Live from TMCnet ITEXPO 2010 (Miami, Florida)
Interviews with Arjun Roychowdhury, Asst. Vice President at Hughes Systique Corp (HSC). HSC is a HUGHES company, an industry leader in IP and communications technology.
(recorded at 2010-01-21 12:04:39)
click HERE for the interview (ignore video ad below)
I finally get why people tweet. It lets you speak your mind the way it is, without requiring you to make a paragraph out of it. When I blog, I think, then form, then rehearse then post. When I tweet, I think and tweet. The link between my thoughts and the tweets is more direct. And of course, very often, I don’t have paragraphs to talk about, but still experience exciting new things that can be written in 3 lines. So now I understand the subtle difference of tweeting vs blogging. I’ve wiped the dust off my twitter account. I will use that more often now. I will still occasionally post, but only if I have lots to say.
Follow on at http://twitter.com/arjunrc
There has been a lot of posts and flutter on Google’s new purported Chrome OS and how it will be a great battle with Microsoft, how it will confuse and/or kill Android etc. And also, of course, taking off from the Google Blog on Chrome OS “For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies” people are also throwing in “Web OS” everywhere.
I thought I’d write a post detailing my thoughts (technical) on this entire issue.
So yesterday, Google finally announced it is getting into the “OS” business with Chrome OS.
Similar to Google Wave, this one is also just an announcement (gee, it doesn’t even have a front page yet 
)
But anyway, here are my predictions on where this will go:
On my flight back home from CTIA Wireless 2009, I was on a southwest flight (one of only 4 in southwest) that offered free Wifi over satellite as a test. Here is a quick test of how it performed
I noticed quite a flutter on several blogs and news sites on a new service from Trapcall that allows you to “see” Caller ID even if the caller blocks the caller ID.
A layman description: Jack is an agressive sales person who loves calling his prospective customer Bob with his caller ID blocked, so that Bob will be forced to pick up the phone and have a chat with Jack. This is a good ploy, because Bob may otherwise ignore the call if he recognizes Jack’s number. (There are of course more serious situations like domestic abuse etc. reported on other sites)
So what does Bob do ? Well, Bob sets ‘Call Forwarding on No Answer’ and/or ‘Call Forward Busy’ etc. on his phone to point to a Trapcall 1-800 number. That’s all.
So what happens ? Jack calls Bob. Bob gets an incoming call without an ID. He ignores it. This makes the call route to Trapcall’s 1-800 # which does its ‘Voodoo’ and routes the call back to Bob, who gets an incoming call again, but this time with Bob’s caller ID !! So he can now really ignore it.
How does this work ?
So the rumors of many years ago were true. Google finally did release a browser. Naturally, I downloaded it and took it for a test drive. Here is the short of it.
Version reviewed:
Google may be rolling out updates regularly (For example, I suddenly see evident popup blocking), so to put it in context, this is the version I am reviewing
Installation:
The installer is just around 470K to download, but of course that is the ‘pre-installer’. Once you grab the pre-installer, it downloads the rest of the browser from the net. As of now, in its first release, focus seems to be on super simplicity. It does not even ask you where to install it. I am OK with that, but it really does choose a weird location to install it (in Documents and Settings!)
(click on any image to see a full size version)
Yahoo recently launched Fire-Eagle, which is essentially an ‘open platform’ that allows two simple things:
A) Users can update the system whenever they want with their location
B) Application Developers can access the system whenever they want to know the location of consumers and do anything with it (i.e. serve any application that can make use of that information)
Of course, ‘Users’ can explictly set permissions on who can or cannot view their location.
For a long time, I have wanted to see such an open and simple platform, where ‘executing a service based on location’ is completely independent of ‘the technology used to provide the location’. Because I believe providing individually accessible repositories of data is the key construct to building a hierarchy of innovative products. You collect data, expose it to others so they can transform your data into information. And your information, is data for the next application. So turns the wheel of the Web 2.0 circle. And a location repository is one key missing element to personalize services.
(image credit to Engadget)
Ever since iPhone SDK got released, we have seen a lot of requests from customers wanting us to build iPhone apps. Naturally, we have loved to oblige -after all, we love hacking on new platforms.
The biggest problem, however, was not being able to run background applications, which KOed out a lot of neat things one could do, especially for location related apps. At the keynote today at WWDC, Scott Forstall said this:
If you are in this emerging ‘applications’ market, and are in the business of building applications for OEMs/ISVs or Service Providers (yes, some Operators actively invest in R&D work), the term ‘Rapid Prototype’ is not new to you. In short, people are always looking at ‘quick and dirty’ demonstration code that shows off a cool concept which they can take to prospective customers as a viable product or service to be rolled out. Customers who ask for this are not sure if that idea will go anywhere, but are willing to test the waters with you (if you are willing). A typical software development organization follows the ‘Build Rome one stone at a time’ model whereas this particular market needs the ‘pre-fab modular home in 1 month’ model and therefore struggles with this particular market. I know of many organizations who believe this is not an area to be in, because of the limited scope and length of such projects. The problem however, is that they fail to understand that this market is actually very attractive and profitable, but only if you look at it the right way, and approach it the right way. Last week, I was chatting up with a friend on the same issue and was sharing some insights into what one should try and institute to make this model work. He suggested a blog post, so here goes – some common problems, pitfalls and solutions:
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