Wireless Utopia

Scribie

2011-03-29T12:57:00.000-07:00

We have relaunched CallGraph.Biz as Scribie.com. Scribie is an audio transcription outsourcing service which lets you easily outsource your audio transcription work to freelancers. You just have to upload your files and pay $0.80 per minute of audio in advance. After 1 business day you'll get back a high quality transcript of your audio file. Check it out!

OT: On Working Alone

2008-12-22T05:09:00.000-08:00

One of the most frequently asked questions, in all the startup and entrepreneurship forums, is can you do it alone? Is it good? Lately a lot of attention is being paid to single person run ventures, eg Balsamiq and Twitpic. Its the new happening thing in town. Here's what I have to say about it.

I've been working out of my living room for the past 8 months. We closed down our office this March and Call Graph is a result of the security deposit that was left over. And it hasnt been that much of a bad experience at all. In fact, I'm loving it. Anna Sambar (rice and curry, the staple food of all the autowallas in Bangalore) has grown on me. For 12 bucks, its a great deal. I hated giving up Ultra Milds. But Gold Flake small is more nicotine at lesser price. And Old Monk! Need I say anything about it? Its been my favorite for a long time. Sadly this years budget meant that a quarter was two bucks dearer at Rs 40. Add to that the bills for rent and internet connection and it pretty much covers the essentials. Monthly cost comes to around 20 K. Not bad for Bangalore I would say.

On top of that, I've cut down on traveling. No MoMo's, no TiE's, no nothing. Not even the weekend late nighters with friends, much to their annoyance. Obviously I dont have a girlfriend and that helps too. If I ever have to head out, I take the bus. In Bangalore its a time sink. You never know how long its going to take. So I try to avoid going out as much as possible. Which of course means that my face to face interactions, the human touch quotient, has gone down drastically. Not a bad thing again, since I'm a born loner. I can live and work alone for extended periods of time.

The best thing about working alone though is the independence. You are pretty much free to do whatever you like. Nobody to convince, nobody breathing down your neck, no wasting of time. Thought of a kick ass feature? Get to work on it instantly. Works great if you happen to be the kind of person who's right most of the time. I happen to think I am. But you never know :). Yeah, I have messed up things once in a while. Big time in few cases.

So is it tough? You bet it is. There are highs and lows. Both the times you wish had someone to share it with. Plus software, by its nature, is a team game. You just cannot write great software alone. Or develop a technology alone. I hope that one day I can assemble a team around CG. The technology involved, spoken audio search, is really complex. And it will need a great team to pull off. That will take its own sweet time I guess.

The only question is, why keep doing it? We'll for starters, I have few paid customers and it kind of covers my costs. I'm not losing any money, if not making some. No harm in doing it I guess. Plus I am definitely having the best time of my life. No question about that. I've never loved my work so much. Never ever in those 8 years in the industry. That means something I guess. Also I have high hopes for the technology since its an unsolved problem out there. The best part however is, its not over yet. There's a lot of work left on CG. Remains to be seen whether I can make it or not. But for the time being, I'm enjoying every bit of it.

So there you have it. Startups are tough. Micro ISV's are the toughest. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Get a team. Its much better and healthier. It should always be the last option, the nuke option, if an option at all.

MoMo Monsoon

2008-08-21T04:46:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post to point that MoMo Monsoon event is coming up. This time instead of our usual event, we have organized a full day event which is full of interesting panel disucssions. Check out our brand new website for more.

http://momobangalore.org

So if you are in town and are interested to catch up with the happenings in the industry, do join us. As usual the event is free to attend.

Roti, Kapda, Makan and Social Networking

2008-07-18T09:34:00.000-07:00

Social Networking is a bad word in entrepreneur circles these days. There are so many of them and apart from the FB's, Orkut's of the world, the rest are not really going anywhere. Still we see more and of these coming up. So everyone asks the question, how many social networks do we need? Isn't one FB or Orkut enough for the whole world?

I think no. Its definitely not. And that is for a very simple reason. Fundamentally all these social networking sites connect people. They solve one of the biggest human needs, the need to connect with each other, socialize. A need surpassed only by maybe our need for food, clothing and housing.

There are hundreds of Social Networking sites. But you can still see people who are lonely, looking for a life partner, or a date or just a friend. If Orkut and FB are doing it right then why hasn't this problem been completely eradicated yet? Obviously there's still a lot to be done. And if one of the new sites are trying to attack this, there's nothing wrong with it. Maybe they have just created a better mousetrap.

Agreed that most of these startups are not doing anything innovative, its the same run of the mill stuff. But me too sites are a reality on the internet. For every successful site, there are 100 clones of it. The guys with the best product win in the end. That's fair.

Lemme go on and cite some some examples of niche's of social networking. I am drawing from my own experiences here, so please bear with me. A typical case is of dating. In Bangalore you have guys who come out of top notch Engineering colleges where the sex ratio is something like 80:20 (mine's was even worse). These are hot shot software dev's who wanna date and dont mind spending for it. In Bangalore you also have a huge call center crowd, a significant part of whom are single girls on the lookout.

Right now what these guys do is register on Shaadi.com and try and find a date. The have no intentions of marrying, but they do not have a choice. Orkut and FB dont solve their problem. How come Shaadi, which was never meant to solve this problem in the first place, ends up eating up this pie? Its a great market segment to target; young, mobile, with disposable income. And the addressable market is huge since the same case can be applied to any metro city in India!

Maybe this sounds lame. But think about it. These are segments that you can target. The hard part is finding a business model around them. It cant be that plain old model of premium plans. Something different, something innovative, something whacky! But I'm sure if you can get these folks hooked on to your site, you will make money somehow. Because these guys are not squeamish about spending on the net. Maybe you can even do a Beacon on them!

The most perplexing thing about the Indian Soc. Net scene is that the old models are still there; pay and contact the girl. Nobody has managed to challenge them. Maybe I am biased because I need to actually get on these sites soon to find a girl for myself, but it still sucks. I dont wanna pay! I am sure there are hundreds of people like me. If someone comes up with a matrimonial/dating site which does not have this business model, people would flock to it.

So there's my defense of Social Networking. There's still a huge unaddressed market. And I am sure that we'll see more of these social networking sites. That is a good thing in my view.

New Blog @ Call Graph

2008-07-08T22:36:00.000-07:00

Since nobody is writing about us, we thought that we'll start writing about ourselves. So we started our own product blog at Call Graph. Pls. check it out here. We plan to regularly update is as we go along. Request you to add the feed to your RSS readers.

Call Graph Web Service Launched

2008-06-29T00:54:00.000-07:00

Blogging has been very light lately. The reason being a) Twitter has completely taken over my urge to put my thoughts online and b) I have been busy with the Call Graph Web Service. Its called CRIMS: Call Record Indexing and Managemnt Service and its done. We have opened it up for everyone now. :)

The purpose is simple. It give you storage, sharing, search and transcription services for your Skype Calls. Here's how it works. You first sign up for the service, then download our Skype call recording client, associate the client with the your account on CRIMS and magically all your Skype calls will start appearing on the site. You can do various things with it after that, the most useful being search and generate transcripts.

The search is done through our keyword mining technology. We process the call record and generate a list of keywords for the call. The call is then indexed with these keywords. So if you used the word "Wireless Utopia" several times during a call then both wireless and utopia would become a keywords for it. Few months down the line if you want to locate this particular call, you just search for wireless and you'll get it back.

The transcripts are a bit more tricky thing though. The first pass is through a Automatic Speech Recognition engine. It processes the call and generates an output. Then we manually proof read the transcripts and correct all the errors. Right now the manual effort required is very high but we are hoping that as we improve the system we will be able to gradually reduce this manual effort.

Its important to note that we do try and protect the confidentiality of the call records. Even though its being heard by a person, we ensure that a single person does not go through the whole call. We use various methods to ensure that. Also, till you order the transcripts the call record is machine processed. So you have a control on which call records can be heard and which one's cannot be.

Apart from these, you can also choose to just archive your call records and keep them with you. Or share them with one click if you want to. We provide these services for free for the time being. Read up on our FAQ to know more.

I'd urge you to try out the service and let us know what you think of it. A lot of effort has gone into this and a lot more needs to be done. With your feedback and help we can surely improve it.

Tags: Call Graph, Recording, Audio Search, Transcripts

MoMo Bangalore April Event

2008-04-21T23:05:00.000-07:00

Like me, are you having a BCB hangover? Dont worry, help is at hand. We have announced the MoMo Bangalore April event. Its about innovation in future mobile services and the speaker is Ashish Thomas of SingTel. The demo is from our own MyDuniya team. This looks to be a promising event. So please sign up for it now.

Tags: momobangalore, momo, mobile, india

The Un-Conference

2008-04-21T11:53:00.000-07:00

Warning: This is a very passionate post.

This post is a direct response to Vijay "PROTO.IN" Anand's post. Its a "howto" on Barcamps. In one sentence "impose some rules". Which begs the question: why?

I have been an avid barcamper. Starting from BCB1 to BCB6. I skipped BCB5 since I got thrashed by the un-organizers on when I suggested that collectives dont work. It pissed me off big time. But BCB6 went back to its original roots. The good old paper wiki and a better second day crowd. And damn.. i loved it. There was this session conducted by our own Prof. Suresh, on Startup Pains. He asked for a show of hand on how many people wanted to startoff on their own. Allmost all the hands in the room went up. And mind you, people were standing and sitting on the stairs. The energy there was incredible.

I loved the in feeling there. So you are a CEO. So what? So you are a hot chick. So what? So you are a avid barcamper. So fucking what? You do not deserve a t-shirt or a mug if you have attended all the rest of them. You are just as good as others.

Who makes rules in barcamps? Who has the right to do it? If you are an organizer, or as my good friend Werner says it, "organ-raiser", can you impose rules? I dont think so. Barcamp is like the linux kernel. To borrow Greg Korah Hartman's words, its not intelligent design: its evolution.

So beware. Stay away from those Barcamps which impose rules on you. You are the barcamper. You decide whats going to happen. Not some moron who's intent is to make the world more friendlier.

Tags: barcamp, barcampbangalore, barcampbangalore6, bcb6

VoIP In India

2008-04-21T03:58:00.000-07:00

I conducted a session on VoIP in India at BCB6. The focus was the legality of VoIP in India and what can be done about it. VoIP is regulated in India and interconnections between a VoIP network and lanline/mobile network is not allowed. The primary reason is to protect the monopoly on International termination fees/rates. The security issue is more of an excuse than a real reason.

The end result is that we as consumers lose out. We are not allowed the benifits of VoIP: lower tarrif, more services etc. And cannot create businesses around it. Any VoIP startup in India ultimately runs into the wall of legality in India. And VoIP is one of the hottest technologies out there today. It is disrupting the Telco business model and we cannot participate in it.

India is still in the stone age as far as VoIP is concerned. Our economy is growing fast and we are supposed to overtake US by 2050. If we do not sit up and take notice, then the status quo will remain. Join our discussion group and tell everyone that you know about it.

Toktumi: The Skype killer?

2008-03-26T02:03:00.000-07:00

There's a new VoIP kid on the block: Toktumi. I have been using it since it came out of private beta few weeks back. To put it in easy terms, its Skype + a free SkypeIn number + free voicemail. There's something similar to SkypeOut as well but the pricing is more like a monthly rental + call charges. The call charges are not laid out (5cents to most phones) so a side by side comparison cannot be done. But it should be competitive, given the state of VoIP minutes market. Whats more, it provides a USB adapter to which you can connect your normal phone to.

Their system is differs significantly from Skype though. The website claims that its P2P PBX which sounds like a bunch of Asterisk servers which are peered together on the internet for load balancing. Looks like that the PC is not invovled in routing other's traffic through your system. Contrast that to Skype where any PC can become a super node if its in a good bandwidth environment. The other thing about this approach is that QoS can be monitored closely. Which eventually improves the call quality. The approach certainly has mertis on its own. But can it be cost effective is the question.

The soft client is breeze to install and use. The interface is more traditional compared to Skype which is more IM'ish. After using it for a few weeks, it found some annoyances about it though. For example, it does not startup minimized: you have to close it and then click ok on the message box which pops up. Another feature lacking is that there's no way to set the ringer to your PC's speaker. So if you are using a headset and a call come's in, you are in a bit of trouble if you are not on your PC.

So can it really take on Skype? Skype is superstar of VoIP services today. It has been going through a bad patch recently, with troubles at the top. But a little competition in this market would not do any harm. As the founder of Toktumi, Peter Sission says on his blog, entrepreneurs can still challenge Skype. It remains to be seen whether Toktumi can be as viral a hit as Skype was. But I would still recommend this service. Especially if you are small buiness owner or working out of home. Or if you are looking for a free US number as me. :)

Tags: Toktumi, Skype, VoIP, Asterisk.

Howto Record Skype Calls

2008-03-14T05:53:00.000-07:00

A video tutorial on howto record Skype calls using Call Graph.

You can download the application from here.

http://www.callgraph.in

Its completely free and without any restrictions. Happy recording!

Tags: CallGraph, Skype, Beta Software, Howto, Tutorial.

Wireless In Goa

2008-03-12T07:50:00.000-07:00

I recently took off to Goa for a break. I was visiting after a gap of two years and was alone this time around. Here're some notes I made during the trip.

Twitter is definitely a great tool for lonely travelers. Here's my archive. I used it throughout the trip to post updates. The only thing it lacked was a easy way to upload your photos directly from the phone. Would have been great! Still I could not figure out why its the hottest thing right now in the valley. Maybe because its one way traffic for me. With more friends following and more interaction, I can see the point.

The GPRS service worked flawlessly through out. I used Airtel Mobile Office. The last time I was in Goa, Airtel did not have its own network. It used Idea's network there. And the SMS's I sent to activate the service would not reach Airtel since I was roaming. This time it just worked. It was slow and painful, but it worked. Even in the beach shacks. And into the sea. I was missing my Nokia Tablet. Would have been perfect for the trip.

The surprising thing was that GPRS never broke down on the road! I took a bus (KSRTC Volvo) and I was checking my mails from some obscure places deep in South India. Gives you a kick when you can do that. And speaks volumes on how the mobile operators are moving aggressively into the rural areas in India. Good job Airtel!

Another interesting this was the availability of Cell Id everywhere. It kind of gave me an sense of where I was on the road. And I had an eureka moment. How about a mashup between Google Maps and an mobile app which records the Cell Id as you go along. I would be able to trace the route of the journey which I'd really like to because the bus made the trip in 14 hours flat (fastest ever in all my 5 trips till date) and I want to know the route. It would also be able to tell me how far I am from the destination next time around. And it would also record which places I had been to during my trip which again would be a nice thing to show off to my friends. Better still have a Facebook app for it, spam your friends with it and get back at them for ditching me. :) Would be a nice weekend hacking project. Anyone up for it?

I am really glad that I have integrated all my mail id's (around 5 in total) into Gmail with mail fetcher. It was a lifesaver. The J2ME app for GMail worked flawlessly I was able to check all my accounts at one place. Thank you Google.

Goa is still a very cheap deal. For a comparison a KF pint is for 40 bucks. So is Old Monk quarter. The food in the shacks is just great, especially the sea food. Reasonably priced. The Condolim, Calangute, Baga stretch must have over 200 beach shacks. So lots of choice.

Surprisingly I saw very few iPod's or iPhones in Goa. Most of the tourists in Goa were European. But still no iPods at all. Forget about laptops. Did not sight a single one. Maybe because of complete lack of WiFi hotspots. But this time I did find a place which offers WiFi. Its called The Indian Kitchen (98221 49615), off Calangute Baga Road. Five minutes walk from the beach and not very expensive. They had a broadband connection and charges were Rs. 100 per day for WiFi. So thats where I'm gonna stay the next time. :)

Finally, the KSRTC Volvo bus service rocks! I recommend it highly.

The only thing I did in there was drink, eat and sleep. In that order. And man, it was soooo good. Its the best place to unwind and relax.

Tags: Goa, Wireless, Travel

Call Graph

2008-02-14T05:23:00.000-08:00

A shameless plug to promote our product Call Graph :)

We have just released Call Graph. It is a simple call recorder for Skype. It records your calls into an mp3 file and indexes them for search. The best part: its completely free. You can record for any amount of time, SkypeIn calls, SkypeOut calls. But its beta right now, so expect a few problems. But if you like it please recommend it to your friends and fellow Skypers! Its pretty simplistic right now but w are going to add a lot more features to it soon. So download it now.

On the personal side, this scores a couple of firsts for me. My app which I have distributed, my first website (although simple html + css + php, i still like it!) and obviously the first product to be released as part of Sedna Wireless (though not our primary product). Something to show at last :).

So give it a spin and let us know what you think of it!

Update: Here's the code for the badge if you want to put it up on your site.

Tags: CallGraph, Skype, Call Recording.

The WOW Factor

2008-01-11T08:03:00.000-08:00

Is there a startup in India which is doing something which simply blows you away? We once asked ourselves this question but unfortunately we came up with nothing. But if you just broaden the horizon and look at established enterprises, the you do see some amazing stuff being done. Obviously the Tata's One Lakh Car is one such project. The coverage it has been getting in MSM is amazing: Digg, Slashdot, IHT, BBC, CNN, you name it.

One which caught my eye was this one. To quote the article.

Overnight, my canteen manager Sitaram-ji, my driver's elderly father who is a retired army man, my grocery supplier Mr Arora, and all such nice people with decent but limited income can start dreaming.
That's wow! Really!

This is the wow factor. A giant leap rather than an incremental improvement. Something which touches the life of the "common man". Solves a problem, elicits a "wow" from them. That is the market we have. The "common man" market. And its here. Its ready.

We entrepreneurs have lot to learn and a long way to go.

Tags: Entrepreneurship, Startups, Tata, Nano.

Get a HeadStart

2007-12-27T01:12:00.000-08:00

So you are a startup in India looking to launch your product, generate a buzz for it and get some visibility. Then look no further than Headstart, a new event in Bangalore hopes to do all that for you. It is an attempt to showcase the best of products to the industry. You might find partners or early adopters for your product along with a good exposure to the investor community. The idea is to bring the innovators and the consumers on a single platform and create opportunities for both.

Proto was the first such event to come up in India to a very positive response. The unfortunate part is that both these events are on the same dates this time around. So companies are forced to choose between these two events. Thats the tough part. But more and more such events cropping up is a good sign for product entrepreneurship in India. Things have never been better.

Tags: Headstart, DEMO, Proto, Bangalore.

OLPC Changes Track

2007-12-01T13:22:00.000-08:00

I have been a huge fan of OLPC. It's one of those revolutionary things which promises to change the lives of millions. I have blogged about it previously here, here, here and here. The criticisms kind of reminds you of Thomas J Watson's statement that there is a market of 5 PC's worldwide! New technologies always create controversy. OLPC just happens to be one of those ideas. After pooh phooing the concept both Intel and MS are trying their best to outmarket them now. That in itself validates this concept.

But as this story by BBC points out, the politicians are the last ones to approach if you are working on something which changes the status quo. Change is risk. And risk is the last thing they want to court. So it seems that they are changing their approach as per this report. Instead of talking the governments they are approaching HWNI's and other charities. They recently launched the buy one give one free program and it has generated orders for around 90.000 laptops. Which is a very good number in itself.

I for one would love to get my hands on it. It seems that the India team is doing a good job of it as well. The smiles tell the whole story dont they. I am actively seeking their contact. Would love to invite them to MoMo and hear about their experiences. So if you happen to know them, pls. contact drop in a line.

OT: Harsha Bhogle

2007-11-03T13:16:00.000-07:00

Harsha Bhogle's podcast.

If you love cricket and care about it, dont miss this. I am amazed at what this guy has achieved. Truly inspirational.

Few quotes.

When you are earning a lot, when you had too many possibilities in front of you, then you got more to loose. And actually you start to take fewer risks. Because what you have is very comfortable.

- On the young guns.

And you can never let the viewer down. Because the viewer is doing you a favor by switching it on. You're not doing the the favor by saying listen, you must be hallow because I'm in thy presence.

- On viewers.

I know the answer but I am getting it from a quality resource.

- On Geoff Boycott

The Australian cricket board is about cricket. The Indian Cricket board is about finance.

- On BCCI

Tendulkar comes once in a lifetime.

- On Sachin Tendulkar.

I dont go to watch cricket matches in India. I feel the shame. I think its a disgrace to our cricket lovers who fund the game, that we put them up in such sub human conditions, its a disgrace.
...
Its an absolute disgrace the way we treat our spectators. And the reason is we dont care for them, absolute disgrace. Money itself is not a disgrace, but obsession with money is a disgrace.

- On stadium facilities in India.

I think he just buried his ego and played for his side. When he was a part of four bowlers his job was to run into the wind. And because he ran into the wind the others could bowl into the wind behind him.

- On Courtney Walsh.

Nobody, nobody has the right to come and throw stones at you because lost a cricket match. You didn't leak military secrets of your country, you didn't go and kill your countrymen, you played a cricket match that you lost. That is it. You talk about playing for India as a matter of life and death. I'll let you hear a stupidier statement than that. This is not about life and death. You are making fun of people whose job is life and death. Are you telling a jawan in Siachen that Yuvraj is playing for life and death. I mean its a joke. Our lives can never be compared to theirs. There's this guy in Siachen, there's this guy in the western border. He's been really looking at death in the face. We need to look at his life and say that all we are doing is playing a cricket match. You win a cricket match you go home. You lose a cricket match you still go home. You lose a war you don't go home. And I think we need to put cricket in perspective in this country. I think cricket gets way to much importance, far far too much importance. A lot of things said about cricket is stupid, because we have lost our sense of perspective about cricket. Cricket is a game, cricket is a sport, and that is it. At the end everybody goes home. And I think we need to understand that.

- On the cricket crazy Indians.

The passion comes out so clearly!

Tags: Harsha Bhogle, Cricket, BCCI, Cricket Stadiums, Cricket Crazy India.

The Decline of BCB

2007-11-01T02:41:00.000-07:00

Its fascinating to see how Bangalore Barcamp is evolving. I have attended all the four events till now. My main motivation being a) network with like minded people and b) attend the interesting talks. To get an idea of how it has changed, here's a comparison of the format, the focus of the event and the position of the topics and participants page on the website.

The first one was a one day event with the classic paper wiki. The theme was Web 2.0 and the participants and talks was on the first page itself. It featured talks from Tara Hunt, Pete Demmer of Yahoo and even Chirs Messina. Its was relatively a small event, with around 100 or so people turned up. It was definitely a good start.

The second one happened six months later at the wonderful Thought Works office. This time it was a two day event and and the theme was entrepreneurship. The website seems to be empty, but if I remember right, the participants and topic page was one click away from the main page. True to its character, the best discussions happened in the vast main hall. One memorable moment was when Sandeep Singhal asked the audience how many wanted to start off on their own and almost all the hands shot up!

The third one happened around four months later at IIM Bangalore. The format was modified a bit to have rooms dedicated to each topic. The theme was more or less centered around Technology. The participants and topics were on different pages, one click away from the main page. The best of talks were in the Mobile track. That room was always full! I loved the session by Savita Kini about services vs. products.

The fourth one happened four months down the line and was a two day event. This time the format was changed to group topics into collectives and were given a shorter time in each room. The official theme was Technology and Social Implications. The topics page was three pages away from the main page depending upon which collective you were interested in. The organization left a lot to be desired and it chaotic at times.

The fifth one has just been announced. The theme and the participants/topics page is not up yet, but I expect it to be similar to BCB4. But reading this gives me a distinct feeling that it is moving away from its unconference roots.

To my mind, BCB3 was the peak and the decline has started. One of the most attractive aspects of Barcamp was its simplicity. It was easy to find who was attending and who was talking about what. With each Barcamp it got progressively difficult to do so. With BCB4 it was impossible to get a quick snapshot and I dont expect BCB5 to be any different.

To think of it, the significance of Barcamp has also diminished over the past year with more events and unconferences cropping up. Barcamp itself has played an important role in germinating these events. These spinoffs have taken over the role of bringing together people around a narrower common interest. And as such Barcamp in its bloated form does not really interest me any more.

But still its hard not to feel nostalgic about BCB. It was fun while it lasted.

Edit: Check out Jace's response here. Have a look at the comments as well.

~~Eidt 2: If you are one of the organizers and want to suggest that I should do something instead of whining, pls. stop here. Read this, read the post once more and spare yourself the trouble.~~

Edit 3: OK. If I look back at this thread with a cooler mind, it does seem very harsh. Its embarrassing in fact. Sorry for getting carried away.

Tags: BCB, Barcamp Bangalore, Entrepreneurship, Startups, India

The Intangible Value

2007-10-24T22:53:00.001-07:00

Earlier this week, Cisco acquired Navini Networks for $330 Million. Navini is a WiMAX base station maker and an early pioneer of Beam Forming Antenna Technology. It is primarily a hardware company which sells its gear to Operators. The value of the company is tied to its assets, customers and its Intellectual Property. It was pretty much an open secret and I had blogged about it before here.

Today, Microsoft invested $240 Million in Facebook for a 1.6 % stake of the company. That gives Facebook a valuation of $15 Billion. Facebook is a social network. Its value is intangible. It derives its value from the personal networks between friends. It has no IP of its own and its assets are negligible. Last year Yahoo was willing to buy Facebook for $1 Billion. Today its fifteen times that value.

The contrast between these two deals cannot be more striking. A $15 billion valuation for a social networking company sounds nonsensical to us in this part of the world. We place much more value in real world relations than the virtual ones. But for those who do give value to the virtual communities, this deal would make a lot more sense. In those economies, the value proposition has moved away from manufacturing and IP to virtual goods.

This is the emergence of Facebook as the Google killer. Google has been steamrolling all competition in recent days and its good to see someone standing up to it. Maybe this also means the gradual transformation of Microsoft into a Internet Services company. Maybe Mark Zuckerburg is the next Bill Gates.

As for Google, they will have to compete with Facebook on their own turf. There have been news of Google opening up the API of Orkut. Orkut is a big ticket in Brazil and India. It still has to play catch up.

Tags: Facebook, Microsoft, Intangible Goods, Cisco, WiMAX

Gutsy Upgrade Problems

2007-10-20T10:08:00.000-07:00

On a day when everyone was decking up their cars and bikes with flowers and whatnot I decided to upgrade up my laptop with the shiny new Gutsy Gibbon. After spending a few hours at it, its finally done. So here's how it went.

My laptop is a Dell Inspiron E4105 also known as 640m. A standard configuration with Intel 945 GM graphics driver and Broadcom 43xx wireless card. I have been running Ubuntu on it since the last year, first Dapper Drake and then Fiesty Fawn. The upgrade to Fiesty was smooth. I only had to reinstall ndiswrapper on it to get the wireless working.

This time it was much more involved. The first thing which happened post install was that kernel 2.6.22 refused to boot with the error

dm-linear : Device lookup failed

After some Googling it turned out to be this bug. To fix it I had to remove the evms package.

sudo apt-get --purge remove evms

The next problem was the Broadcom 43xx driver. The restricted driver manager pointed out that a driver was available and after a warning that it is not free, allowed me to install the firmware. Had to reboot the laptop to get it working.

The third problem was very slow scrolling on Firefox and other apps. A bit of searching on Ubuntuforums led me to this. Removing xserver-xgl solved it for me.

apt-get remove xserver-xgl

I dont use Compiz usually. So this solution works for me.

The next issue was slow internet browsing speeds. The DNS lookup used to take ages. There seems to be no resolution to this problem yet although a lot of people are facing the issue. I tried disabling IPV6 in firefox and using Open DNS servers and now the speeds seem to be better. Had to manually edit the /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf file and add the Open DNS name servers to it. These two lines specifically before the request statement.

prepend domain-name-servers 208.67.220.220
prepend domain-name-servers 208.67.222.222

The last was a minor issue with fonts. Firefox fonts had changed as soon as I had upgraded. The issue was with msttcorefonts which I had installed for Fiesty. Had to remove the package before things started looking better. Its still is not as good as before though. But I can live with it. This didnt solve the font problem with console which had changed as well. Finally selected the Courier 10 pitch font after trying out all the 100 fonts on my system. Not many among them are usable though.

All this took up the entire day for me. If you are looking to upgrade to Gutsy, then keep a day aside for it. Right now its not all that stable enough. Or just wait for a few weeks more before the initial hiccups are sorted out.

Wishing everybody a very happy Dassera and the festival season. Enjoy!

Update:

To solve the fonts problem, I used this trick.

I discovered weird sound issues when it used to stop playing sometimes and speaker and headphone used to work together. To fix this, I had to update Alsa. Used the commands mentioned in the this thread.

Tags: Ubuntu, Gutsy Gibbon, Upgrade, Troubleshooting

MoMo Oct

2007-10-18T01:47:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post for MoMo Bangalore. The October event is on next Monday, 22nd. The talk is on Software Defined Radios (SDR). SDR is one of the most promising technologies today and is heavily used in Military applications already. It hasnt yet come to our Mobile devices but Vanu is working on that! I already have my set of questions ready for this talk.

The demo is even more interesting. A lot of focus is on local languages and local content these days. Tachyon is one of the companies at the forefront of developing new technologies for Indian Language. Their product QuillPad is one of the best transliteration tools out there. The demo of QuillMobile will definitely be interesting.

So sign up for it now.

Tags: MoMo, SDR, Transliteration, Bangalore, India

TringMe

2007-10-15T02:38:00.000-07:00

VoIP services these days are all about low cost calling services. But once in a while you do see an innovative application. TringMe is one such service. I guess a disclaimer is due here: I happen to know the founder for some time and relate to his passion about VoIP. So this might be a biased view. But here is what TC had to say about it. Here is a VoIP Guide article. The key differentiator is that there is no software to download, nor a phone required to make a call. It can be initiated from the web browser itself.

Here is how it works. It provides you with a embeddable widget (much like Jaxtr) which can be put up on your blog or your profile page. Anyone who clicks there can talk to you on your phone or GTalk or send a voice mail (currently the only option supported). So all you need is a browser and a headset (maybe). Right now phones to US, UK and Canada are supported. The cool part of the application is really integration with GTalk. It works flawlessly. I think that would be a killer application. Wish they could add Skype support as well.

There are obvious issues with Spam but not very hard to solve it. And questions about business models. But its not very hard to imagine it would be very useful to replace those 1 800 support numbers you see on websites. Much better than publishing the phone numbers. It would also be useful to bloggers who want to be reachable. Or maybe it can even evolve into a voice based comments system. There are just so many possibilities.

With Flash 9 with H.264 and VoIP support on the way, things are going to get better and more competitive. Lookout for more such services in the near future. It would be pretty frustrating for Ribbit I guess. They have been working on such a system for quite some time. Makes you wonder about the wisdom of the "release early, release frequent" paradigm!

Drop me a line if you need invites.

OLPC in India

2007-10-14T09:03:00.000-07:00

Via Alootechie. Reliance Communications is going to bring OLPC to India priced at $180. I never knew that OLPC is available for commercial use as well. Till now their focus was to strike deals with governments and distribute through them. Nevertheless this is great news. Given that Reliance is expanding into the rural areas, this becomes important.

Over the time I have been a big supporter of the OLPC project even though it got bashed in the Indian Blogosphere. Its an amazing project. And I firmly believe that technologies derived from OLPC will make a significant impact. Not only the inbuilt mesh.

India and other emerging economies are a ripe market for OLPC like devices. I guess after this others are going to follow as well!

Tags: OLPC, India, Reliance.

MoMo Sept: Rural Kiosks, Mobitop Launch

2007-10-13T03:27:00.000-07:00

This has been a long pending post. MoMo Sept event happened on 24th last month as usual. Unfortunately it clashed with the Twenty20 final between India and Pakistan and the attendance was pretty thin. But we all managed to catch the last moments, thanks to a TV in the OnMobile cafeteria. Here's a short summary of the event.

Our speaker was Ashim Roy of Comat Technologies. Comat is a Social Enterprise based out of Bangalore which provides e-Governance solutions targeting the BoP segment. Interest in rural consumer is increasing in India. Several big names are expanding their footprint in rural areas and coming up with services and products which can be marketed to them. ITC's E-Choupal is one such example. Reliance is another big name in this sector.

Comat is one such company which has set up kiosks in rural areas which provide consumers access to information technology products and services. The talk was about how these kiosks can be used by other entrepreneurs for offering their services. They are looking for concepts and solutions which can be rolled out as additional services. It is one of the biggest challenge as well as opportunity in India today. If you have read the Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid you'll agree. So if you have a bright idea, get in touch with Ashim. Find the presentation here (pdf).

The demo was from one of the regulars of the Mobile Startup scene in Bangalore, Mobisy. Lalit presented their flagship product called Mobitop. Mobitop is an application development platform for Smartphones. The language is HTML and Javascript and the platform provides device access. It supports S60 currently and over a period of time they plan to support all major Smartphone OS's. They also take care of signing and certification process. It attempts to solve one of the biggest pain point for mobile application developer: the diverse OS platforms. Usually an application needs to be ported for each one of them separately. With Mobitop you dont have to worry about porting.

Another interesting part of Mobitop is that it enables rapid development of Mashups for mobile devices. Since its Javascript, any web based API can be accessed from the phone over GPRS or a WiFi connection. An example, which they cited, is product search using the mobile phone camera and the Like API. It also opens up the possibility of using Ads. to generate revenues for mobile application. Right now the only ways you can earn through a mobile application is to either deploy it using an operator and signing a revenue sharing deal with them or selling it directly to the customer. Both of these have severe issues. With Mobitop you can have an ad based business model! So if you are thinking of a mobile application, Mobitop is worth a shot! Slides can be found here.

Another nice MoMo event. Even though everybody's mind was on the score, we participated actively. In fact, Ashim stopped in between the talk and asked for the score as well :).

Rajan covered it for Livemint. Read it here. And if you are in town on 22nd Oct, do drop in. The announcement will be up by Monday on our blog.

Vodafone's Music Service

2007-09-12T06:49:00.000-07:00

Finally an operator has decided to step into the music downloading business and challenge Apple's monopoly. Operators had completely ignored this particular market paving the way for iPods. Wonder what took them so long to figure it out. With the impending European launch of iPhone, this becomes more significant. Maybe the N95, with Vodafone's music store can be a competitor to the iPhone.

And IMHO it is a huge opportunity in India as well. Music phones are very popular in India and as is Bollywood music. Ringtones based on Bollywood music is already the biggest VAS segment in India. It would be the natural evolution to a music downloading service on the mobile phone. Plus the Indian Music Industry is much better than the likes of RIAA and MPAA. It is a vast untapped market. And to counter the low popularity of GPRS, you can always do sideloading.

It is amazing why there is no such service in India.

Previous Post: Mobile Music In India.

Nokia vs. Apple

2007-09-10T03:07:00.000-07:00

Some thing that i have been following for some time, Nokia vs. Apple. Here's wonderful analysis of it. With all the hype surrounding iPhone and iPods, not a lot of print or analysis has been devoted to this topic. But this has the potential to change the future of mobile computing. With mobile technologies getting more mature and the hardware getting commoditized, Nokia had to reposition itself. It decided to go into the Internet Services business and recently launched Ovi. This is the market which Apple currently dominates and had its sights on since the launch of iPod. Apple did see the impending challenge from Nokia which prompted it to move into the mobile phone business. Both of them are interestingly poised to take on each other.

Its going to be very interesting to see how these two fight it out.

Google Reader Gadget

2007-09-08T11:39:00.000-07:00

The Google Reader Gadget is one of the most useful gadgets on the Google Homepage. I recently ditched Bloglines for Google Reader and added the gadget to my homepage. Since then my reading frequency has jumped. I check out the feeds at least a couple of times daily. And I can selectively read the one's which interest me. With Bloglines it got to the point where the entries would pile up and it would take ages load. I gave up when after loading it used to go blank! The only thing I use it for now is blogroll for this blog. It would be just great if Google adds this functionality to reader as well.

And maybe my blogging will increase as well because of this. :)

Facebook Crap

2007-08-28T07:01:00.000-07:00

I finally have to admit it: I have not been able to figure out Facebook. No, not their business model. But what to do with it. I am on it and so are a decent amount of friends. But I hardly ever go beyond the home page. I see all my friends adding all sorts of applications, running quizzes, giving each other gifts, reading fortune cookies and whatnot. They seem to be having a good time.

But somehow I fail to enjoy it. None of the apps are really interesting. Or useful. To be frank, some of them are downright childish. Fortune cookies, comparing likes and dislikes. Who has the time for these things. And how do people find the apps in the first place. I hope they are not googling for it. That would be a nice irony: the supposedly Google killer is being helped by Google.

I am too old for this. Orkut (and its new look) is the one for me. At least I do some eye candy surfing there. :)

Tags: Facebook, Orkut, Stupid, Social Networking.

Reliance WiMAX

2007-07-29T06:58:00.000-07:00

Yesterday at the Barcamp, someone mentioned that Reliance has been running a trial of WiMAX with speeds upto 2 Mbps in Bangalore, for consumers. It was hard to believe for me so I did a bit of digging. And sure enough the Blogosphere has some news about it. Unfortunately the Reliance Website has nothing. But on the above post someone has posted a number which can be called up. So if you are looking for Broadband and no one in your area is giving out any, then call Mr. Thakrunath at 98863 49624.

Tags: WiMAX, Reliance Communication, Broadband, Bangalore, India

The Chasm and Mobile Applications

2007-07-18T07:23:00.000-07:00

I have been reading a lot about marketing these days. One of the fundamental theories is the Technology Adoption Lifecycle. It categorizes the consumers into specific segments of early adopters, pragmatists and laggards. As it turns out, the classic Bell Curve can be applied here as well. The early adopters form around 13 percent, the early and late pragmatists around 70 % and the rest are laggards. Each segment also has definite characteristics. For any new product the segment should be identified and only one at a time should be targeted. Otherwise it leads to confusion.

For disruptive technologies, those which require a significant change in user behavior, there is a gap between the early adopters and the pragmatists. Successful products are the ones which have managed to cross this chasm and become more widely adopted. Unfortunately, no one really knows what causes the pragmatists to adopt something a particular technology. The book, Crossing The Chasm provides some generic strategy. But it would differ from product to product.

Now mobile phones, as a product have definitely crossed the chasm. It is in the late pragmatists stage right now. But can we say the same thing about mobile applications? I think most of the mobile applications have failed to cross this chasm. And most of the applications have ignored the behavioral change aspect of it. We are used to applications on the desktop. But migrating the same application on the mobile creates severe usability issues which hinders the mass adoption.

Take for example, internet browsing on the phone. The user experience is completely different from what we do on the PC. The behavioral change needed is huge. As a result its still in the early adopter phase. Same thing goes for all other mobile applications which have a desktop counterpart.

So whats the way out? I think we should stop approaching mobile as a replacement for the PC. Its a new computing platform and applications with forge their own way should be developed for it. So instead of trying to replicate the Firefox or IE on the phone, we should be thinking of approaching internet browsing on the mobile in a new way. What that way is still to be discovered!

Here's some more links for reading about this theory:
Act Your Age!
Ten Reasons High Tech Companies Fail.

Tags: Marketing, Technology Lifecycle, Mobile Applications, Mobile Internet.

Collective Hopping

2007-07-11T09:03:00.000-07:00

Its the newest fad in town. :) Its Barcamp'ing time again. The format has been tweaked a bit and instead of speakers and tracks, we have collectives. And going by the number of collectives, I think I'll do some "collective hopping". Promises to be load of fun.

See you there.

Tags: Barcamp, Bangalore, India.

QC vs Sprint

2007-06-06T22:50:00.000-07:00

Ars Techicna points us to another big patent battle for QC: on OFDMA patents this time. Sprint Nextel has till now not heeded to QC's claims that it holds key patents for the technology around which WiMAX (and all forthcoming 4G one's) is built upon. QC has a good war chest for these kind of situations and will be more than willing to go the whole hog. Going by historical data, it might just win. That will be one big blow to WiMAX.

The other interesting point to note is the sour relations between Sprint Nextel and QC. Sprint is one of two big CDMA based carriers in US and they both were partners at one point of time. Legend has it that Sprint's EVDO network was all because of a short trip to San Deigo. Things started to go bad when Sprint decided to go for WiMAX for its 2.5 GHz spectrum. QC had pitched for Flash OFDM.
QC it seems is still looking for its pound of flesh.

Tags: WiMAX, Qualcomm, Sprint Nextel, Patents, OFDM, 4G.

VSNL's Enterprise WiMAX

2007-06-01T07:33:00.000-07:00

A news worth noting: the first commercial launch of WiMAX in India. Not much information available about the tarrifs, but it would be similar to a leased line connection, around Rs. 2 Lakhs per year. Strangely although the news media is reporting it, there is no mention of it on the website. Since VSNL's been owned by Tata's now, that is a bit surprising. Or it might be just intentional!

Its up to the market now to validate this new kid on the block. Lets see how far it goes.

Tags: WiMAX, VSNL, Enterprise Broadband, India.

Cisco WiMAX Acquisition?

2007-05-22T11:47:00.000-07:00

Unstrung reports that several divisions of Cisco is looking at WiMAX. Does that mean that Cisco is pulling out its big fat checkbook once again for the WiMAX companies? It would be likely if Cisco greenlights WiMAX. They have previously taken the public stance against it. But if they change their mind, they will be the second heavyweight to do so after Qualcomm.

In other news, Clearwire's spending on WiMAX is predicted to be in excess of 4 Billion this year. Same for Sprint Nextel. Given that much of money being poured into WiMAX gear, it is not surprising that companies start looking at that market. That would mean only good times for startups since none of the big guns have anything ready for market yet.

Good times for WiMAX.

Technorati Tags: WiMAX, Cisco, Qualcomm, Clearwire, Sprint Nextel, 4G.

Youth and Entrepreneurship

2007-05-20T07:50:00.001-07:00

Whats age got to do with entrepreneurship you ask. Here's a nice article explaining how the Bayesian advantage works for the younger entrepreneurs. And in my personal experience I have seen this working out. This also explains, why the hottest companies in the valley are founded by very young people just out of the college.

Over the last year, since I left my regular job, I have come across a lot of entrepreneurs. And in my mind I have made a classification of sorts. People around 35+ go for low risk ventures and younger ones do the opposite. The age factor has everything to do with it. Since you are young, you can take bet a few years of your life chasing a dream and still not lose much if you dont make it. If your idea was really revolutionary, you stand to gain a lot. Its a gamble only younger people can take.

Besides, it much more fun exploring the unknown. :)

Tags: Entrepreneurship, Startups, Age

Mobile Vs Fixed Internet

2007-05-15T09:23:00.000-07:00

A very nice post on the mobile vs fixed internet access by Dean Bubley. His blog is a must read for anyone tracking this space.

The predominant view in India is that the Mobile Internet will dominate the Fixed PC based Internet. The explosive growth of mobile phones is often cited as a reason for it. The shenanigan's have been touting the mobile platform and it is one of the reasons why Mobile VAS is such a hot segment these days. Mobile VAS seems to be the way of bridging the gap between the Fixed Internet and Mobile Internet. Adapt a service from the web on to the mobile and mint some money.

The contrarian view to it is that the heavy duty work will always be done on a Fixed PC connection. The mobile broadband services in India do not provide the same experience that a Fixed Line, 256 Kbps based internet access does. Which makes the user go back to doing the real work when online. Even if the mobile phones match the capabilities of computer, it will be difficult for this generation to change their habits and switch to a mobile based platform for all the work.

Which leaves one big question: what would be the preffered access method for people who have never experienced internet? How will they look at Internet, how will they use Internet? Should we even bother to get them on Internet? I have been thinking about this since one of our speakers in Mobile Monday events, Dr. GV pointed it out.

What should be the focus of Mobile VAS in India? Bridging the gap or providing new services which are one generation ahead of the internet.

Tags: Mobile Internet, Fixed Internet, Broadband, Mobile Monday.

Five Things to Enjoy For A Entrepreneur

2007-04-20T20:38:00.000-07:00

Life's tough when you are a struggling first time entrepreneur. You dont have credibility on your side, people throw up questions for which there are no answers and to top it all, you are completely broke. But that does not mean that you cannot enjoy some of the simple pleasures of life. Here's my top 5.

Traveling in the rush hour in these. They kind of feel like home these days!
Enjoying the freedom and expressing it with a overgrown beard and a ponytail. Not to mention repeating the same set of clothes until you cannot stand them. :)
Answering the question "so, where do you work?".
Sleeping in the office before an early morning meeting after you've spent the night working.
The first cheque from an investor/customer. Amazing feeling!

Its an amazing experience. Much better that I hoped or dreamt it would be.

To 3G or Not To 3G

2007-03-22T21:17:00.000-07:00

The DOT officials are pondering over this question heavily it seems, as per Unstrung. It has been months since TRAI recommended a policy and the first trials started. But in typical fashion, the final decision on the spectrum allocation has been postponed from one month to the other. The reason it seems are lots of unsolved issues, but none are mentioned. I guess among them would be that the spectrum in question is being used by the Defence Forces, as was the case with WiMAX.

The intriguing part is how and why WiMAX is playing into all of these. There seems to be a lobby favoring WiMAX driven by the vendors. But again the spectrum released for WiMAX is 3.3 GHz and the bandwidth is 100 MHz. Since this is not the spectrum the rest of the world is using for WiMAX, it means that India will not benifit from economies of scale. So even if we go for WiMAX, will it be really affordable? The rural broadband angle is being unnecessarily played up, I think.

Maybe DOT does not want to go either way. Maybe its thinking about following China as it did with TD-SCDMA. Wouldn't that do wonders for Telecom startups in India!

Tags: 3G, WiMAX, Spectrum, Licenses, India

MoMo March

2007-03-21T06:25:00.000-07:00

The topic this time is Building Websites for Mobile Users and the speaker is M. T. Raghunath from Google India. After that we have a demo of Mango Technolgies' Mobile Application Development Platform.

So see you there.

Convergence and Operators

2007-03-20T02:14:00.000-07:00

Red Herring has a carefully worded article on the status of Fixed Mobile Convergence. It is the latest and the hottest convergence technology in Telecom nowadays and promises to solve all the problems associated in juggling between the home/landline connection and mobile connection. The landline phone's days are numbered if this technology picks up.

Unfortunately its not. And Red Herring places the blame squarely on the Operators. Either the backend network cannot handle the seamless handover between WiFi and mobile worlds or the Telco's haven't marketed it properly. One of the enabling technologies for FMC is IMS. But IMS is still being trialled. So the only option is to deploy GNA (the new name for UMA) which adds additional costs.

The other problem, which the report fails to mention, is that WiFi is something the operators are not really happy about. The combination of VoIP (read Skype) and WiFi can become a nightmare for the Telcos. Already their cash cow, voice revenues are at the lowest. And this combination has the ability to hurt that even more. Its only logical for them to resist this change. Their preferred way of doing it would be to replace the WiFi router in the home with a Pico or Femto cell. This approach removes the threat posed by the free VoIP services and keeps their revenues intact.

But again, WiFi is the incumbent at home. Its popular, cheap and proven to work. Virtually all devices at home are getting WiFi enabled. So how long will the operators be able to resist this onslaught is the question.

Tags: Fixed Mobile Convergence, Convergence, WiFi, Telcos., Operators, 3G, IMS.

Vodafone and Skype

2007-03-15T12:36:00.000-07:00

Some news about the mutiny of the smaller operators. Vodafone has demo'ed a prototype called Starfish which allows you to use Skype and other Internet VoIP calling services! The reasoning given by the article is that Vodafone is the market leader and it has to keep up pace with its rivals. Which in turn means that X Series is a successful product and is drawing customers away from Vodafone. It might not be launched but this but at least 3 has managed to force Vodafone's hand.

The X Series launch had drawn a lot of opinions from everyone around. There was speculation that this might be the watershed in Telco. history. That was followed up with news of Sprints intention to build an Open Mobile WiMAX network. No updates on that one yet. But going by the trend, it seems a more open minded approach is picking up. And its ultimately the business factors which are forcing them to do it. Dont you love the way free markets work!

Its been long overdue. The operators really need to stop thinking about "subscribers" and start thinking about "customers".

Tags: Vodafone, Skype, 3, X Series, VoIP, Mobile

Barcamp Bangalore 3

2007-03-12T05:05:00.000-07:00

For those who dont know yet, the Barcamp Bangalore 3 has been announced. Its happening on 31st March and 1st of April and is picking up steam. This time around the topic is Social Impact of Technology. And the second day is dedicated to Demo's. I am planning to provide a sneak preview of our product ThinFone. So if you are going to be there, dont miss it.

Also there is talk of a Demo Camp and Barcamp India going on. Things are heating up in Bangalore. Is this the year for entrepreneurs? Lets wait and watch.

Previous Coverage: Barcamp 1, Barcamp 2, Barcamp 2 Experiences.

OT: My Heritage

2007-03-04T10:04:00.000-08:00

Random Wikipedia browsing one of my favorite ways to kill time. To my surprise, I came across few pages that I never imagined would be there. About times and places long gone by and forgotten. Here is a sample.

This is the place that I hail from. My parents are from interior villages of Bhagalpur, most commonly known for its Riots. During my childhood we used to visit there every summer vacation. The last time I was there was 7 years ago and am sure that I wont ever visit it again. I still fondly remember the places and times but. Village life is so much different.

My mother tongue is this. I have vivid memories of one of my distant uncles telling me about it during one of our trips. He was a local school teacher. My mother still speaks it, but neither my brother nor me can speak it anymore. Its not going to get passed down to our kids obviously. Which is a bit sad.

I was born at this place. I spent most of my childhood and teenage years here. Silchar is still the place I call my hometown and identify the most with. I used to speak the local dialect of Bengali (called Sylethi) fluently although that is also fading now. Reminds me of a strange story. The house next mine was under construction. One day I woke up with a feeling of deja vu. I though I was in Silchar. The reason was the workers on the next bulding were speaking fluent Sylethi. It was surreal. Took few moments for me come back to reality.

All this just goes to illustrate why Wikipedia is the most important repository of cataloged information today. Its an amazing piece of work.

MoMo Demo Coverage

2007-02-27T13:53:00.000-08:00

This event of MoMo was definitely one of the more interesting ones. Our speaker was Naveen R from Tonse Telecom and the topic, WiFi Market in India, generated some interesting comments. Nobody it seems was convinced of the potential of the WiFi in India. The numbers (around $1B) were unimpressive and the growth nothing compared to mobile phones. Unfortunately the mobile aspect completely overshadowed the discussion. IMHO there's too much focus on mobiles in India. But thats a separate post.

Demo's were the real show stealer this time around. In MoMo Bangalore's own characteristic way, it was chaotic. The audience gave a hard time to Akshat and Rajan. Akshat demoed the Active Mobs product which is a group messaging solution built on SMS. Rajan showed us Motvik's WWIGO (Wireless Webcam Wherever I Go) product which turns your camera phone into a live webcam. Understandably both of them were a bit upset about rough treatment.

But I kind of liked the way it all turned out in the end. Real world users are pretty much like this. Real users hate to learn a new things. Real users tend to oppose change. Real users have to be marketed to, won over, wooed. If anything, it was a preview of things to come and unbiased first hand opinion of their targeted customer base. This was as close they can get to their real world users. And to be fair, quite a few people were impressed.

The one common aspect among them is that their focus is to first build the community first. These are free services which do not generate any revenue right now. In fact the SMS volume of Inactiv costs them Rs. 200 a day. Its the mantra of Web 2.0 being applied to Mobile VAS; community first, monetization later. And both of them are looking at advertising as a possible revenue stream. Which does not again have many fans in India. But monetization is really an afterthought here. Which I think is the right way to go with these kind of services.

What is needed right now is strategization. They have to pick their next step very carefully and figure out a way to move forward. As Sramana points out, they need experienced hands to guide them. Hopefully they'll find some. Entrepreneurship needs courage. Kudos to them for doing it. Here's wishing them good luck and success. We really need more such examples.

WiFi Market in India, Inactiv, Motvik

2007-02-19T06:10:00.000-08:00

We have announced the Feb Event of MoMo Bangalore. We ran into a bit of trouble when our scheduled speaker backed out due to personal commitments. After frantically looking for another one we found Naveen R of Tonse Telecom. Tonse Telecom is one of the few Market Research firms specializing in India. They recently released a report on WiFi Market in India. Content Sutra had covered it earlier this month. Naveen's talk will cover this report.

We had kept Demo's as a backup if we do not find a replacement speaker. But we have had an enthusiastic response. So we are thinking of regularizing this in our events. An open door policy for anyone who wants to demo his product/service. It only has to related to Mobility and/or Wireless.

This time around its Motivk and Inactiv. Rajan has recently launched his Alpha product called WWIGO. He is going to Demo it this event. Inactiv is the other company doing the Demo. I ran into them in the Bangalore Barcamp and they have a unique mobile messaging solution. Next time it'll be Sloka Telecom and Mango Technologies.

So register yourself and come down and enjoy the show.

Tags: Mobile Monday Bangalore, MoMo, Bangalore, India.

ThinFone: Our Product Blog

2007-02-15T13:07:00.000-08:00

We have just launched our product Blog. Here is the URL.

http://www.thinfone.com/blog/

The idea is to document the process which leads to the Pilot Program launch. It's going to be a very exciting next few months for us. Join us in this journey. :)

And if you dont know what ThinFone is, dont worry. Once we are ready we'll tell you all about it. For starters, check out the website for an intro.

Tags: ThinFone, Startup, Entrepreneurship, India

Free Linux Kernel Development

2007-02-14T02:12:00.000-08:00

A quick post to point to this great program. If you have a device which you want to supported in Linux, the Linux Kernel developers will do it for free for you. And push it into the mainline. It means a great deal in the embedded world where to get the devices working you need a working driver from the manufacturer. Having the kernel developers do it is a much better way of getting it done though. The only issue is the NDA and to cover that there is a program with the FSF.

Linux is a very powerful alternative to all the embedded OS's these days. It already supports a large variety of interfaces and devices. And nowadays most of the manufacturers by default provide support for Linux for their products. There are companies which support these Linux Distributions. They generally provide a basic customized kernel but for the full thing you have to pay. For an early stage venture this is not an option. Therefore you end up writing the device drivers yourself or integrating from some other source. That, although is fun, takes a lot of time and effort.

If this program succeeds, it will become a trivial task to port linux on any embedded solution.

Via: Slashdot.

Tags: Linux Kernel, Device Drivers, Embedded, Open Source.

Tremor Guide

2007-02-05T02:57:00.000-08:00

Tremor is a fixed point version of the Ogg Vorbis decoder meant for embedded systems which do not have a Floating Point Unit. Its an excellent piece of software developed by the Xiph foundation. Unfortunately its not maintained properly. It took me some time to get it all together. So here is a guide for those who are interested.

The trunk version does not work for me; autogen fails. But the low mem branch wroks fine. Download it straight from the svn here.

This version has a big memory hole. The patch for that is available from the mailing list. Download it here.

There is a performance improvement patch which uses IMDCT by Sandvall. That patch can be found here (thesis is here). Many thanks to Frantisek Dufka for sharing it. I had to make some changes in the makefile to get this working properly.

There is another patch which increases the performance by 15 %. I havent tried it out but its available here. Dunno if its already there in the low mem branch.

Thats all that is needed to make it work. Also check out the Rockbox's version of Tremor. They seem to have made a lot of changes, which again I havent tried out.

The one thing that is missing from the Ogg Vorbis specification is redundancy. The primary focus there seems to be encoding/decoding from/to files. I have been using it for streaming and packet losses lead to some nasty breaks. I am entertaining thoughts of adding that capability to Vorbis. Sounds like a good challenge! I am hard pressed for time right now but. :(

Real Estate and Startups

2007-01-29T02:12:00.000-08:00

How are they related you ask? They are. Consider this. Early stage startups need money. In the Silicon Valley, Angels provide this money along with their expertise and help the startup in making a profitable business. Its no secret that the Silicon Valley model does not work in India. First of all you dont have any creditable Angels in India and for those who are there, its very difficult to find an exit. The closest thing you can get in India are the returned NRI's. Those who have worked for startups in the valley and made their money and returned back for various personal or professional reasons.

But getting them to don the role of an Angel is again a difficult proposition. The reason being, real estate. Buying and selling houses is such a profitable business nowadays that everyone is happy just hoarding their cash into a upcoming property, sitting back and enjoying the fruits. The NRI's also prefer to put their extra cash into the real estate. Even the big corporate IT players are doing the same. Ever wondered why no companies in India have a Venture Capital arm? Investing in Real Estate gives them much more returns without the risk.

But things might change. Going by this article in FT, people have started talking about a correction. A correction driven by the high real estate prices in India. I really hope the real estate market crashes. We might then see some more money being put into startups like ours!

iPhone: A Niche Product

2007-01-20T09:25:00.000-08:00

The hype created by the launch of iPhone has been amazing. Almost everyone has written about it and going by the gushing, it is already a hit in the market. Without being launched yet or a dollar being spent on the marketing! A testimonial to the brand called Apple (read Steve Jobs). The Apple brand is strong and in very good health.

But whats being missing in all what I have read till now is the reason why Apple was forced to cannibalize it most successful product: the iPod. There must have been a very good reason. The tipping point, it seems, has been recent success of music phones. Music phones have been doing very good business lately. I myself bought a music phone, with a FM so that could listen to music and have to carry only a single device. And the iPod has been suffering. Yes it been selling, but the sales growth has reached a plateau. For a very nice and detailed analysis go here. Makes a lot of sense.

The success of iPod and iTunes had started to threaten the mobile phone industry. For them the world is and should be converged on a single device: the phone. The iPod was about divergence. They had to make their move and music phones were launched. Just like iTunes, they also started building content delivery backends. Nokia acquired LoudEye just to force Apple's hand. And finally the MEN's (Motorola, Ericsson, Nokia) of this world have got Apple on their own turf.

But as with Mac and iPod the iPhone will never be a mass market product. It will be niche product for people who have the buying power and brand loyalty. The music phones will always outsell it. If ever Apple does go the mass market route, the battle will be something to watch out for. It would be difficult to beat the incumbents. But then, they are Apple.

The wheel finally has turned a full circle. It was Sony which had introduced the concept of music on the go. Apple took the concept to the digital age. Now with its Walkman phones, Sony Ericsson has reclaimed its glory.

Bonus Link: Dont miss this ad of the Sony Ericsson walkman phone. I absolutely love it. Note how the world "love" is never used in it. And how in the end the guy says hello, to emphasize that it is a phone. Wonderful.

Tags: iPhone, iPod, Apple, Musicphone, Mobile, Music, Sony, Walkman.

Cameraphones and Privacy

2007-01-20T06:21:00.000-08:00

An interesting article on how camera phones have affected the us all. As it puts succinctly, it has launched a thousand jackasses! That is true if you think about its impact in India. Every now and then you hear the news of an MMS scandal which generally involves someone filming his partner and boasting about it to his friends and in the end it finally it lands up on a website. Having said that, some of them are really funny.

The troubling aspect of it all is the loss of privacy. We naturally have this urge to capture a pretty face or an important moment (the Kodak moment as it is called). With all the photo sharing and video sharing sites on the net, its trivial to share it with our network as well. I guess its okay as long as its a public moment. Things start getting bad when we do it without consent or for our own private moments. That in turn depends on our own perceptions.

The concept of privacy needs a urgent makeover I guess!

Tags: Cameraphone, MMS, Photo Sharing, Video Sharing

Open Source == Innovation?

2007-01-17T01:12:00.001-08:00

As per this report sponsored by European Union, switching to open source software increases the short term costs but leads to significant savings in the long term. The Total Cost of Ownership therefore is lower compared to Proprietary software. Followers and believers have always claimed this. They stand vindicated at least. Its great to see Open Source Software getting backing from government organizations. It is a proof how it has fundamentally changed the dynamics of the software business.

But if you read the report carefully (beware, its a huge one), you'll find a recurrent theme in it. Open Source software has become a hub for innovation. Technologically they are better, if not equal, to most of the proprietary software out there. And it is not difficult to see why. The philosophy behind it encourages people to solve a problem if they find it and share the improved product with the rest. Most of the stuff out there is pretty much cutting edge. Some are even bleeding edge! If you want a specific example, go here. And here. They solve real world problems and I dont think there are any proprietary equivalents.

This has had a domino effect on innovation itself. To create a product or service which solves a pain point has become relatively easy these days. Its basically a combination of lots of LGPL'ed libraries with your application on top. The barrier to entry is considerably lower. I bet all the startups these days are using open source software in one form or the other. If they are not, then they are missing out. We at Sedna Wireless are in fact leveraging a lot of them. And if we succeed, we will be the first one's to contribute back to the community. I hope we live to see that day.

So if you have a startup idea, I would recommend doing some research in the open source software world first. Its likely that someone has done it already.

Links: Slashdot's disucssion thread. BBC's coverage.

Tags: Open Source, FOSS, FLOSS, Innovation, Startups, Entrepreneurship.

MoMo Bangalore January Event

2007-01-17T00:33:00.000-08:00

The announcement for the January Event is up here. The topic is the over "Killer" Apps, Trends etc. It promises to be lot of fun. To think about it, there is only one Killer App which drives the internet. Pr0n. It was and is the biggest industry on the Internet and is THE reason why it is viable commercially. But that is not the case with Mobiles. Mostly due to regulation, I guess. IMHO, on mobiles the killer app is, surprise surprise, voice.

The registrations are filling up pretty quickly. So sign up fast for it.

Tags: Mobile Monday Bangalore, MoMoBa, India.

Sprint's Open Network

2007-01-13T07:58:00.000-08:00

It is said that contrarians always end up changing the world. They are the one's who bring in new ideas, some of them which go on to have a lasting impact. In the operator world, there are breakaway one's too. T-Mobile and Three are done it before with UMA and X-Series. And now its Sprint.

Michael Mace tells us about something unimaginable coming from an operator. Open Network, Open Devices, no contracts and embracing the open culture. Sprint is a desperate operator. It has been in tough times recently. With their back to their walls they are thinking about doing things which an Verizon or Cingular will never ever dream about. The plan as it sounds now is a winner. If they dont give in to greed, stick to just being a bit-pipe and allow users to use it at reasonable rates, there is no reason why they will not end up changing landscape. Users will flock to them in droves.

But a plan which cannot be executed is worthless. They need a strong visionary leader to execute it. Still kudos to them to at least thinking about it.

Update: GigaOm says that the debate is still on and the signs are not looking good.

Tags: Sprint, WiMAX, Open Network, Mobile Boradband.

The GX Linux Scam

2007-01-10T15:53:00.000-08:00

We recently purchased a CSB535 Development board from Cogent. Its a low cost ARM 9 based development platform which can be used for rapid prototyping. It came along with a Embedded ARM distribution called GX-Linux supplied by Microcross which included a package for Windows and Linux hosts. The solution looked pretty promising on the face of it but we were in for a big surprise.

The problem was the Build environment. The build environment on Windows, which was based on Cygwin was severely restricted. And on Linux, the crucial files were missing. It was basically an incomplete package. After a few mails I discovered that that Microcross sells several flavors of their software. The basic one which is provided free as is and comes with the board. The premium one's have the complete build environment and it costs around $2000 including support.

Which begs the question: isn't withholding the sources a violation of GPL in the first place? My question to the support was left unanswered. To add to my suspicions, there was not much information available on the web about GX-Linux. From whatever I could fathom, it seems that, GX-Linux is a private build controlled by a company whose business model is to profit from the work done by the free software community.

This is one business model that I dont recommend. Its a shame!

Mobile VAS Numbers

2007-01-03T00:38:00.000-08:00

Here are some India specific Mobile VAS numbers: Market Size is around $ 600 Million, expected to grow at around 60 % and reach $ 1 Billion in 2007. The revenue share stands at 60:25:15 for the operator, provider, copyright owner. On the face it looks very promising. But lets get a bit deeper into it.

Assuming that you are a startup operating in this market, and assuming that you have a great product which will outsell others, you'll probably still have around 25 % share of the pie. So you're on target to make $ 60 Million. Thinking realistically, given the number of players in this industry, and the maturity of the consumer base, you'll struggle to reach the 5% mark. That works out to around 10 Million USD. (Also note that the data is from secondary sources!)

Is that enough to play with? Methinks someone has to be big hit in this segment to make a ton of money. Still Mobile VAS startups did attract some attention from the VC's this year. But a closer inspection reveals something else. OnMobile is a Mobile VAS platform provider; so you can count them out. JiGrahak and Paymate happened around the same time and that was largely due to the KPCB factor. That leaves IMIMobile and Mauj. They are hardly startups anymore! On the other hand the Web Startups had a sterling year. Notice that there are no other companies but the Consumer Internet and Mobile VAS one's.

So maybe its time for you give a second thought to that Web 2.0 concept again. Or just forget the numbers and figure out a way get to revenues without help from our VC friends!

Bonus Link: BW's series on Startups. (Hat tip: Puneeth)

Update: Here's Sidhartha's take on the report.

OLPC Launches

2007-01-02T15:42:00.000-08:00

In spite of all the all the odds, the OLPC XO has been launched. It has reached production and the first batch is going to reach the countries signed up in few months. No mention of the cost though. It will take decades for the impact to be visible. But my hunch is that it will change the approach a lot of people have towards computers. Debatable yes, but its my hunch.

Let the flamewars begin!

Winsock, Codesearch and the New Year.

2006-12-30T10:02:00.000-08:00

Here is a useful tip if you are working on winsock. If you ever get the error 10035 (EWOULDBLOCK) while sending data from the application, then one thing which might work is increasing the send buf size with SO_SNDBUF option. It may still come but the frequency will reduce by a large amount. Here are some example usages. And this tip is proved to be a lifesaver for me!

BTW, Google Codesearch rocks! Here is a gem I found! Ah. Coding sometimes gives kicks, doesn't it. :)

And yup. The template has finally been changed. In preparation for the new year. A very happy new year to everybody. Enjoy!

WiMAX Challenges

2006-12-28T22:55:00.000-08:00

A detailed backgrounder on the challenges WiMAX is facing right now, both political and technical. The technical issues are mainly the size of the device, power consumption and handover. It is far from being realized as a truly mobile technology which gives users high data speeds on the move. That is one of the reasons why its called Fixed Wireless or Nomadic. But then it is a relatively new technology. They will be solved as more and more money goes into it.

The political one is a bit more complex though. Its the 802.20 standard. Better known as Qualcomm's Flash OFDM! Seems that it has been already standardized by TIA and it has actually worked out a solution for the handover problem. QC has always maintained that Flash OFDM is a technologically superior. Seems that it is so! The last time 802.20 made news was when the working group was suspended. The article has a very nice summary of why and how did it happen. IEEE has sorted out things now and the working group is back on track.

The year 2007 seems to be poised for a rollicking start. Its back to the high stakes games!

Tags: WiMAX, 802.20, Flash OFDM, IEEE Standards, 4G

IndiaFM and Digg

2006-12-27T03:18:00.000-08:00

This is hilarious. Somebody is posting India FM links to Digg. The stories are not getting any attention but the speed at which the user is submitting the stories surely is. So much so its on the Front Page of Digg! A picture of a diligent employee who has been instructed post stories on Digg comes to mind instantaneously. Someone out there just discovered Digg it seems.

Poor guy. :)

read more | digg story

Tags: Digg, Crowdsourcing, IndiaFM, India, Funny

Free Messaging!

2006-12-26T01:47:00.000-08:00

The most cost-effective use of the mobile phone is, of course, communicating via missed calls. I guess everybody has used this method sometime or the other. Its intuitive and does not cost anything. Missed calls have become such a craze nowadays that it is starting to worry the operators. But charging them might really offend the users and run into regulatory troubles as well!

But that is besides the point. Here is a great study about the use of shared mobile phones in Uganda. A short summary is here. The same rules apply elsewhere as well. Read it to get an idea of how the masses use communication tools effectively.

The communication revolution is happening around us right now.

Interesting Quotes of 2006

2006-12-25T05:38:00.000-08:00

"There is an old joke within the wireless industry, from years ago, that, in the beginning, God created the heavens, part of which is the electromagnetic spectrum. He then gave the spectrum to Motorola, who tells the FCC what to do with it. Maybe it’s not that much of a joke anymore,"

More here.

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a very happy 2007.

Talk on 3G in India

2006-12-11T03:33:00.000-08:00

The winter has finally set in here in Bangalore. To warm up things a bit we have a hot topic to discuss in this month's edition of Mobile Monday Bangalore: 3G In India. The hype around it is just starting to build. The trails were announced a few months ago, TRAI is actively working on the spectrum issue and the government has clamped down on Internet V oIP Telephony at the operators behest! Sure signs of things heating up in 2007.

This is therefore the perfect time to delve a bit more into this topic. Look out for more discussion on this topic here.

The Dark Side of Services

2006-12-07T01:28:00.000-08:00

If there is one standout sector in the new economy of India, its Information Technology Services and they ecosystem of Enabled services (ITES) they have spawned. It has created millions of jobs for young graduates, created wealth for them, has been a major factor in the Real Estate boom, contributed to a high spending middle class consumer base and most of all, given India a brand name. The back office of the world! The TCS's, Wipro's and the Infosys' of the India have captured the imagination of people all around the globe. They are great companies, something every Indian should be proud of.

But it has come at a price. The price of Innovation. Services has been such a big money puller that the product making startups in India have been laid by the wayside. They have sucked in talent, set the bar too low for them, given them mundane work and ruined their careers. For the average Ramu who has been in the industry for around 5 years, he's doing good if he is into people management, owns a Apartment somewhere, has a car and a 9 to 5 job. He is right on the path of becoming a email processor, excel sheet expert with a good knowledge of CMMI.

Unfortunately that is not what is needed to create world class products. Passion and sweat is. You have to put your ass down, write the code, test it and do the work. And keep doing the same thing for nights and nights without end. Marketing and everything else always follow the work. This is an alien culture for the vast majority of workforce out there who are just happy with a 9 to 5 job which involves handling a few fire fights, sending mails and indulging in some office politics. They cannot code and do not want to code. And they fail spectacularly when put in a situation where they are in charge.

So it came as no surprise to me when the organizers of Barcamp drew up a list and found that there are only around 100 of product startups in India. 100? Thats the number of startups which start and wind up in Silicon valley in a month I guess! This is not the only factor, but one of the major one's in my view. But the attendance of Barcamp (around 300) also proved that people are revolting against this. They are the one's on which our hopes depend. They are the harbingers change, of a brave new world.

Barcamp Hangover

2006-12-04T22:51:00.000-08:00

Man. It was two amazing fun filled days. I had loved the first one and this one was even better. Suddenly now its back to work and I miss the excitement! It was heartening to see new faces there along with the second timers. Almost everyone whom I bumped into there had a plan. They are either doing something or are thinking of. Its like dry hay. It just needs a spark and a huge deluge will come. A deluge of innovation and entrepreneurship from Bangalore. More on that later.

Here my presentation about the open source project I am running.

You can check out all the presentations here. The flickr photo stream is here. Enjoy!

QC's Legal Battles

2006-11-29T00:15:00.000-08:00

Some juicy bits from a very detailed analysis of the legal battles Qualcomm is facing right now.

As per the author, Nokia is worried about the royalty part. As the shipments of WCDMA handsets increase, it is seeing more and more revenues flowing from its coffers into QC's. Hypothetically if WCDMA handsets are the only handsets in the world, then effectively QC would own 5% of Nokia. That is unnerving for Nokia. TI has the same problem. Ericsson on the other hand wants a competitive edge over Huawei and does not want QC to license its technologies to them. All of these have ganged up right now and they are using the EU to press their case.

The WiMAX factor is a bit more interesting. It seems that QC is readying its legions of lawyers for litigation against WiMAX players right now which is inflating the bills. There is no doubt that QC will use these patents to kill WiMAX, after its Flash OFDM offering was piped to the post by WiMAX. The deal in question is the Sprint Nextel deal and the author goes to point out that Sprint is in a bad management shape right now after the merger. Nevertheless, the point the author missed out was that they had to differentiate themselves from the Verizon somehow. And it was either WiMAX or Flash OFDM. They choose WiMAX. Even though QC had decades of relationship with Sprint!

Another interesting take is on the QC partnership with the Operators. The Operators and the handset makers have been at logger heads for sometime now. The Operators want control over the handsets, preferably their own branded ones. The consumers want more services on it and the handset manufacturer's have to satisfy them. The classic case was the introduction of WiFi radio in mobile phones. It gives the consumers an option to bypass the operators network and obviously operators are not happy about that. Everybody is worried what happens when Skype goes into wireless devices and people start using that free service.

In comes QC. They are trying to fundamentally change the value chain and cut out the handset majors from it completely. It would just have the the chip providers, the manufacturer, the software provider and the operators. A win win situation for both QC and the Operators. The operators keep control on the platform and QC gets royalties from the ODM's. That in turn gets passed into the unit cost, which is again subsidized by the Operator. So everyone is happy, except the consumers. They dont get what they want. Funny!

In the end, the article predicts, the best brains will prevail. And QC, beyond doubt, has the best brains in the wireless technology business. That is true.

Talk on Mobile TV

2006-11-26T05:52:00.000-08:00

This month's Mobile Monday event has been announced. Mobile TV is a very hot topic these days with lot of hype and hopes surrounding it. One of the most read posts on this blog are the one's on Mobile TV incidentally (thanks to Google!). Since we have someone from the operator to speak this time, it will be very interesting to know their viewpoint.

I am definitely looking forward to it. Hope to see you there as well.

Clean and Fresh UI!

2006-11-24T09:49:00.000-08:00

A nice example of how innovative thinking can bring about new ideas!

The X Series Impact

2006-11-22T03:50:00.000-08:00

Its been some time since the X Series was announced. The X Series is a flat rate subscriber plan which bundles mobile broadband with popular applications such as Sling Media, iSkoot (an interoperable VoIP Client) and Orb. Since then there has been a growing interest in it with several influential bloggers pointing out the implications. BW has now picked up the thread and is carrying a detailed analysis of it.

So why this much interest? Its the old battle of open gardens of the internet against the walled gardens approach of the Telcos. So are the Telco's really opening up? Some breakaway carriers are. They are right now bit players in terms of subscriber base and they hope to increase it by providing the same services which the bigger players refuse to. It was predicted before. T Mobile embraced UMA for the same reason. Now the focus really is how effective these plans are. Can they dent the numbers of the Verizon's and Vodafone's?

If they do succeed, which is a big if, true disruption will happen. The best answer to this if is the question of data service. Data service is and will always be an add on feature for the mobile phone. Its the voice service which matters the most. Mobile phones are primarily used for voice and voice revenue, although on the decline, are still the major chunk of operators pie. And the Internet VoIP Services, the Skype's and GTalk can never better the quality of the plain old circuit switched voice calls. For the simple reason that its an unmanaged network. There is no guarantee of QoS there. Which means that an important call might drop anytime! You cannot rely on the service nor claim any support for it.

The Telco. killing VoIP service is still not there. Skype has come closest to it. But it needs to be improved upon if you want to really kill the Telcos. The X Series will have an impact on the final outcome though. Its testing the waters.

Update: Its a mutiny rather than a revolution, says Om.

PutVoted!

2006-11-20T10:42:00.000-08:00

This is going to be a nice test of the crowdsourcing phenomenon in India. There is a site called PutVote. Its a Digg clone. And its for Indians (there are several of them!) . Thanks to Ravages, one of my posts is up there. The Digg effect is legendary and has even a mirror site dedicated to its victims. Watch out for results out here.

PS: Dont forget to Vote!

Update: Its a trickle, rather than a deluge. Disappointing.

EVDO In Good Health

2006-11-20T04:15:00.000-08:00

Looks like EVDO is winning the 3G battle in US hands down. The major CDMA carriers, Verizon and Sprint Nextel have publicly announced roll outs of EVDO Rev A and Rev B and C are on the horizon as well. Rev B's major feature is Mulitcarrier support and Rev C is about OFDM on the wireless link. With all this traction, EVDO is firmly entrenched technology in the US.

On the other hand UMTS deployments have lagged behind and it will be some time before they can even match or compete with EVDO. HSUPA provides QoS and uplink rates similar to EVDO Rev A and are technologically quite similar as well. Cingular has plans to roll it out and but for it to become mainstream it will take at least two to three years.

All this bodes well for Qualcomm. It is a major player in both these technologies. EVDO is completely QC's and it has been actively contributing to HSPA technologies as well (which explains the similarities). Globally EVDO might be destined to be a niche player but it seems to be the testing ground for cutting edge wireless access technologies.

So, good news for QC after a long time. They did get beaten in the WiMAX game, but to their credit, they are still hanging in there.

Mobile VAS Startups?

2006-11-16T05:05:00.000-08:00

If you are looking at the Mobile VAS space aggressively, here's some food for thought. The Operator's in India are not really hungry for Mobile VAS right now. They are more focussed in trying to expand their customer base and Mobile VAS is secondary right now. This point had come up fleetingly once during one of our MoMo events. Kiran makes better case out of it.

Couple this with 80-20 factor: 80 % of revenue for the operators, 20 % for the content providers. If you think you are a better bargainer, think again. With the Operator's mind elsewhere, they would just walk away from the table. The result, you have to settle for less. There are also a host of technical challenges to overcome as well related to the incompatible mobile platforms. Its almost impossible to build a cross platform mobile application today.

But if you are doing the rounds of the TiE CON's, you would know that its Mobile all the way. The VC and Entrepreneur community both are agree on one thing: the Mobile is the platform of the future and in India presents lots of opportunities. There have been some high profile investments in that segments as well: OnMobile, PayMate, JiGrahak, July Systems etc. Did the VC's get it wrong then?

The answer depends upon what you think is the gestation period for a VAS startup. In few years the user base growth will hit a plateau and the focus of the Operators will shift. The ARPU will become a major headache and Operators will be in a more listening mood. So if you time your startup to be at the right place at the right time, you are a game.

As they say, timing is everything!

Barcamp Returns

2006-11-11T02:29:00.000-08:00

The Barcamp Bangalore is back. I have vivid memories of the last one. It happened a day after I officially became jobless and it was a part of my first baby steps in the world of entrepreneurship. And I had a fun time there. Met a lot of people and made some good friends. This time it promises to be even a bigger affair. Its a two day affair and they have some cool topics lined up as well. I am especially looking forward to Sujai's talk on WiMAX. He gave a great presentation on the same topic in Mobile Monday event once.

I am putting up my talk as well. If you are interested in Open Source and hate how the mobile phone is a completely a closed architecture, be there.

The Adrenalin Rush

2006-11-09T02:38:00.000-08:00

Riya got a makeover this week. Riya is supposed to be one of the high profile Web 2.0 startups and the last Barcamp Bangalore I met a few of them. Since then I lost touch and this news came as a complete surprise. But thanks to the CEO, Munjal Shah's detailed first person account at his blog not much was missed. Its a fascinating account, a must read for anyone with an entrepreneurial bent of mind. You almost feel the tension and the adrenalin rush leading up to the launch.

This is the stuff dreams are made of. All the best to them.

The Hackable Phone

2006-11-08T04:53:00.000-08:00

The South Asian Hardware Houses are a big a factor in the hardware business. Anybody doing something related to hardware has to answer the question: how do you stop BenQ or Flextronics to launch a clone of your product and take the market away from you. So much so that the mobile phone handset majors have been restricted to only a marketing organization leaving the development and manufacturing to the ODM's. The answer it seems lies in branding, as Apple has shown with the iPod. But for smaller companies the going is much tougher. Take Trolltech for example.

It's much touted GreenPhone has a new competitor: the OpenMoKo. Its an mobile phone running on Linux with a TI baseband, Samsung ARM9 host processor, 128 MB of memory and 64 MB of Flash. It also has a AGPS support, Matchbox Window Manager and an "apt-get" like update manager. Except for the baseband and the AGPS, all other parts are open: ie. the source code is available. It is not mentioned whether the phone can be reflashed, but if they are calling it the Hackable phone, the assumption is that it would be. The Inquirer has a detailed piece on it and looks at the business case as well.

The price tag is currently at $350 which is around half as cheap as Trolltech's Greenphone. The Open Mobile Phone business is a completely new market. There are no incumbents there. And it remains to be seen if open source can make any significant impact in this market. Its the branding power that the South Asian Manufacturer's lack. And, maybe, in this business brand might not matter.

A smart move I would say.

The Yahoo Time Capsule

2006-11-06T15:14:00.000-08:00

Stumbled upon the Yahoo Time Capsule today. Its an intriguing experiment. And a very nicely designed site as well. Perfect implementation of the Web 2.0 spirit of user generated content. Every body wants to want to leave their mark, embellish their name in the history books. Only few make it though. For lesser souls like us, Yahoo Time Capsule comes to our rescue. We can now imprint our footsteps in the annals of mankind's history. Maybe someone someday, long after we have gone will actually go through it and see us. It would be a perfect snapshot of our times!

Its something like throwing bottles with messages into the ocean. Only time and place has changed. Go ahead and indulge yourself.

The CRV Bridge Loan

2006-11-02T11:48:00.000-08:00

The Bridge Loans (or Convertible Notes as they are called in financial terms) are going mainstream. Charles River Ventures, one of the oldest VC firms in the valley has started a new program called CRV QuickStart. Under this program they will provide money upto $250 K for early stage startups looking for angel money. The amount will be provided at a 6% rate of interest and 25 % discount converted once the company reaches the Series A round. In return CRV will hold the right to be participate in Series A and contribute at least 50 % to it. If Series A does not happen then CRV loses the money and the company is not liable. For more information on how convertible notes work, go here. Here is a brief FAQ on the program.

Since the launch on Wednesday (on TechCrunch!), it has kicked up a minor storm in the VC circles. The who's who of the VC world have commented on it. Generally it has been welcomed as a good idea and CRV has been appreciated for accepting the ground realities. O'Reilly Radar has a good post of the real challenges VC's businesses are up against. And by the looks of it, they have attracted significant interest. Several other VC firms are also thinking about similar programs. Depending upon its success, it might one day become the norm for all VC firms.

IMHO this model can work work wonders in India. High Tech startups in India face several challenges: lack of mature ecosystem, very little angel money and knowledge, dearth of talent with track record and not many good incubators around. Finding ways around these generally saps the energies of the founders. A scheme such as this would enable them concentrate on the work. Several Tier A VC firms in the process of establishing their presence in India right now. Hopefully someone will think about it.

Otherwise we will just have to wait till CRV comes to India.

Update: Seems that startups in India are also eligible. Waiting for a confirmation.

Update 2: Negative. :(

Feature Overload?

2006-10-30T12:04:00.000-08:00

Just coming back from another MoMo event today. This time the topic was Location Based Services on the mobile. The mobile is truly becoming the convergence device. More and more applications and features are being packed into it making it much more than the phone. Apart from doing the voice part, it can also act as a Digital Camera, Organizer, Watch, Compass, Tracking Device, Secure Token, Credit Card, Matchmaker and what not. The sky is the limit! At this pace, it will one day even do all the work for you. You'll just need to sit back and relax.

Contrast this with the latest offering from Motorola: a high tech dumb phone. Ironic! Its a bare bones phone which conserves your battery power, improves signal quality, can be charged easily, has big UI fonts, has voice activated menus and is cheap. Its meant for the emerging markets where the biggest factor are usability and cost. This seems to be the successor of the groundbreaking C115 handset. And they have put in a lot of work to create this simple phone.

So if you are suffering feature fatigue due to your mobile phone, there is some hope for you. Somebody out there wants to sell you just a phone.

The Open Source Brand

2006-10-25T03:01:00.000-07:00

I recently read the book Primal Branding by Patrick Hanlon. It is a nice read and is replete with numerous tales of companies, brands, community building etc. It proposes a theory: brands are belief systems which have seven primal code embedded within them. The Creation Story, the Creed, the Icons, the Rituals, the Sacred Words, the Pagans and finally the Leader(s). The author goes on the cite examples of existing brands which have all of the seven pieces of code and hence are successful brands (eg. Nike, Starbucks, UPS, Microsoft). There are several which do not and according to the author they are not as strong.

Reading the book it struck me how the FOSS movement has each of the seven pieces of the code. The term Open Source however is never used in the book. So here goes my analysis of the Open Source brand.

The Creation Story: It all started when RMS found that he is not able to modify his printers source code to make it work as he wants. It picked up steam when Linus decided to write a unix like kernel for the Intel x86 processor. And thus Linux was born. For a concise history, go here.

The Creed: Undoubtedly the four freedoms. The freedom to execute for any purpose, study the source code, modify if required and redistribute. They are the cornerstone of the open source movement.

The Icons: A number of them. The most identifiable being the Tux which is the mascot of Linux. The Open Source Trademark is also a popular icon. Individual projects have their own icons as well.

The Rituals: Depends upon who you are. For the user, its the downloading a tar ball, extracting it and executing the configure, make and make install steps. For the programmer its accessing the cvs or svn repository. Postings on mailing lists, forums, the LUG's are also a ritual. Even the Vi vs Emacs flamewars on slashdot is a ritual.

The Sacred Words: Again lots of them. FOSS, FLOSS, OSS are commonly used acronyms. On the mailing lists flamewar, trolling, top posting are the words one has to learn to become a part of the community. For the programmers and hackers, the acronyms get even more arcane.

The Pagans: All Microsoft'ites in general. Even within the community there are some naysayers. The recent debate of GPL v3 has brought them out in the open. The FUD practices of Microsoft is also an example.

The Leader: Depends upon which camp you are in. If you are in the FSF then its RMS. If you are more secular, its Linus. Individual project have their own leaders.

Going by the theory of primal branding, the open source brand therefore is fundamentally very strong. And its here to stay. Hence its proven. :)

Technorati Tags: Brand, Primal Branding, FOSS, Open Source, Linux.

OT: Observation's on Rails

2006-10-18T09:58:00.000-07:00

I travelled on a train after a gap of about three years. Train journeys are always memorable for some reason or the other. Its a good option if you want to take a break, see the countryside, do some reading, enjoy music, socialize with unaquainted fellow passengers and just break the monotony of day to day life. This journey was all that. Hopefully the journey back will be better.

Here are some observations.

Mobile Phones are ubiquitous. Everyone has one. There was this guy who was conducting his business while travelling on the train. The Indian Railways has responded in kind, by installing charging points on the berths. They should do that in the Sleeper Class as well though.
The network has spread. The last time only the bigger cities and towns were covered. This time only some interior rural areas did not have it. Its also amazing to see your phone work on the road.
Laptops are a craze. There were dozens of young people, presumeably executives, carrying laptops. Some were watching movies and others doing some work on the move. (How about internet access? The Indian Railways should think about it. Maybe a good idea for a startup to pursue. Wireless Broadband on Rails.)
No iPods! People had music players with them, but nobody was carrying the iPod.
Laloo Prasad Yadav is a hero in people's eyes. He has created a presonality myth around himself. I realise that he might have a decent shot at Prime Ministership down the line. Unbelieveable! Here's is the guy who invented vote bank politics, destroyed Bihar economically, introduced criminals into politics and amassed personal wealth doing all that. And he is the darling of masses nowadays!
Vijay Mallya on the other hand is an icon for the youth. He is a successful man and is very rich. Plus is always surrounded by good looking chicks. No wonder he's seen as the embodiment of success in today's world.

In summary, it was good fun. Its back to work now!

A very happy and prosperous Diwali to everybody.

Technorati Tags: Indian Railways, India.

Open Source WiFi Mesh

2006-10-13T20:32:00.000-07:00

Fascinating stuff! It took hackers from the Silicon Valley to implement India's first WiFi mesh network project. The Dharamshala WiFi mesh is made up of Linksys WRT54G routers loaded with a OpenWRT and an implementation of OLSR. It includes over 30 nodes and serves around 2000 computers. It is integrated with Asterisk VoIP PBX and provides voice services using ATA's. Unfortunately in India termination of VoIP calls to local PSTN is still illegal. Hence the network is used only to terminate VoIP calls.

They are taking the wraps off this project at the Air Jaldi summit. RMS is going to be there. Some of my friends are going to be there. Lucky guys! It is a once in a lifetime chance for nerds, hackers and Open Source evangelists in India to meet their couterparts. A perfect example of how Open Source empowers local small communities.

Technorati Tags: WiFi Mesh, Muni WiFi, WRT54G, OpenWRT, OLSR, AirJaldi, Dharamshala, India, Tibbet.

Telco. Bashing

2006-10-10T19:46:00.000-07:00

I guess everybody must have read this by now. GigaOM nicely summarizes the content here. Put this in perspective with Mike's thoughts on the same topic. Even I have indulged in some. Nevertheless, there still no one who can guarantee the level of service a Telco. gives. You have to give it to them: they know how to make voice work. But voice is so so oldish. Can they repeat the same for data? I wont bet on it.

Still, Telco. bashing is fun. :)

Technorati Tags: Telcos., Carriers, Bashing, Voice, Packet Data

PROTO.IN

2006-10-04T00:55:00.000-07:00

DEMO is coming to India. As PROTO.IN. Few enterprising blogcamp'ers from Chennai have decided to bring the DEMO style conference to India and provide a platform for cutting edge homegrown innovation. If you are in India and have a product startup, then its the right place for you. You can showcase your product to an informed audience, get feedback, pitch to VC's, maybe even sign up beta testers amongst the techie crowd, or give a sneak peak of future lifestyles. In short, its the place soak in the second wave of Indian Entrepreneurship.

To find out more, go here, here and here. Drop in a line to Vijay Anand if you have queries.

Technorati Tags: PROTO.IN, Chennai, India, DEMO, Entreprenuership, Startup

Zune's WiFi Mesh

2006-10-02T23:26:00.000-07:00

Engadget reports that Zune is WiFi challenged. It cannot connect to a WiFi hotspot or AP. The only thing it can do is to connect to other Zune devices nearby. That is only possibile if it supports Ad Hoc Mesh Networking. Ad Hoc Mesh Networking is supported inherently supported in WiFi. The cards can be configured to connect to a AP or to another card in a AdHoc mode. There is also a better version in the works known as the 802.11s standard. It enables the devices to be connected to each other through the AP's and creates a self configuring multi hop network.

The most popular topology of WiFi today is one to one connection between the clients and the Access Point. Due to this the AdHoc part of WiFi has gone relatively unnoticed although all commercial devices support it. It was put in with the intention that in the absence of an AP, which was likely in the early days, the devices can at least form a peer-to-peer mesh. If the reports about Zune are true, it would become the first major consumer electronics device to implement a pure WiFi mesh. But as the norm with Microsoft, I suspect that it would be a propreitary implementation.

Still a worthwhile experiment. Lets see if it takes off or not.

Technorati Tags: Zune, WiFi, Mesh, AdHoc, WiMesh, Microsoft

Mobile Music Wars

2006-09-27T09:23:00.000-07:00

Another interesting battle is shaping up: Nokia vs. Apple. The turf is the music distribution business. It all started with Nokia's acquisition of Loudeye, a music content provider. Today Nokia has released plans of its own music distribution business. Users can sign up to a serivce in which David Bowie recommends his favorite tracks with a 30 second clip embedded. The users in UK and Australia can even buy the track if the want to. The Loudeye's system provides the backend.

Om informs us that Nokia's N91 will additionally have around 8 GB of memory. They are also introducing N95 and N75 as musicphones. Apple has some serious competition to its iPods' now. With 8GB of memory N91 will be a direct competitor to iPod apart from being a 3G phone as well. It had been speculated earlier that Nokia might want a piece of Apple's iTunes business. It was by far the biggest producer or mp3 enabled devices. In response Apple was rumored to be working on the iPhone.

The ball is now in Apple's court. Watch out for the next move.

Technorati Tags: Nokia, Apple, Music Distribution, iTunes, iPod, iPhone

Of Rain and MoMo's

2006-09-25T23:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was MoMo night. We all converged at Indiranagar Club around the evening despite the rain to disucss about Mobile VAS 2.0. Its funny, every time we have a MoMo, the rain gods want to join in. At the first one we had a huge deluge and we were all stranded. This time it was a light drizzle though (I still had to leave my cycle at the venue; hope its still there).

We continued the discussion around mobile VAS and Sanjay Swamy, CEO of mChek was our speaker this time. His talk was very interactive and we all tried to our best to give him a hard time. He showed us a demo of the mChek's two tier payment method and it captured everyone's imagination. A sneak peak into our future lives I guess. Still he didnt reveal how he managed to convince the VC's without any clear cut revenue model.

It was also nice to see some new faces yesterday. The regulars including Rajan, Sujai, Harish, Sid were there. And thankfully we had some ladies as well, including a reporter from Business Line! We are hoping to get Krishna Dhurba next time to speak and if that happens, watch out for a cracker of an event. Sadly I'm gonna miss it since I'm home in Diwali.

Do have a look at the pics.

Technorati Tags: Mobile Monday, MoMo, Bangalore, India

Showtime

2006-09-19T09:01:00.000-07:00

Not to be missed.

Open Source and Charity

2006-09-19T07:59:00.000-07:00

Warning: A personal rant.

Charity is a dirty word in business circles. Free Open Source Software is considered charity. Therefore FOSS == Dirty. Free Software Business == stupid idea. FOSS Entrepreneur == BIG LOSER.

This is a reality. I face it every time I step out of my own protected land of CVS and Linux and try to socialize with the top notch entrepreneurial talent in Bangalore. I have tried to be preachy and show them the vision behind but all I take back home from such encounters is a big hole in my heart and a bitter aftertaste. After some period of time the doubts start creeping into your mind and you start questioning your beliefs.

Is FOSS really charity? Let's go to the root cause. What is the duty of an entrepreneur? There are two schools of thought here. The first one says that it is to make money. The second one says that it is to create value. Depending upon which where your loyalties lie, FOSS will be dirty or wonderful for you. Obviously I am in the latter camp. Note that value and wealth are not equals. They differ in several ways. But thats a seperate discussion.

According to me the primary duty of an entrepreneur is to chase his own dream. I know that my dream will both bring value and wealth the long run. How? I dont have a freaking idea. With time maybe I'll figure that out. Maybe not! So does that make me an entrepreneur? In the books of majority it will not. But I will still pursue my dream to its end. If it works out, well and good. If it does not, I'll be contended with the fact that I had a shot at it.

I have always done things differently in my life. And I am proud of that. I still hold my head high.

For the lost souls who wandered till here, a bonus article. Draw your own conclusions.

Technorati Tags: FOSS, Charity, Entrepreneurship

A Flood Is Coming

2006-09-18T05:06:00.000-07:00

Mike at Mobile opportunity warns of an impending disaster. It is the clash of civilisations. It will be a long drawn out war in which each battle will be fought with blood. The loyalties will be cheap and sides will be exchanged frequently. Call it the last stand of the Telcos.

Its time to sharpen your swords.

Technorati Tags: Telcos, Carriers, Innovation, Walled Gardens, Web Applications

Internet Dating RoI

2006-09-17T03:22:00.000-07:00

I am a veteran of Internet Dating and Social Networkinng sites. I have tried almost all the services out there. Starting from v-india, match.com, fropper, eHarmony, etc. to the more recent web 2.0 ones: myspace, bebo, orkut, zorpia etc. There were many forgettable ones in between (lovehappens, friendster, ringo etc.). I have also tried out some of the Indian online marriage classified sites: Rediff Matchmaker, JeevanSathi etc. Given this background, I consider myself as a seasoned campaigner (maybe I should start a wiki about how to make these services work for you; there lies a profession in there!).

But IMHO none of them address the basic issue Return on Investment (RoI). Males are meant to pursue females. Thats the way we are built and the way our society works. Given a 50:50 ratio of both sexes, each girl will get requests from at least 10 to 25 % of the guys on the site. Which creates 1) a problem of choice for the girl (if she is indeed looking for a date) 2) spam (if she is not eg. on SocNet sites). This phenomenon is most visible on Orkut (at least amongst Indians). All the girls on Orkut get hundreds of friend requests from guys looking for a date. The more attractive looking female gets more requests. Some girls refuse flatly, some check out the profile once before refusing and sometimes, once in a while, she accepts! As usual the odds are stacked against the males here as well. The hit rate is around 1 % and the chances of some action is even lower; around 0.01%.

That is simply too low. It results in too much hard work without a guaranteed RoI. The traditional methods have much better hit rates. Ask your friends, join a salsa class or just randomly approach girls on the street (yup, i have done that too). To make these SocNet sites work, they have to increase the odds against the guys. The service has to assume that there will be more guys on the site and each guy would preferably want to try out all the attractive looking girls out there (why not!). Its job should be ensure that he has a fair chance of accomplishing that.

And the best way to do that is to offer incentive to the girls. A rewards based system in which the girls would want to interact with the guys since its in their interest. Feed their greed (gifts, shopping vouchers, talk time on mobiles etc.) and make them more responsive. Leave the rest up to the guy. Its up to him to get a date after that! Given a large and diverse userbase, such a system would end up being much more effective. After some hits and misses, you might just bump into your soul mate and she will at least reply back once (trust me, that is a big step). Its a win-win situation either ways: the guys get to romance a bit, and the girl gets some real meat out of it.

AFAIK there are no incentive based Internet dating services yet. There are numerous methods of implementing such a service. Make the guys pay during registration, distribute it to the girls when they actually respond to guys and keep a commission for yourself. Have a concept of virtual money which can be encashed with real money. Have a phone based system where the guys actually pay twice the amount to talk to the girl. Create implementations which caters to niche user groups. The underlying concept remains the same. The females are rewarded and the males pay for that.

It would be an interesting experiment to try out at least. Maybe I should talk to a VC. And get this patented as well. In case I don't get the funding, I'll at least become rich if someone else does! That would also automatically ensure me a date :).

Update: Some assumptions validated in this study.

Technorati Tags: Social Netowrking, Incentive, Rewards, Orkut

The NGMN Initiative

2006-09-16T01:04:00.000-07:00

The heavyweights of the Telco. world have united to form a new lobby, called the Next Generation Mobile Network or NGMN. The idea being that the operators can provide a coherent view of their requirements for 4G networks. The term coherent here is the keyword here. The industry standard bodies are responsible for the formation of standards. In the telecom world ETSI, 3GPP and 3GPP2 were responsibile for laying out the current crop of standards. The technology bodies like GSM Association and CDG were fromed to prmote these standards.

But with the advent of WiMAX and all IP networks, IETF has has established itself as another influential standard body. And IETF is notorious for squabling and has been marred by turf wars between the rival factions being backed by leading OEM's. The UWB group was finally disbanded and the MANET working group is considered a joke. With billions of dollars of revenues at stake, the telcos. dont really want to take a chance.Since the Telcos. are the eventual customers for the OEM's, thier voices will be heard.

So maybe the next round of meetings and conferences will be a bit more amicable. The entertainment will be sorely missed though.

Technorati Tags: Telco, Carriers, Standards, IETF, WiMAX, 4G

A Pointless Debate

2006-09-13T08:43:00.000-07:00

Slashdot points us to a paper by Harvard professors attempting to answer whether Linux will ever be able to beat Windows. A formal mathematical model is followed in which the mixed duopoly of for profit software vs free software is examined. The result is rather predictable: Linux cannot win over Microsoft. The reason being that Microsoft has an first mover advantage in terms of installed base and market share. The paper (pdf) and the interview both provide very solid reasoning.

But there is one critical flaw in the model. It assumes that Microsoft as a company will be there forever. The basic theories of economics teaches us otherwise. There are always four phases of a company: embryonic, growth, consolidation and decline. This has been the case with each company and will be the case with Microsoft as well. And the spectre of this happening sooner is looming large with the impending rollout of Windows Vista. There is a genuine concern that Vista might fail in the marketplace.

By the same reasoning, even Linux will not be the predominant Open Source OS in the long run. Although its not driven by any company as such, it will be gradually replace with newer OS's as hardware becomes more and more complex and desktops receede from prominence. Whem pervasive mobile computing devices become commonplace, the embedded OS's would rule. On the servers asl well new OS technologies will come up and replace the existing ones. Afterall nothing is really permatnent.

Given all these factors, I wonder how important is the question itself. Both Linux and Windows have their own place right now. And Linux is rightly gaining in the desktop market. Does it really matter if it never becomes the numero uno? I dont think so.

Technorati Tags: Linux, GNU, OpenSource, Economics, Windows, Microsoft, Vista

TI Joins the Race

2006-09-07T03:01:00.000-07:00

Here is something unique. As per IHT, TI is launching a chipset solution (named Hollywood!) with Picture-in-Picture (PiP) support which allows users to channel surf using the cellphone! How many people actually channel surf with PiP on their TV's in the first place? PiP never really took off in the Television world and most of the manufacturers have discontinued this feature. Its difficult to see people using it on their cellphones which have an even smaller display! But still TI's chipset is being marketed that way.

The article also gives a background of the Mobile TV chipset market. Qualcomm is the other major player there with a unified chipset solution which support at least three standards, DVB-H, MediaFLO and ISDB-T. The TI chipset supports only DVB-H. But then it does not incur any licensing costs as the QC chipset does. MeidaFLO is a propreitary technology owned by QC and being launched by Verizon. Intriguingly QC does not expect any major revenues from MediaFLO in 2007!

On DVB-H vs MediaFLO, it points out the advantages of the latter. Channel Switching is faster, picture quality is better and more channels can be accomodated in the same bandwidth. But still TI could generate upto $500 million as per one estimate with DVB-H expected to dominate in Europe and other parts of the world (the GSM world). Provided Mobile TV proves a big success as the market researchers predict. As per IDC, the number works out to around 24 Million users by 2010 in the US alone.

And if that happens TI would want to be a major player (as it is in the mobile handset chipset market) and have a significant market share. All that with built in PiP support!

Technorati Tags: TI, Mobile TV, DVB-H, Qualcomm, MediaFLO

Cool T-Shirts

2006-09-04T10:24:00.000-07:00

Baishampayan Ghose at the Ubuntu India community has generously offered to do the hard work to get us cool Ubuntu T-Shirts. All sizes except small are available (so you cannot gift it to your wife and/or girlfriend yet!) and right now each one costs around Rs. 270 a piece. And he promises that with more orders the prices will go down. Check out the annoucement here and some sample views here.

So if you are an Ubuntu user in India and love it, and want to brag about it, drop him a line.

Technorati Tags: Ubuntu, GNU/Linux, Bangalore, India.

Nortel's UMTS Sellout

2006-09-01T03:51:00.000-07:00

Finally the UMTS deal between Nortel and Alcatel (or Alcatel Lucent as the official name seems to be) is being confirmed. Alcatel is buying out Nortel's UMTS business for a cool $320 Million. Nortel had around 10 percent share of the UMTS network infrastructure market. With this acquisition the combined market share of Lucatel's would be around 16 %. And it would give Lucatel access to the vast European market. The leader would still be Ericsson with a 30 % market share.

The rumors regarding this deal had been going around for some time. Nortel's CEO, Mike Zofirovski had earlier indicated that Nortel would move out of businesses in which they dont have 20 % market share. And the 3G business was one of them. This deal would go a long way in leading Nortel out of the woods. Since the telecom downturn, Nortel has been struggling with losses and falling revenues.

This deal would seem to the last major one in the consolidation wave kicked off by the Lucent Alcatel merger. After that Nokia and Seimens got together and spun off a seperate joint venuture for Network Equipments and Motorola aligned with Huawei for the UMTS business. The battle lines are now fully drawn and everyone has chosen their sides.

Its on to the main action now; the battle for UMTS gear marketshare.

Update: The official press release is up. The intriguing part is that Nortel still keeps GSM, GPRS, EDGE and GSM-R. Is GSM family still earning profits? If it does, how did Nortel get upstaged in the evolution process in the first place? Its still hoping to have a 4G portofolio (read WiMAX and the likes). Maybe it will acquire some WiMAX startups then!

Technorati Tags: Nortel, Alcatel, UMTS, Network Infrastructure, Lucent, Huawei, Motorola

The Telco. God's

2006-08-29T08:05:00.000-07:00

Another month is coming to an end and what's better than finishing it off with a Mobile Monday event. So yesterday we had the August edition in Bangalore and the topic was Mobile VAS. It was carried over from the last month's discussion where we could not spend much time on it. Rishit from Verity Technologies gave us an good overview of the scenrio in India. The dicussion as usual was very lively with Harish, Sujai, Rajan and all others joining in actively.

The part that fascinated me the most was the challenges in actually providing a VAS application to the subscriber. It is seemingly very simple. Talk to the Operator and get him to host your application on his WAP portal or some other content provider's portal. Its easier said than done. The Operators are God's and God's rarely oblige. To even get a chance to talk to the right person is a big acheivement. Assuming that one has past that stage and the operator is ready, they will eventually ask the content to be delivered through an exisiting Content Provider with proven relationship.

So now the Content Provider becomes the God and you are back to square one! The same process has to be repeated once more. Assuming that one did manage to convince someone and get somebody to host the stuff on the portal, the revenue distribution will be something like 60:40 in favor of the Telco's. The Telco's will take the majority share just because of they hosted the application! So in the end of all the haggling, you dont really make much out of it.

The question goes abegging, why? Why make it so difficult to do business? Eventually its the Telco's are going to gain with more airtime usage and more revenues coming in from the subscriber. A Ecosystem is always helpful for the business. The present state of the industry is a classic case of the lose-lose situation. Eventually the content providers will be driven out of business due to the low margins, the consumers will be deprived of good content and the Telcos will lose the value addition. And I dont think that it can be justified for the simple reason that they invested so much in the network infrastructure! It still does not make any sense.

And this is a global phenomenon. Newsforge recently carried an article by someone under a false name ranting about his experience. All Telco's are born obnoxious. All Telcos are cash rich. And all Telco's fudge their numbers, provide poor customer services and simply scam people whenever they can. The best example of the scam in India is actually the dating services that the Telco's run. Both Airtel and Hutch provide this IVR system where one can hear sweet voices of girls telling about thier ideal mate. Only at Rs. 6 per minute. Dont bother to try it out unless you just want to hear someone's sweet voices and sleep deserts you in the nights. Nobody replies to your messages there (yes, i tried it out!).

The only way to break thier monopoly is to bypass thier network completely and create a new community sponsored voice network. Its a pipe dream and may not happen for a long time. But there are attempts being made. Skype is one amongst them. WiFi is another. And FON is the project which is being watched very closely by many. Their success will have far reaching implications for Telcos and their walled gardens.

Technorati Tags: Telecom, Telcos., Content Distribution, VAS, Scam, MoMo, Bangalore, India

Open Source Watchlist

2006-08-28T13:43:00.000-07:00

Nine Open Source companies have been put on the watchlist by Network World (tip: for easier reading, choose the print option at the bottom of the page). One of my favorites, Asterisk features on the second spot! Asterisk is an Open Source IP PBX which can be used to replace the PTSN based PBX for Small and Medium Enterprises (SME's). Its one of the few open source telephony projects which has been successful. And they recently got funding from Matrix Partners as well. And the mailing list is full of activity. It is yet to pick up in India though; nobody asks the classic question of "please help me" in those fourms!

Amazingly there is a company from Sri Lanka, called Sahana which has found mention. And another company seems to have an operation there. That is some acheivement. Goes on to show how Open Source enables innovation at the most unlikeliest of places.

Vyatta is one notable exception. It is one of the few players in Open Source Telecom world. The product has been launched but there is no word on how it is doing.

It is very encouraging to see more small businesses crop up around FOSS. Not many are really convinced that services can be a big earner if the code is open source. Its a myth and hopefully one of these will break it.

Technorati Tags: FOSS, Open Source, Free Software Business, Startups, Entrepreneurship, Asterisk, Telecom.

MoMo August Event

2006-08-25T03:47:00.000-07:00

The August MoMo Event has just been announced. The announcement is late by a week since we had run out of venue options. CKS Consulting came in at the last moment and generously offered to host this month's event. The best part was that it happened at the very last moment. We were thinking of postponing this session for another week till we find a suitable venue. Goes a long way to show the interest that Bangalore has in such events.

We are going to carry forward the topic we had stopped at the last meet: Mobile VAS. Due to lack of time we were had to cut the disucssion short. The audience had showed keen interest in the tiopic. Even after the event we had some disucssion on the mailing list. Hopefully we will have the same enthusiasm this time around as well.

This time we are experimenting with only one speaker and a topic, so that it leaves us with some time for disucssion as well as networking. Networking is one of the main reasons why we host this event. For enterpreneurs like me, these events form a support system where once can get business and technical contacts!

So do hop on to the website, register yourself and spread the word. Hope to see you there.

Technorati Tags: MoMo Bangalore, Mobile Monday, Bangalore, India.

The Mesh Networks

2006-08-18T07:43:00.000-07:00

Continuing on the topic of Stupid vs. Intelligent networks, here is a nice article by Network World describing an ongoing DARPA project which is a combination MANET, SDR's, AI and Sematic Web. These technologies are still at a very nascent stage and restricted to academic research. The idea is to create a self configuring network which does not have a single point of failure, where inidividual devices can figure out which radio spectrum to use for communication based on the network condition and present meaningful and correct information to the user.

All these technologies are already being applied at a smaller scale. In the MuniWiFi deployments the WiFi Access Point's actually form a mesh between them. They use dynamic routing protocols which is the heart of MANET's. Rather than depending upon traditional table based routing, the dynamic routing protocols figure out a way to route the IP packets based on the changing network conditions. Several such protocols have been standardised: ADOV, OLSR and DSR. Likewise, the Mesh WiMAX standards also derive off the MANET protocols.

The mesh networks are the new wave. Its a paradigm shift in the way we think about architecting networks.

Technorati Tags: MANET, SDR, Cognitive Radio, AI, Muni WiFi, WiMAX, DARPA, Mesh Networks

The Greenphone

2006-08-17T07:43:00.000-07:00

Since the announcement of the Trolltech's Greenphone more information about it has started to trickle in. Reuters says that it would be priced at $ 680 and is targeted to enterprises involved in mobile phone software development. An interesting business model is also proposed: if any enterprise wants to build custom handsets for its employees with specific cabapilities, it could use the GreenPhone to develop it and finally get it bulk manufactured by OEM's. Interesting concept! Expect the company branded phone along with the standard package now.

Does this mean that that quest for the truly open phone is at an end? Hardly! There are still a lot of unanswered questions. For starters not all parts of the software is open. The baseband is still closed. The argument most probably is that its anyways standardised and no one would want to change it. But that would hardly satisfy an open source enthusiast who wants the freedom to look at it. Dont expect an FSF endorsement of it unless all parts of it are fully open.

There are again licensing issues. How much GLP'ed code does it actually use? GNU/Linux does allow commerical non-free applications over the OS. But any kernel modules are governed by the copyleft. The kernel sources have to be provided. And baseband has to be a kernel module. Of course there are ways around it! A glue code can be used to bind the propreitary kernel module with the GPL'ed kernel.

The critical part is where is the community? Would the existing QT community include the Greenphone as well? Or will Trolltech leave it up to anyone to build the community around it? Forming a Fedora style non profit organiztion is also another option! Given the pricing of the phone and depending upon its availability, it will not be beyond an average open source enthusiast. A community forming on its own around it is not too difficult to see. Considering the latent demand for such a device it might just be the kind of push QT needs.

Further, what about the Hardware? Is it an Open Hardware project? Are the scehmatics and PCB layout included in the package? If that is provided then it would be a much more attractive solution. Hardware is where you can really cut down the cost of the phone. Or add your own specific components suiting your requirement. Offshoots of this can lead to a very different device which actually ends up being much more than a phone! The possibilities are endless there.

The interesting part would be how the operators and regulators react to this. Ultimately its upto them to allow a particular phone on their own network or not. They have this paranoid fear that any un-approved phone can bring down their whole network leading to downtime (read revenue loss). Although its still unproven, a truly open phone can be a good tool in the hands of spammers looking to extend their reach! Most of the operators would see that as a distinct threat.

But at least its a start. At least OMAP Open Source has a competitor now. A lot is at stake on Greenphone's success.

Via: MoCoNews.

Technorati Tags: Greenphone, TrollTech, QT, Qutopia, OpenSource, GNU/Linux, Community