.

Technorati Tags: laser projector, tiny projector

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Telecom & IMS: Quote

Telecom & IMS: Quote: "IMS is a polygamist. It tries to marry all the protocols and hogs bandwidth resources, just as it should."

Vijay Anand's got a post up on Telecom & IMS that discusses a conversation he had on IMS. I agree 100% with the quote. IMS is to communication what middleware is to IPTV - soon even middleware would need to be IMS compliant :)
In fact, this is another reason why the operators who are investing heavily in IMS-ready platforms (and planning to have IMS systems) are the same operators who are maneuvering for a tiered Internet. They want to ensure that at least their IMS-compliant services get through even when the customers are watching something on Google Video or downloading a tv show from iTunes.

Technorati Tags: Telecom, IMS, tiered internet, communications

Moving my iTunes library from XP to my new iMac 20“

I've finally documented how I moved my iTunes collection intact from Windows XP to the new iMac! Before blindly copying everything and ending up losing my song ratings and presets and playlists, etc for my gigantic 8600 song collection, I decided to RTFM first (one of those rare cases where its worth reading up before acting!). My music collection is split into two segments: 1. The real iTunes collection, imported and sorted by artist etc in iTunes. This has my purchases from the music store when I was in the US and all the CDs I have imported into iTunes. 2. The other music from before iTunes for Windows came out. This is sorted by Genre and stored in a separate folder that had been manually and painstakingly imported by dragging directory after directory into the iTunes Library. These are the steps I followed: 1. Using the backups I had created earlier (Backing up my data), I copied two folders over to the iMac (the iTunes Music and the other music). 2. I setup the iMac's sharing services to share my user directory on Samba. 3. I mounted my Mac user directory on the Windows PC as a separate drive (say Z:) 3. Now, I edited the “iTunes Music Library.xml” file on the Windows PC, using Find & Replace to redirect all directory references to the two folders in Z: This is the critical step, without this, iTunes will just over-write and ignore the changes made to the xml file! 4. I opened the “iTunes Library.itl” file (also on the Windows PC) and deleted its contents, then save. This file is a binary version of the xml file, derived and updated by iTunes every time changes are made to the library. The idea here is, Apple keeps a backup in the xml file, so the binary data can be derived at any time! 5. I then ran iTunes. As expected, it complained that the Library was corrupted and began re-constructing it from the xml file. This took ages as it had to run through all 8600 songs' data and verify their locations on the remote drive (Z:) 6. Once this was done, I now had an iTunes installation on Windows using music that was actually stored on the Mac! Final step! I was now content that I was almost done, and that I would now just have to copy the xml file to the iMac, find and replace Z: with the local path, delete the contents of the binary “iTunes Library.itl” and open iTunes. 7. I copied the two library files “iTunes Music Library.xml” and “iTunes Library.itl” to my iMac, and then, trusting one of the articles I had read earlier (referenced below), just took the chance and ran iTunes. And it worked! iTunes came up, said it was translating the library, and the entire song collection came up, with ratings, last played, # of times played, my precious playlists, the iPod settings, everything! There was just one hitch however, I had to re-signup for all the podcasts - somehow this transfer method does not retain he podcast subscriptions. References: iTunes library transfer · made in costa rica by josue salazar How to Safely Move Your iTunes Music Directory to a New Drive Google Search: transferring itunes library from windows Technorati Tags: Apple, backup, iMac, iTunes, Switcher

Backing up my data

As part of my series on switching to the Apple iMac, here's my piece on backing up data. I looked around for a good solution to store upwards of 300GB of data on a Firewire + USB2.0 external drive and came across the Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo Edition. This drive comes in two sizes, the 600 GB version has 2 x 300 GB drives in a RAID 0 configuration and the 1 TB version has 2 x 500 GB drives that are set in RAID 0 by default but can be changed to a RAID 1 setup via the included management program that's available on the cd that comes with the package. I however did not know of the limitation on the 600 GB drive until after I purchased it. So much for redundant backups! Guess I will change to that at some other point. The drive comes pre-formatted for Mac OS X (i.e. it has a single partition across both drives in HFS+). It was a simple plug & play job to get it working with my old Powerbook 800Mhz. Now, the logical step would be to run MacDrive 6 and connect up the Maxtor drive via USB 2.0 to my PC. Just my luck, this simply would not work. MacDrive never managed to detect and grant access to the Maxtor drive. So I was stuck backing up files via the network and the Powerbook. This was a few days effort of setting up a data transfer and leaving it to run while I went to work. After giving my network (driven by a great Linksys WRT54G running the DD-WRT release) a nice exercise, I had a backup of all my files, for use when the iMac arrived. Next up, setting up the iMac and transferring iTunes! Technorati Tags: Apple, backup, iMac, iTunes, Linksys, maxtor, DD-WRT, Switcher, WRT54G

More on the move to the iMac

I'm gonna spend the next few days documenting my move to the iMac from Windows, including the following:
1. backing up data
2. transferring my iTunes Library intact without destroying my precious song ratings, # of played, last played and other meta-data that iTunes stores on my 8600 song, 48 Gig music collection
3. every day programs I now use on the mac
4. dealing with video

So! watch this blog to track my progress...

Technorati Tags: Apple, iMac, iTunes, Switcher

Switching back to Apple!

After at least 2 years of using Windows and an AMD (Athlon XP 3200+) based system, and 4 years of having a Powerbook 800Mhz, I have finally taken the final plunge and converted to an all Apple world. I am now the proud owner of a 20“ iMac with an Intel Core Duo processor!

Technorati Tags: Apple, iMac, Switcher

DECT cordless phones in US market from Philips

No Snap or Crackle: A New Technology for Cordless Phones - New York Times Its hilarious to see the NYTimes not checking their facts before writing this article... DECT has been around for at least a decade as a technology for cordless telephony. In fact, it has been used for much more. There are over a million fixed phone lines around the world that depend on DECT for their connectivity instead of a regular POTS connectivity via copper wires. These are mostly in South Asia, South Africa, South America and Russia where DECT offers a very affordable solution to telecom operators vs. digging/stringing cable up to subscribers' premises. As related news I should mention that the DECT Forum, part of the ETSI group is meeting on Friday April 28, 2006 in France. Disclaimer: I work for a company (Midas) that supplies DECT equipment for fixed line telephony in emerging markets. Technorati Tags: DECT, cordless, telephone, Midas

BarCampChennai

As I live in Chennai and am interested in this whole concept of free-form BarCamps, I will be attending BarCampChennai. I plan to keep tracking the progress as this event is organized and might be writing my thoughts live from there on this blog... lets see how it goes! Technorati Tags: BarCampChennai, BarCamp

Each new generation takes tech for granted (& adopts it) while those even 5 years older have a hard time getting used to the same

Peter Cochrane's Blog: Kids today - LANs - Breaking Business and Technology News at silicon.com

So what of today's youngsters, what do they see? One eight-year-old I came across has never seen a computer connected to anything other than a power outlet when charging.

Kids in each new generation just take certain things (especially technology related) for granted that someone even 5 years older would have seen appear and disrupt they way they used the same technology.

Peter Cochrane sites a few examples such as kids today expecting WiFi access to the internet wherever they go and the appearance of the IR remote control instead of a wired one.

DRM, CAS and why the Indian Digital TV market was stillborn

Anil Dash: Dos and Don'ts for Beating the iPod (and iTunes)

Teaching consumers about DRM is like giving your cat a bath: You're only going to piss her off, and she'd do a better job of it on her own anyway. Explain your lack of DRM in terms of user benefits instead of technology, and you'll avoid disgruntled customer testimonials.

This reminds me of the way in which Digital TV was pushed in India - it was marketed as TV with CAS (Conditional Access System) - a means for pay channels to get paid for the customers who subscribed to the service. The resulting disaster:

• Chennai (Madras) got Digital TV with two partial deployments by SCV/SunTV and Hathway
• Rollout started in New Delhi - but were halted when consumers and "interested" (as in monetarily) parties took this to court and halted the whole process
• It is understood that only a few thousand customers today are on the two operational systems
• Set top boxes - the rumor in the cable tv industry that there are close to 200,000 set tops just sitting gathering dust in warehouses around India

Resuscitation attempts:
Hathway and a few other operators have finally begun marketing this as Digital TV, with traction in Bangalore, Mumbai and a few other cities. Instead of insisting customers purchase Set tops, most operators now bundle the set top free with service, against a security deposit. And now, DTH - satellite based TV service appears to be the next big move in this industry - this time luckily there is no mention of CAS/DRM - even though it is generally accepted that this will exist.

Note: I am a subscriber to digital TV service from Hathway in Chennai - service hasn't really seen any upgrades/feature additions/refinements since it was launched in 2003 - and the signal quality drops significantly in evening hours, when customer support is unreachable as their offices close at 6.30 PM.

This appears to be inspired by the Cylons

Hilarious info on EuroTelcoblog

James Enck of EuroTelcoblog has touched on this hilarious tidbit:

The floorspace occupied by VoIP, IPTV and telco triple play industry events exceeded the total surface area of Canada for the first time in history, and the delegates to these shows, marched side-by-side into the sea, would form a neverending column

The hype and craze for IPTV and triple play seems to have reached a crescendo this year. I remember the days at work a year and a half back when I had to explain the concept to customers. Now they are clamoring for it!

How real is the need for speed?

How real is the need for speed? Om Malik asked the question earlier this week and has some fascinating facts which show that beyond a certain connection speed, there is no perceptible difference in the experience. Of course, with applications like streaming video - IPTV or Video-on-demand - this would change, especially if these are adopted more as packetized realtime streaming formats, not the "file-download" or "partial-file-download" and playback methods adopted by most vendors today.

Here's a link to Om's article: Need For Speed... How Real?

As usual, Robert Scoble has his opinion on this as well and he points to TV over IP as the typical need: Om asks whether we really need the speed of broadband?

On a side-note, I'm publishing this via Performancing for Firefox. Its a great start, has a long way to go however on features.

Innovative Plasma Drives