Overpopulation ...

I recently read that "There is a new blog created every second, and that the total volume of blogs doubles every 5.5 months". A serious case of overpopulation, methinks, but of course every blogger thinks their blog isnt one of the excess. True of human population as well.

1-800-WHY-HAVE

1-800 Numbers
I think they aren't going to be around for too long.

For people using landlines, long distance calls have gotten extremely cheap. And with the increased penetration of VoIP services such as Vonage and long distance bundling offers, long distance calls are often free.

And 1-800 numbers are of no use to cell phone users, for whom long distance calling is free in any case - And they pay for the minutes used regardless of whether its a toll-free number or not.

However, if the cell phone companies can get together and create a 1-800 like service that is truly free for cell phone users (no minutes used), that would be phenomenal.

MTV meets the Alphabet

I am now officially addicted to "Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County" on MTV. Its a reality show that follows a bunch of rich Southern California high school kids around. Its immensely entertaining (in a sorta perverse way) to watch these 16 year old kids indulge in the worst sort of adult behaviour (back stabbing, cheating, badmouthing etc ...)

However, one day after an episode of Laguna Beach, there was a new reality show that was on - It was the first episode and they were choosing the contestants based on videos that they had sent in.

There were a couple of Indian-American teenage girls on the show - On their video, the first half showed them in traditional garb performing religious poojas with their parents singing their praises - "So obedient, so responsible, so studious !!"

In the second half, cut to a disco on the West Coast - The girls in shockingly short skirts in some club hooking up with some seedy looking guys. The girls proudly say that while their parents think they are here on an internship, they are just freaking out, partying and clubbing ....

In short, they were trying their best to project a "bad-ass" image that was as far away from a traditional Indian girl as possible.

The judges (including Omarosa, remember her !!) uniformly rejected these kids saying "Its horrible how you guys are trying to fool your parents when they trust you so much".

Funny, funny - Those girls looked confused as hell. "Wait a minute, I thought we had to be bad-ass to get selected !" - No wonder people call them Confused.

What's fit ?

Lance Armstrong is such an amazing athlete - I think that his comeback is probably one of the greatest achievements in modern history.

Much has been written about the fact that his body fat is at 4-5% - Its funny to me that Lance Armstrong who is considered so fit would be the first to die if his plane crash landed on an island with no food source.

Which got me thinking about this unholy obsession with BMI and Body Fat etc ... What a quantum change in thinking in the last 200 years or so - To think society has gone from widespread hunger (and associated involuntarily low body fat) to a situation in which people are struggling to reduce their body fat.

I have personally decided to keep some excess fat on me - Who knows when I might need it ;-)

And the Winner Is ......

Amar Kapadia ! Congrats Amar on winning the raffle !

Please visit http://duvedisneha.blogspot.com/2005/09/two-to-tango-and-winner-is.html for more details on the lottery process ...

Decision Making

I learnt an interesting piece of information recently - That 95% of all purchase decisions are made right in a retail store. I would have thought that with the proliferation of the internet, consumer guides and product comparision tools, more of the decision making would be made outside of the retail store.

This statistic establishes that human beings arent as much of a rational decision maker as is made out to be. Lets take the hypothetical case of a person buying a camera.

Previously it was thought that people did most of their research online, looked at multiple websites, consulted their friends and then made their decision as to which model they wanted to buy and then walked into the store and picked up that model.

Not true ! Apparently, 95% of people decide which model they want to buy right in the store and often the decision has no basis in rationale. The bottomline is that people buy products that appeal to them, that are attractive to them - Not necessarily the "best" products. And in fact, when the person goes into the retail store, they decide on the model they want to purchase based on the aesthetic appeal and then simply look for reasons to justify their purchase so that they can be satisfied that they made a rational purchase. (This excludes true photography geeks obviously !).

Which is why products that are extraordinary in capability, but ordinary in presentation just dont sell ! And the reverse is so often true of course ...

Video Games Meet Trump !

Its watched the first episodes of both the versions of "The Apprentice" this week - The Martha Stewart version and the good ol' Donald Trump version. The Martha Stewart version was quite horrible and seemed to be more of an interior decorating/house-keeping show. In fact, the stock value of Martha Stewart Omnimedia plunged the day after her maiden episode.

Donald Trump on the other hand was at his usual flatulent best with his helicoptering, golf course owning and of course, the horrible hair.

Of course, everyone thinks they can run a company. And lots of people think they can do a much better job than their CEO. And of course there's a group of people that think that theres nothing to it :-)

And given the immense success of video games, I wonder if there is a market out there for a video game where you are the CEO and need to make all the typical decisions that a CEO needs to make, in addition to having the ability to hire/fire/expand/declare bankruptcy/go public etc ... Would people be interested in playing such a game ? I know I would. Readers, what about you ?

$1,000 Barrier Crossed

We have sent out the raffle numbers to all contributors so far.

For those who are hearing about the raffle for the first time, read my post about it - http://www.ideamani.com/2005/09/two-to-tango-projectwhy-fundraiser.html

We are closing the raffle on Sunday and will be announcing the results on this blog ! We have collected more than $1,000 - Please help us get to the target of $1,500.

Thanks
Ideamani.

Another Indo-Pak War ?

India is making huge strides in the IT/BPO space. There is immense respect for Indian IT professionals world-wide.

As I read this excellent quote recently "MNCs came for the cost, stayed for the speed and the quality". I think that captures the essence of the India.

I get pissed off when I hear people who attribute the entire success of the Indian IT Industry to the British who introduced us to English.

If knowledge of English was sufficient to generate success in the IT space, why havent any of the other ex-British colonies been able to succeed in the same space ?

Pakistan
Bangladesh
Sierra Leone
Mauritius
Barbados and several others ....

Pakistan's IT space employs 10,000 people (as against >2 Million in India). None of the other ex-British colonies are even close to India in terms of the IT Business.

India is a culmination of the influences of history, geography, anthropology, evolution, economics, mathematics, logic, religion and linguistics as well.

3 Levels of Customer Service

This post follows up on my previous post, BPOs & Robots.

I have been thinking about Call Centers on and off for the past few days. I was one of two Indians at the conference I went to earlier this week and there was an unbelievable amount of interest about India in general and Call Centers in specific.

Personally, I think there will have to be a drastic change in the way customer service is provided in the US. I just dont think people in the US are hapy with the quality of service provided. Of course, they arent very happy with the quality of service provided by American employees either ....

I visualize that, in the future, a customer while purchasing a product/service would be able to choose the level of customer service that he/she desires and pay a certain amount accordingly. For example, Dell gives one the option of choosing different levels of service - "At Home", "Mail In", "Phone Support" etc ...

Ultimately, I think companies would offer customers three options for customer service via phone - "American Call Center", "Indian Call Center" and "Robot". Customers who choose the Indian Call Center or Robot options would get a discount.

And those that feel the need to
a) Speak only with an American or
b) Want to keep jobs in the US, can put their money where their mouth is, and pay more !

Project Why - Update

Contributions have crossed $900 now.
There are four more days - The target for the raffle is $1,500.

Also, welcome aboard, Muranpaadu & Shoe Fiend.

Retail Customization

Yesterday, I started talking about how marketing is going to evolve, and the evolution of customized marketing. Well, here are the various technologies that are either already in use, or will be in the very near future.

In the past, marketing was "all to all" - For example, there was a single TV Commercial that was broadcast across the country. So, every consumer in the US would see the same General Motors commercial regardless of the area they lived in, their income etc. And at one point, that was the only option, when TV broadcasting was centralized.

In the first stage of evolution, "some to some", there was some amount of customization - For example, people in Arizona would get more advertisements on SUVs, Californians on Hybrids and Minnesota residents on All-Wheel Drive vehicles. In addition, there was a certain amount of customization in Direct Mail, with the letters having different content depending on their gender, age and income.

The next stage is "one to one", where everyone in the country/world gets a unique message, based on their individual tastes.

There are two aspects to the entire "one to one" marketing.

The first of course is the collection of information about each person's individual tastes. This can be done in several ways.

It is unbelievable the amount of information retail stores already have about you, collected using loyalty cards and charge accounts.

Option two is to simply ask you for it - Through surveys and questionnaires. Research shows that most people are willing to provide this information if their shopping experience can be enhanced. And of course, offering a chance at getting a $25,000 prize in return for filling out an online survey is very, very successful.

Sharing data with other retail stores about customer buying patterns, although at the border of flouing privacy laws is another option.

The second aspect is offering the customized marketing message.

On Television, technology is moving towards customization already with viewers being able to control and purchase content. Eventually, the advertisements that will be beamed to each cable receiver will be dependent on the people in that household. There will be a provision to identify the location of each receiver in the house. For example, if there is a family of four (Parents, Son and Daughter) in a house and they each have their own TV, each of them might have different programming and different advertisements.

On Direct Mail, technology has enabled companies to print a million different pages at the same cost as a million copies of the same page. This enables companies to print a customized message to each customer with their name on it - A message that would depend on their previous purchase history, age, gender, income, location, interests and even taste & style. Imagine technology that will enable a company to print an advertisement with a map from the customer's home to the nearest store !

Mobile Phones are well suited for customization with custom SMS messages sent to each user. As is the Internet and E-Mail.

However, the most exciting customized experience is in the Retail Store itself.

There are some exciting display technologies available today - One of them is a mist of water that can have messages projected on it - And you can walk right through !

With the use of RFID, ultimately every credit card and loyalty card will have a unique RFID tag embedded. And this RFID tag would be linked to a database where every possible detail about you would be stored.

Imagine this scenario ..

You walk into a retail store. The RFID reader in the store scans your card automatically and recognizes you. (The amazing thing about RFID is that the readers have a range of 30 feet). After it recognizes you, it dynamically changes the advertisements on the windows.

And there is also talk about replacing the floor of the store with glass and placing several projectors underneath. As you walk past, there would be messages flashing underfoot.

For example, the store would know that I buy a 6-pack of beer every Friday. And it would know my favorite brand. Imagine if there could be a message projected from underneath - "Corona Beer on sale - Buy 2, Get 1 Free".

This could even go further. Lets take the example of a young couple with no children. Their regular pattern might be to go shopping together every Saturday morning and buy the usual groceries (Milk, Bread etc). However, if one day, only the husband's tag is scanned, what does that mean - Maybe the wife is out of town - Which could only mean one thing - PARTY ! So, of course there is going to beer, chips, chicken wings involved - What if the store could recognize all of this ?

This would be the ultimate in "one to one" marketing.

Project Why Update

Contributions are now at $740.
And we welcome aboard, DesiPundit, our latest sponsor :-)

Airport Noise

I was at Phoenix the last three days. While I was taking a flight back from there to good ol' Raleigh-Durham, there was an amazingly huge crowd at the airport. And obviously, that meant there were Public Announcements made every second. I hate them.

I love the relative quiet of European airports (esp. Frankfurt), where there are no announcements at all. If people arent on time for their flights, their flights just take off without them ... Novel concept, aye ?!

I was actually in Phoenix for a Retail Conference and the overall theme of the event was about customized messages/marketing to clients - Ranging from targeted mailers, dynamic store displays and information kiosks (More about these later).

There is also the ability to send sound signals to just a single person, such that nobody standing around him/her can hear it. So, if there is somebody standing near the chips section in a grocery store, you can send him a message about a special sale on chips, with no one else hearing it.

I wonder if this can be extended to the airport with messages being sent directly to the concerned person with nobody else having their peace disturbed by them. So if Jane Doe needs to be on Flight 547 to Miami, she would get a customized message that only she can hear ....

The More, the Merrier ...

Three more great bloggers have joined us in promoting the Blog Raffle.
Welcome aboard Selective Amnesia, Anya and Gargs !

Linear Algebra

The world is a small place, so small sometimes that it seems tiny.
BITSians (Students of BITS, Pilani, Rajasthan, India) will truly appreciate this post.

Guys, do you remember the name V. Krishnamurthy from your BITSian days ?
Sounds kind of familiar doesnt it ??

Well, the reason it sounds familiar is because he was the co-author of our dreaded Linear Algebra book along with J.L.Arora !! I am at a conference at Phoenix right now and one of my co-presenters turns out to be not just an ex-BITSian, but also the son of V.K !!

Project Why Update !!

Guys
The charity drive is going well !

We whave collected $547 in the last 4 days.
Lets keep the momentum and remember we have a cool $100 raffle prize for donors.

Please donate as much as you possibly can !

"Two to Tango" - A ProjectWhy Fundraiser

Several Bloggers (Ammani, Rupya, Vinod G, Sonal, Sneha and Ideamani are hosting a Raffle for Charity!

Ladies and Gentlemen, give it up for "Two to Tango"- A ProjectWhy Fundraiser!!! I know I know..... All of us get paranoid when we hear the name "Charity", however, rest assured that your money will be in safe hands. Learn more about the organization where the charity money will go.We will assign all of you a ticket for every $2 (Rs.90) you pay and you enter into a raffle.

The winner will win a prize of a 100 (or Rs.4,500) dollar gift certificate.

SO come join us in this wonderful event! Win for a good cause!!!Register and with as little as $2 from your pocket, you make a difference in someone's life! Your registration in this raffle will buy a complete meal for a child for a week in India! I urge you all to help me in this conquest of ours and donate generously to this cause, this IS the time when you can make a difference!

All the registration fees can be sent here: http://projectwhy.org/justonerupee.htm. Kindly mention your full names and email ids in the additional notes section when you complete transaction in paypal. You will then receive your random lucky draw number via email. Additional donations can also be directed to the same paypal account.Please help us help those less fortunate.

Tales from Japan ...

As I said in yesterday's post, my sister and brother in law are in Japan for a few months. My sister was telling me about some amazing things she has observed there.

My sister is learning Japanese from a great group of four middle aged ladies there. She goes to class every Wednesday.

In Japanese, apparently the verb changes according to the nature of the object it refers to. For example, in the two sentences "I like the table" and "I like Jane", the verb used for the action "like" is different, because in one case, an inanimate object is refered to and in the other case, the verb refers to a live person.

Apparently, my sister was taught how to say "I love this food" etc .. but when she asked them how to say "I love my husband", they were flummoxed, because apparently they do not have a verb for that. In fact, they never say "I love you" to their husbands !! And they never hold hands in public. And they were quite shocked when my sister told them that she both held her husband's hand in public and told him she loved him !!

But it might be different with the younger generation, and in fact, one of the ladies has promised to ask her daughter about the whole "I love you" business and report back. Stay tuned for updates, folks ...

BPOs and Robots

My sister is in Japan right now, with her husband who is working on a project in Japan for Cognizant Technologies. They are having loads of fun and seem to be discovering new things every day. My sister was telling me the other day about the cool robots they have in Japan.

One of them is Aibo the robot dog that is made by Sony.


My brother-in-law was telling me about a robot receptionist that has been designed, that can recognize voices and perform some of the basic functions of a receptionist.

And this got me thinking about BPOs.

For some time, there was a lot of enthusiasm about robots potentially taking over a large portion of manufacturing activities because they were more accurate, they never got tired, they never went on strike etc ... However, this never took off on a large scale because of the costs involved and that lead to a large scale movement of manufacturing to China in search of cheap wages.

This situation exists, albeit on a smaller scale with BPO's/Call Centers. The lower wages in India are driving companies to set up call centers there. But what if robots empowered with speech recognition were made available at a commerically viable price ? Would we have armies of robots answering customer service calls ?

Project Why

I was first introduced to Project Why by Ammani. Project Why is one of those organizations, which I would never classify as being just a charitable organization ... It is so much more than that.

The organization was started by Anouradha Bakshi, a truly spectacular human being - Read more about her.

The organization is primarily focused around children. It provides an education support system to help under-priviliged kids in Delhi stay in school. They now have 300 kids in their group, of which more than 200 go to school. They have several teachers, a cyber club and several learning activities.

Giving to charity
can make anyone feel good, and helping others will make others feel well also
since they can get the help they need. A great way to help charity is to
donate a car or even
donate your boat or
donate an old RV
that you may not use anymore.

Donations can be of help to many people and there are always people in need
worldwide.

Flying Under the Radar

Language skills are such an important part of any person ...
In fact, it is so important that one can be mislead into perceiving people lacking language skills as being less qualified, intelligent or talented.

I have often found myself making a hasty judgement about a person's overall competency simply because they could not speak English well.

But I have realized that Intelligence and Brilliance need no spoken language. Or a written one.

I believe that this is one of the reasons why China (and Japan in earlier years) was able to fly under the radar for so long, even while undertaking massive efforts to build infrastructure. I think that there is a certain degree of disbelief that the Chinese, with their lack of English language skills could create such amazing plans.

Its unfortunate that knowledge of English is so often the primary judging factor of a person's intelligence.

Everything is Relative ...

My boss recently came back from a business trip to China. He was amazed at the growth there in the last few years (He was there in 2000). China is in the process of building 12 brand-new cities, each of which would have the infrastructure to house and employ upwards of five million people.

I found that amazing. But thats not the subject of this post.

Once he had described all of the good things happening in China, he regressed into his more familiar mode of complacent Western supremacy. He started recounting an incident that he had witnessed while in China.

Apparently, while he was walking down a street, he saw a speeding bus hit a pedestrian. And he said that very few people bothered to try to help the poor guy. He then went on to compare and contrast this with the US, and talked about how everyone would have stopped to help over here.
True, but not completely.

I dont believe that its a fair comparison.
If Americans lived in the same conditions as most Chinese do - Working 12 hours a day in a factory, making little money, staying in overcrowded cities, riding an overloaded subway system, with no air conditioning to protect them from the elements, etc .... Would they be the same ?

Which begs the question - Are people from different countries really "different" or are they just the combined result of their country/region's economic/historical/political situation ?

If Indians and Americans exchanged countries, would Indians remain as superstitious, fiscally conservative, tradition-bound as they currently are ? Or would they start resembling Americans ?

And would the Americans remain as innocent, naive, jolly and insular as they currently are ?

(Pardon me for the use of these stereotypes)

We are all human beings.
We all share 100% of our genetic makeup.

I think we arent as different/diverse as is made out to be.
Our environments/history/politics are, but not us.

Rich Rulers

When I was in India, I thought that if only the rich ruled the country, there would be less corruption.

I changed my mind after I saw the US.

Hurricane Relief: Paging Bill Gates

Finally, something about the hurricane ...

I had an interesting conversation with my colleague (lets call him Joe) about donations that have been made to hurricane relief efforts.

He was upset about the amount of press that P.Diddy was getting for his $1 Million contribution. Joe was upset at the smug statement that Mr. Diddy made while announcing his contribution - Essentially stating that he had done his part and it was now time for the rest of America to donate what they could.

Joe believed very strongly that his own contribution of $100 was greater than Diddy's contribution of $1,000,000 because it represented a much higher portion of his own disposable income.

Joe said that he had one car with 106,000 miles on it, his wife had one car and he had to take care of his two young daughters and that he had next to no disposable income. On the other hand, P.Diddy had a much higher disposable income and he didnt really need his three homes, 150-foot yacht and several other accoutrements.

He also went on to ask where Bill Gates' contribution was and thought that he should donate atleast $1 Billion considering that his net worth was close to $66 Billion. (The Gates Foundation has contributed $2.25 Million)

Firstly, I applaud his contribution to the relief efforts. I think its admirable that he has chosen to give up something in order to help the helpless victims.

However, I believe his argument against P.Diddy and Bill Gates is specious. And here are my reasons:

1. This is not a Socialistic country where people live in equal wealth (or poverty). Demanding that the rich give up more money simply because they are richer goes against the very fibre of capitalism. If P.Diddy would have to contribute 50 Million dollars and Bill Gates had to contribute a Billion dollars everytime there was a natural disaster, they would'nt have worked hard to create Bad Boy Records and Microsoft. They might have just kicked back and relaxed.

2. Arguing that P.Diddy doesnt need his yacht and Bill Gates doesnt need the most advanced house in the world is besides the point. Disparity in wealth exists everywhere. Taking this logic one step further, is there any reason why people in the western world should spend $4 on a cup of coffee when a huge portion of the world subsists on less than $1 a day ? Would Joe agree to live in an unair-conditioned mud house, with no electricity and send the savings to Congo ?

3. Bill Gates and P.Diddy (As examples) have made huge contributions to the US Economy, through job creation, wealth creation and tax payments (Probably not as much income taxes as sales, wealth and estate taxes). They contribute to the US Government's coffers everyday. The 51 Billion dollars that Congress approved - That didnt just come out of thin air !

4. P.Diddy and Bill Gates are talented and deserve the money they make. Ok, P.Diddy cant sing, but he sure can manage a record label.

5. If people were so concerned about purely doing good for hurricane victims, why claim tax deductions on their contributions - Let the Government use that money as well.

6. Why look only at entertainers and billionaires ? There are countless millionaires at Fortune 1000 companies with huge incomes and stock options - What portion of them have even made a contribution ?

Fotosharing via Gmail

I am not a big fan of the Google Mail interface. It can hardly compare to the interface offered by Yahoo or Hotmail - I am sure it has all the same functionality, but I can almost never like a product whose aesthetics do not appeal to me.

However, there is one thing that Google Mail could be used for, quite effectively, because of its large storage limit. It can be used as an online fotosharing center.

You could create a Gmail account and share the user id and password with the whole of your gang. Then, whenever anybody has some photographs to share with the group, they can just email them to the common Gmail address with the subject providing details about the snaps.

This would work better than each person using their own foto sharing service (Yahoo/Ofoto/Snapfish/Kodak) etc ... because with Gmail,

1. All the fotos are consolidated at one place
2. There is a huge amount of storage space

Yours Truly - 0% White

Chappelle's Show is my absolute favorite comedy show.
Do you guys remember the episode in which he talks about musical instruments that each race loves ...

He starts off saying that the postulate that "White People can't dance" isnt true. He further states that every white person will dance wildly to the music of the electric guitar. And surely enough, when Dave gets John Mayer to play a few riffs on his guitar, he gets a few white people to go absolutely bonkers, with some female top shedding and so on ...

He performs similiar experiments with Black and Latino people and discovers that their musical instruments of choice are the Drums and Electric Piano respectively.

I went to a concert today - "Three Doors Down". I had heard a few of their songs before and had never particularly liked them. All of Hard Rock blends into one pile of discordance for me. My boss invited me to go with his family and I hoped that a live show might prove different. This group is supposed to have two of the best electric guitarists in the business - But no such luck - I was busy keeping my Corona glass full and replying to email on my Blackberry :-(

So, I know this for sure - I am 0% White !
But, the possibilities of some Blackness exist - Watch this space for an account of my adventures with Snoop Dogg !

Google's CFO

I have seen a lot of bureaucracy in large companies. And I have seen people getting immensely frustrated by it. Billions of dollars have been spent on consultants in order to imbibe a "small company entrepreneurial" spirit in employees of large corporations.

It is extremely difficult to do so because the dynamics in the two kinds of organizations are so different. In large, well-established corporations, everything revolves around the share price, budget and demonstrated benefits. There is no incentive for speed, innovation and radicalism.

In small start-ups, outrageous thinking and fantastic leaps of faith are de rigeur. People are in start ups because they believe in an idea, an abstraction of what it could become.

The ideal situation, of course is to create an organization that is large and profitable with a good amount of systems/logic/processes without losing the ability to innovate and do crazy things.

This is difficult. And very few organizations have pulled it off. Some that come to mind are Virgin, Whole Foods and Apple.

For most startups though, the transition to being a larger, more responsible organization is fraught with growing pains and identity crises.

Take Google for example. A spectacular success, the most successful IPO (ever ?), no serious competition in sight, endless cash, a young, dynamic workforce.

Take Microsoft - A 50 Billion Dollar company where innovation is no longer the number one priority. The bottomline is. There is no excitement at Microsoft anymore. It's all grown up now. But it performs very well, delivers consistent results, employs a lot of people.

Will Google become like Microsoft in its organizational set-up ? They are resisting that with all of their might.

An example - Recently, Google invited several top Wall Street analysts to a meeting with their CFO. The analysts assumed that the company was going to give them some results guidance, as is the common case. However, they were shocked to see that their meeting was with the Chief Food Officer, and not the Chief Financial Officer. The meeting started with descriptions of Google's menus, their chefs etc ...

By no means am I a fan of the bloated egos on Wall St, and I believe that bringing them down a notch would do them a world of good - But a Chief Food Officer prank !! Thats just suicide.

5 years down the line, Google will inevitably lose out on its ability to innovate. And share price and Wall St analysts are going to be more important. I truly hope that this was just a one-off deal - Google cant be a geek kid forever :-)

The iPods of the Future

As an extension to my post iPod Innovations, check out the link below that shows some of the cool things that Apple is planning for the iPod ...

http://infotech.indiatimes.com/quickies/1224481.cms

In my post, I had wondered when we would get an iPod with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi - Looks like its not very far away !

Movie Posters in India

I really identified with Sneha's well-written post on being a small town girl. I grew up in a small town myself and of course, sex education was certainly not on the curriculum at my school.

Most of my knowledge about sex came from precocious friends and the inevitable "Adult Movie" at the theatre. Indian movie theatres have never been very careful about not allowing kids into "A" rated movies (the equivalent of the US "R").

We used to gape at movie posters that were cleverly designed to seem a lot more revealing than the movie actually was and spend a week's allowance (Rs.20 = 40 cents) on what promised to be a movie with a veritable sex orgy ...

For example, the following poster



In its uncensored form was,



Smart chaps, the theatre owners ;-)
They got us every time !

Pollution ...

Have you guys read the fantastic book, "State of Fear" by Michael Crichton ? The book is quasi-non fiction and talks about the irrational fear being put into people's head about Global Warming by the environmentalist lobby (Which is almost as well funded as the Oil lobby). He shows evidence in his book that a large part of the world has actually cooled over the past 100 years and in fact we might be heading for a second "Ice Age".

Pollution is a major concern in India. With growing industrialization and a fast growing consumer market, pollution is getting out of hand. The air quality in Mumbai is amongst the worst in the world. China has even worse of a problem, with seven of the world's top ten polluted cities in the world in China.

However, pollution-wise, the US is by far the leader. It contributes 24% of the world's pollution, with China at 13%. So, normalizing this in terms of population, the US emits 8 times the amount of pollutants as China (per person). In fact, China's contribution is only expected to rise to 17.8% even in 2025.

You would never realize that, if you read media reports from the Western World - They would have you believe that India and China are the twin evils when it comes to pollution !

Despite all the noise made in the US about environmental protection, absolute reduction in pollutants has been quite low - 30% in the last 15 years. This is because, even with stringent regulations, the sheer number of cars and energy utilities leads to a huge amount of pollution.

There are three major sources of pollution - Emissions from power plants (Coal based), Industrial Plants (Smelters for example) and Automobiles.

India has a new bill in parliament which would set a minimum standard of 99.5% Pollution reduction in the first two of those - This would put it at the same level as the European Union.

As far as the third one is concerned, low sulfur diesel and petrol are being made available - And new cars have to adhere to Euro II pollution standards. The weak link there is the old vehicles on the road - The 20 year old Ambassador Diesel and the 30 yr old Government Transportation bus ..

New Delhi under Shiela Dixit did a phenomenal job of converting buses and autorickshaws to CNG power. In fact, this might have been one of the major reasons Ms. Dixit was re-elected.

Offshore this !

So many things are getting offshored these days ... And, it looks like there is no end to it - Of course, this is an outcome of the lack of Free Trade in the US.

Of course, it started with manufacturing. And quickly moved on to IT Services, Medical Transcription, Tax Preparation etc.. There is even a service now where executives in the US can send an outline to India and get a complete Powerpoint Presentation the very next day.

I started thinking of services in the US that could be offshored to India ... An interesting one that I thought of was "Mall Security Services".

Every mall in the US has a security center - Where there is a bank of about 100 TV's each showing different sections of the mall and parking lot. There are about 5 security people sitting there watching the TVs. If they notice something suspicious, they radio the guards that are walking around the mall.

In this age of super-fast communication, why not have the security cameras transmit the video to India and have five people in India monitor the footage. Then, if there is a problem, they just need to pick up the phone and call the guards.

I would think that with 5 people working in each shift, with 2 full shifts a day, @25 dollars an hour, that would cost $730,000/year. In India, it could probably be done for $200,000. Half a Million dollars saved in each mall - This could be a pretty good business ...

Wireless Power ...

Everything is going wireless ... At home, I now have wireless internet, wireless speakers, a wireless printer, a wireless headphone. And of course, my phones - Cell phone and Landline are wireless and of course Remote Controls are sort of wireless too.

The only thing that stubbornly remains wired is electricity. Having wireless power would just be the coolest. Of course, the concept of wireless power has been around for a long time (more than 100 years). Tesla was the one who came up with the idea.

The method he proposed to use to produce wireless power was to employ the earth's own resonance with its specific vibrational frequency to conduct AC electricity via a large electric oscillator. J.P. Morgan, the billionaire financier agreed to underwrite Tesla's project and a strange structure was begun and almost completed near Wardenclyffe in Long Island, N.Y.

It looked like a huge lattice-like, wooden oil derrick with a mushroom cap and it had a total height of 200 feet. Then suddenly, Morgan withdrew his support to the project in 1906, and eventually the structure was dynamited and brought down in 1917.

More recently, another method was tried.

Light was transmitted from place to place and then converted to electricity using photo-voltaic cells. The need for light transmission was because durid any point of time, there are regions on Earth that do not have sunlight.

However, these methods deal more with long distance transmission. I wonder what a good method would be to transfer electricity from the wall socket to my computer with no wires ....

Sania's On !

Sania Mirza - Maria Sharapova is on right now on CBS
Man, Mirza is powerful ...

And she has a GVK logo on her T-Shirt - Wonder if thats Taj GVK Hotels, operators of the Taj Krishna, Taj Residency & Taj Banjara in Hyderabad.

Ok, she lost 2-6, 1-6 - But she had showed some flashes of brilliance - I have a good feeling about US Open 2006 ...

Networked Printers ...

I have resisted getting a fax machine for a long time now, despite having a home office.
Today I caved in and got an efax number which lets me view incoming faxes electronically.

And I also thought of an idea that could eliminate the need for fax machines.

Almost everybody has an printer on their desk. And everybody has an internet connection. Lets assume that everyone's printer could be given an unique identifying code (like an email address). Would'nt it be cool, if when I want to fax something to my father, I could just have the document print on his printer, by using the Print Command on my computer and specifying his Printer Code as the chosen printer.

Pros
Eliminate the need for a fax machine
Avoid the need to print a document before faxing
Better Quality

Cons
If somebody gets hold of you printer code, you could be "Printer Spammed" !

Sania Mirza !

Dont forget to watch Sania Mirza (Unseeded), the Hyderabadi Thunderstorm against Maria Sharapova (Seed 1) tomorrow in their 4th Round Match at the US Open.

Expected to be around 3:45 PM on Sunday.

Binge Drinking and Jam

There was a good article in Time magazine about binge drinking on college campuses in the US. As background to my non-US readers, let me provide a brief history of drinking legislation.

Prohibition was introduced in 1920, and repealed in 1933. Prohibition of course, was one of the major reasons for the rapid growth of the mafia. I blogged about that some time ago.

The legal age to drink was initially set at 21.

Following large scale youth movement during the Vietnam War, the voting age was reduced to 18 on March 10,1971. The legal age for drinking was also reduced to 18 shortly.

In 1984, following intense lobbying by Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD), the legal drinking age was increased to 21.

MADD and the NTHSA claim that setting the 21 year minimum, rather than 18 saved 917 lives in 2002. No explanation is provided on how this was calculated.

Of course, setting the drinking age at 21 means that college students cannot drink legally until their final year. And thus branded "illegal" becomes immediately extremely tempting to every college student.

Typically, on Friday and Saturday nights, underage students congregate at the off campus home of a 21+ year old and binge drink before heading off to parties/bars where they cannot drink.

In 2004, more than 300 students died as a result of excessive alcohol consumption in a very short period of time.

The author of the article points to Canada, where 18 year olds can drink legally. He goes on to say that if the drinking age is reduced to 18, although it might create a temporary increase in consumption, it would quickly level off. Drinking would then occur in supervised public places, in a less hurried manner.

In addition to reducing binge drinking, the money spent on preventing 18 year olds from drinking could be used to prevent drunk people from driving (Regardless of their age).

I agree with the author's recommendation and I do think that consumption will level off and stabilize after the initial few days of euphoria.

This reminds me of a similar incident when I was an undergrad - For breakfast, at the dining hall, we would often have "Bread and Jam" (Jam is the Indian name for Jelly). We would only get a little it of jam - About 1.5 tablespoons full.

One day, the dining hall management decided to do away with the quota system - They just put a huge bowl of jam on the table and let everybody take as much as they wanted. The first day, the starved students went berserk taking 5-6 times the amount of jam they usually got. Within a week however, consumption was back to the old levels when everybody realized got over the initial euphoria ....

Wow, that seems like a long time back, when a spoonful of jam was a big deal !

Contact Lenses

I always wanted to wear glasses.

I think it was because of the IIT JEE Toppers list that was released every year. About 95 of the top 100 rankers wore glasses. I think I formed an unconscious association between wearing glasses and doing well in the JEE.

So, after several faked headaches and doing artificially badly on an eye exam, I finally had glasses, albeit with a -0.25 prescription.

After trying the Brilliant Tutorials material for the JEE for about 2 days, I gave up on the IITs and settled for good ol' Pilani, but of course, my eyes got addicted to my glasses and my power gradually started increasing - To a point where I can hardly see things that are 10 feet away with my naked eye.

And after resisting contacts for a long time, I started using contacts about 2 months ago.

There are colored contact lenses to give your eye an artificial color - I wonder if it would be possible to create a contact lens that would automatically become "sunglasses" when you walk out into the sunshine - Similar to the glasses that change tint when sunlight falls on them..

$4 Coffee - But of Course !

I had an interesting conversation the other day about coffee ... With a 50 year old man. He was talking about how Starbucks and other coffee chains had made $4 Coffee the norm, rather than the exception.

"Starbucks marketing strategy is brilliant !"
"Take a $1 product, price it at $4 and create a huge market segment."

And the thing is, he said, now there is an entire generation which has gotten completely comfortable paying $4 for coffee. They would never consider buying coffee at Dunkin Donuts and McDonalds. Thats powerful ....

Personally, I dont really like Starbucks all that much.
Dunkin Donuts makes some really good coffee and so does Cup A Joe ...