Today Hon’ble Finance Minister (FM) presented his budget for FY2011-12. These are my immediate comments on seeing the live broadcast.
For the initial years of UPA government I had great expectations like rest of India on then dream team headed by Dr.Manmohan Singh. But over the last 6 Years it has diminished and now I am happy if Government just stays on course.
So on today’s budget and FM I had very low expectations, but for that FM seems to have done well. He hasn’t done anything new or path breaking, but thank god he hasn’t messed up anything either. He has retained Service Tax @10% itself which is good for many of us like myself in Services Industry. He has promised easier refunds for Service Tax on input services that go into Exports and on some cases there will be Exemption coupons as well – I wonder what took government so many years to see this..
I was not expecting STPI (Software Technology Parks of India) 10A/B Income Tax exemption to continue beyond 31st March 2011 and FM didn’t extend it, so I am not disappointed on that. But the FM introduced up MAT (Minimum Alternate Tax) on SEZ (Special Economic Zones) at around 18% tax, which basically renders SEZ useless from attracting new investments. The North Block of the Government headed by the FM has to be made to travel to China to understand the true meaning of SEZ and why they are important to generate employment for millions of young Indians.
To inject growth to overall Economy FM has announced some good measures like Tax Exemptions for Cold Storage for Foods products, a much needed thing to address routing of food products. He talked in length on the E-Governance initiatives, introduction of more Central Processing Centres (CPC) that is currently operating in Bangalore for Income Tax Returns Processing, Process of TDS E-Filing getting stabilized (Is it there are many gaps and mistakes happening on this ), exemption from Employees to file their TDS returns as it is already filled by their Employers and so on. All these E-Governance measures are good news for IT biggies who are involved on these, but nothing for SME (Small & Medium) IT Companies.
Two weeks back Google announced a product called “Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office” with the below video. This free product helps Microsoft Office (Windows application) users to collaborate (share, backup, simultaneously edit Word, Excel & PowerPoint).
Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office
Last week Microsoft has replied back in kind with the below video. Microsoft has been offering its own collaboration using its on-premise offering of Microsoft SharePoint Server or on the cloud with Office Live Workspaces (or SkyDrive) or SharePoint Online.
Microsoft’s response to Google Cloud Connect
There have been many discussions on the Blogosphere why is Microsoft doing this, are they threatened or they are feeling comfortable to come out in open. Whichever is true I find this to be a renewed interest on improving the basic office productivity suite after a long time. It is going to be a good time for consumers like you & me.
I am half-way through reading the book Googled when it struck me the thought that has become this post. Reading the book you are awe-stuck on Google’s initial years, the story of how the founders acted, their extraordinary vision & brilliance, their boldness touching arrogance are all unbelievable. Though many of us who were over 20s when Google was founded has lived through their growth, still when you read it chronicled we realize that this is a company that was so disruptive, so unconventional, so transformational in the first years of its life itself. Then suddenly when I started thinking about Google in the present term (2011), I felt not so cool or exciting about them.
The thoughts that go through my mind as I now think of Google are:
FaceBook is the new darling of the Silicon Valley. You have read stories about the Google struggling to retain their brightest people and fresh A-Grade talent are choosing FaceBook over Google.
Google’s strength always has been the amount of information it has – about People their interest, what they search, when they search, what advertisements works and so on. Now FaceBook seems to be doing one-up in this, FB knows more about individuals – they know who my friends are, what they like and they know that in real-time from my updates. And people spend good part of their day in FaceBook, where as in Google they visit & immediately leave Google.
After their initial wave of product releases (or acquisitions) including Adwords, AdSense, GMail, Google News, YouTube, Blogger, Picasa, Google Books, Google Maps, Google Chrome which were innovative & in rapid succession, you are finding things have become slow. (Let us look into new innovations in later points). The last major release I remember of Picasa, YouTube, Google News or GMail were years ago. Blogger is certainly aging and crying for an update whereas WordPress is shining with new features all the time. Google Docs is evolving ever more slower. There has been incremental updates like Microsoft has been doing for last 2 decades with Windows & MS Office, but nothing that’s disruptive like Apple is able to come out with each release.
After the initial lead I am not finding Google Apps to be offering any compelling value over competition. Microsoft has been successful in stemming migration to Google Docs, infact Microsoft has grown its revenues from MS Office pretty well over the last few years much more than expected. When it comes to cloud you hear Amazon AWS, Windows Azure & SalesForce more often than Google App Engine.
Apple which was basically a Hardware/OS firm is now the biggest media retailer (Music, Movies) and is one of the the biggest Online Services firm from new markets that it created from nowhere (Books, Apps) – where as Google is nowhere in any of these. I have used Android Marketplace and it pales in comparison even to Microsoft Zune/Windows Phone Marketplace and certainly not in the same league as Apple App Store in terms of technology, user experience & developer experience. Android is also plagued with the problem of heavy fragmentation and so far no plans from Google to address it for benefit of developers & users.
When a company like Google which has grown exponentially every year for last ten years in terms of revenues and resources (people & infrastructure) it is natural to be having big expectations and innovations coming out every year. In recent years, Google has come up only with Android which has become a hit. Google Wave was a disaster, Chrome OS is having release delays & predictions from IT pundits of being born dead, Orkut is an also run, Open Social a failed show of strength and PayPal clone Google Checkout has had few takers. Many of the recent announcements from Google have not got the same WorldWide PR attention like in the earlier days. The next wave of growth in Tech World is undoubtedly the Social & Cloud – Google is not the leader in any of this.
It is not surprising to hear bad things about Google especially from Steve Ballmer and then from Carol Bartz – who both have called Google a “One Trick Pony” at various times, but I find it to be more true than ever. Google has been very successful in defending its turf on Search for almost 10 years now, it has been constantly improving it, it has got releases in quick successions and almost always the product turned out to be superior in technology than the competition. Bing! is catching up (due to Yahoo! acquisition & fairly good product) but still Google is able to maintain its lead comfortably. The entry barrier in this field is phenomenal for any entrant here.
So what will the next ten years of Google will be – that’s the billion(s) dollar question. One thing we can be certain is that the road ahead for the incoming CEO Larry Page from April 1st is not going to be smooth. All the best for Mr.Page
Having seen the various trailers I could guess pretty much what the movie was and many of the reviews talked about the Ralston freeing himself only after amputating himself his arm. I was expecting the movie to be long & dull inside a cave & pretty gruesome (which it was but only in those few scenes) and I wanted to avoid seeing the movie. But curiosity got the best of me and I watched the much talked about movie “127 Hours” today – just in time as tomorrow will be Oscar Night where the movie with many nominations is one of the favourites. The movie turned out to be good, the director sustaining our interest level almost throughout and the acting by James Franco was great. A.R.Rahman background music was phenomenal but in the dark moments silence (rather than the loud BGM that was played) could have been more effective for the viewers to feel the pain.
The film stars James Franco as real-life mountain climber Aron Ralston, who became trapped by a boulder in Blue John Canyon at Utah, for more than five days in early 2003. The movie had generated much interest because of the Director (Danny Boyle who directed Slumdog Millionare, which by the way I am yet to watch ), Music (A.R.Rahman) and the fascinating real life story.
I came across and purchased iMovie today for my iPhone4. I was curious to see how you can do video editing on a small screen in a handheld.
In general I have found Video Editing to be like a miniature rocket science course. I use Windows Live Movie Maker for quick edits and publish to YouTube as it is easy to approach and use. For anything even a little important I struggle my way each time with Adobe Premiere Elements.
With this background, iMovie on iPhone4 was super cool to use. It took me less than 5 minutes to figure out the way in the App, compose this video (below), trim it and publish it to YouTube – and all of them from my iPhone. Of course, the App is very limited on what it can do. But isn’t that what makes it so easy to use, anyways you are not going to doing special effects in an handheld.
What are the must have software in your PC for 2011, apart from the OS (Windows or Mac OS)?. Below are my favourites which are present in all the 3 PCs I use, most of them are available for Windows 7 & Mac OS 10.X.
Drivers & Antivirus
After you install OS (Windows or Mac OS), connect all your peripherals like Printer, Scanner, Camera one after the other and ensure to install the necessary drivers. Most cases going with default Windows 7 (or Mac OS) driver might be the best, except for your Graphics Card & Printer for which the OEM given software offers more features & performance
Microsoft Security Essentials: If you are not going to be buying any of the commercial Antivirus (which I highly recommend) like Norton 360 or K7 Total Security, then download & install the free Antivirus from Microsoft for Windows XP, Vista & Windows 7.
Free (as in free beer) Software:
Firefox web browser (or Google Chrome, but I will go with Firefox due to the number of add-ons)
Microsoft Silverlight: If you are visiting sites like NBC Olympics or sites owned by Microsoft like Bing! & MSN, this Flash like Plug-in from Microsoft is a must. And it runs on Windows & Mac OS.
KeePass Password Safe: All of us deal with several tens of passwords, PINs and other secret information to remember. This free application is the best one out there and offers the best security. It stores all your private information in a local XML file, which is only accessible with your master password. Shows the stored information in a neat hierarchy (like folders) structure and you can also search by words stored. Apart from being available for Windows & Mac OS on your PC, there are KeePass compatible apps for your mobile (iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, J2Me, PalmOS and Windows Phone)
VLC Media Player: Whether you use Windows Media Player or iTunes, there are DVDs or Video files that you are not able to play due to Encoder and other confusing technical issues. Here is a free Media Player that plays almost all Video and Audio files out there from the most popular to the most obscure
Paint.NET: The built-in MS Paint application in Windows is useless for anything beyond for kids to colour for fun. For any serious editing, cropping images, Paint.NET is the best. It offers some advanced features like Layers, Filters which are found only in Adobe Photoshop or GIMP but makes them available in easy to use fashion. Even though I have paid Adobe Photoshop Elements, most often I use Paint.NET as it is faster and gets simple jobs done easily
Skype: Many of us have in far-away places our friends and family and Skype is the best free service to speak (or chat or see) to them
PDF Creator (or PrimoPDF): Having a Print to PDF application installed can be a life-saver especially if you do online transactions or purchases. In events like after you have booked a ticket online, you want to save it as a file and email or printer is not available. Though in initial years I have used PDF Creator, nowadays I prefer PrimoPDF as it works flawlessly on Windows x64 as well
7-Zip: Most often you will use a Zip file for compressing and packaging files and Windows does Compressing/Extraction of Zip files automatically. But what if you get a file from a friend that’s in RAR, ISO or other formats. That’s where 7-Zip comes handy and it is much faster than the built-in Zip feature of Windows. If you can spare some money, I will recommend going and buying WinRAR, a commercial application that does the same even better
OpenOffice: (Certainly Not needed if you have bought MS Office) The free equivalent of MS Office apps to create your documents, spread sheets and presentations. Though OpenOffice can open, edit & save MS Office files I will recommend you having the official free viewers from Microsoft installed; this ensures you can at least open Word/Excel/PowerPoint/Visio files.
Free – Useful for most users but must-have for Power-Users:
Windows Live Essentials: This free suite from Microsoft is the best kept secret for Windows. In one single download you get quite a handful set of applications, but in opinion 4 of the included apps are the best in-class and you should definitely be selecting them while installing it. They are Windows Live Movie Maker (the easiest video-editing software), Windows Live Messenger (connects to MSN Messenger service, Yahoo! IM and Facebook chat all in one go), Windows Live Writer (the very application that I am using to compose and post this blog post) & Windows Live Mesh (that synchronizes files and folders between your PCs and an optional cloud storage)
Free Download Manager: Almost all of us download large files especially music & videos. FDM is the fast and easy to use Download manager and integrates seamlessly with your web browser. It also supports downloading videos from YouTube, Torrents and more
Apple iTunes: If you have any Apple device you can’t be without this software, especially iPhone or iPad. Also the best service to buy Music & Movies
Handbrake: This is one of the best application for converting your movie DVDs into Digital files that you can copy to your iPhone/Zune/Smartphone/iPod. I have wasted numerous hours and few hundred dollars in trying out many of the Video Conversion software available in the market, but nothing beats HandBrake
Java runtime: If you are doing online banking then many Bank still run Java Applets and you will need to have the latest Java runtime in your PC. If none of the sites you visit, prompts you for it, you don’t need to have this
Adobe AIR: If you have specific some apps like New York Times reader or TweetDeck)
Picasa Photo Editing Software: This software from Google is the easiest Photo management & online sharing service I have see. I will rate it better than Yahoo! Flickr and FaceBook. In recent times, Google seems to be improving it less frequently, but still I find it adequate
Sobees Desktop Application: Almost all of us are into Social like Twitter, FaceBook or Linked-In, this free Microsoft .NET WPF based app rocks when it comes to connecting to all popular social websites with a single application. Since the application is written using Microsoft .NET Windows Presentation Framework (WPF) it is I18N compatible including Indic Languages)
Paid (Commercial) Software
Microsoft Office: No explanations needed. Word, Excel and PowerPoint
Norton 360 Antivirus suite: Though there are many free and paid Antivirus out there, I will go with Norton 360 any day. The newer versions offer speed, take very little system resource and never slows down your PC. On top of a great product, their online support has been the best I have used. I have been a loyal subscriber of their service for last 6 years.
Nero Multimedia Suite: If you want to do anything beyond just copying files to your CD or DVD including burning/copying discs, you will need Nero. I have been a paid users upgrading to each of their latest version for last several years
Adobe Acrobat: If you scanning documents or creating PDF files and sharing them to your partners and outside world, buying the Adobe Acrobat Pro will pay for itself in few months. The reduced filesize and the clarity in the PDF files created by official Adobe Acrobat can never be matched by free software or the built-in software that came with your scanner. It also allows you to edit PDF files, annotate, fill forms and save them. Though it is very expensive compared to alternatives and I delayed buying it for years, I am experiencing it benefits
Adobe Photoshop Elements & Adobe Premiere Elements: They are the siblings of their best in-class bigger versions from Adobe. If you don’t want to keep experimenting with multiple software out there in the Internet and want to go with a safe and easy to use Photo-Editing and Video-Editing software you can’t go wrong with these two from Adobe. When you buy them together you get good discounts and rebate from Adobe.
Other Software I use regularly
NHM Writer: I use this IME (Keyboard input) application to type in my mother tongue (Tamil). It supports many of Indian & Asian languages
Windows Virtual PC (or Oracle Virtual Box): I use these to run old Operating systems like Windows 98 or Windows XP for some testing and a bit of nostalgia. Most often I use them to run say Windows XP when I have to browse sites like torrents which I am not sure on how safe they are. In those cases I enable the UNDO feature in Virtual PC do my browsing then shut-down the instance and throw away the changes. Running these unsafe browsing sessions inside a Virtual instance of an OS, helps me to protect the base OS
After the Nokia & Microsoft partnership announcement last few days back, it has been the main news on the tech world. Many pundits have rushed to criticize the partnership and writing it off as failure even without knowing the full details, with Google’s Vic Gundotra leading the pack with his pre-emptive tweet “Two Turkeys do not make an Eagle”.
For me this deal can be best described as “The Devil is in the Detail”. At this moment, none of us know any details about the partnership, the timelines, money’s involved, exact IPs that will be exchanged – basically who brings what to the table. We only the broad one-liner – Nokia brings Hardware & few software assets like Maps, Microsoft brings the Operating System (Windows Phone), Bing! & XBOX Live. I have had few lively discussions on this subject this week with two of my good tech-buddies in the industry and it turns out I see this deal a little different from them.
Today my primary phone is iPhone4 which I upgraded after 2 years of satisfied usage with iPhone3. Last year once WindowsPhone7 came out I bought HTC Mozart with a BSNL 3G connection and I feel it is a promising device, yet it hasn’t replaced iPhone4 as my primary phone. Few months back I used HTC Legend (Android 2.1) for some days, though its touch is usable & comparable to iPhone I find Android to be less polished than WindowsPhone7 on the interface front. Many things in Android UI are counter-intuitive especially for me coming from iPhone world.
Coming back to the Nokia-Microsoft deal, inferring from what we know I see lot more positives than negatives. I see Nokia gaining more from the deal than Microsoft. For Nokia this is the only business they have, for Microsoft Mobile is just a portion of their $60B empire.
Other than iPhone & BlackBerry, all other smartphones including all the Android variants are pathetic when it comes to Battery life and voice clarity. A smartphone primarily is a Phone and as a Phone battery life is super critical. In this area, no one can beat Nokia. In general, all Nokia phones including their Smartphones or their Communicator easily last for more than 2 days on one charge. I believe the Battery Life is an area where the Hardware, Drivers and OS have to work together very tightly. That’s the reason why generic OS like Android or Windows Mobile have failed in the past, whereas vertically integrated players like Apple & Blackberry have succeeded. With Nokia-Microsoft, they can get this right by making WindowsPhone more efficient on battery usage.
So far both Nokia and Microsoft are not known for being agile. Both have wasted precious last four years in giving the lead they both independently on the smartphones to Apple & Google in a platter. But this time around the writing for both of them is in the wall and no company works great than Microsoft when it is paranoid. Look at how well Microsoft responded to competition including Netscape, OpenOffice, Java, Sony Playstation, Linux on Netbooks & Adobe Flash.
Nokia’s hardware is world famous for its reliability and durability. They still make the largest number of phones in the world. Outside USA, especially in Asia & Africa (which is where the next 1 Billion phones are going to be sold) Nokia is a much bigger brand than iPhone, BlackBerry, HTC, Android, Motorola, Sony – all put together. Nokia makes phones at every price point. Android OEMs like Motorola, HTC, Dell & others may find it difficult to play the low & medium end of this game. Apple always likes to keep its variations limited to 1 or few and I believe all the news about low-cost iPhones are nothing but rumours. The only player I see who can play the game across price points is Sony-Ericsson and they seem to have much bigger problems than Nokia or Microsoft.
Let us take one important feature in a Smartphone – Camera. Hands down Nokia Phones with their Carl-Zeiss lenses are the best, I find even my iPhone4 not able to deliver photo or video quality like a Nokia phone that costs half. Software features like HDR in iPhone does help a bit, but ultimately it is the optics and the physics there that matters.
How about manufacturing?. Today majority of the smartphones including iPhones are manufactured by contract manufacturers like FoxConn. Though these manufacturers help in reducing the cost, in the long term they offer no differentiator at the manufacturing level. Once consumers especially in Asia & Africa become more sophisticated they will demand better finished, well polished devices – which can be executed well if you own the manufacturing. For example, look at the Nokia’s manufacturing facility in Chennai (India).
Today’s Mobile Operating System are more like PC operating systems of the 90s. They are becoming more and more complex and I see them to converge/unify in the near-future with the PC Operating System. In PC Operating System if you take Windows – developing something like Windows today is like building a Rocket or even more complex. Only firms like NASA can accomplish this. The competition for Windows, Linux has struggled for last 20 years to make any significant impact in the Desktop market. Only another closed source OS, the Mac OS is able to garner about 10% market share from Windows. To continuously develop and improve an OS like Windows, you need phenomenal resources, engineering talent & discipline. Microsoft has proven time and again they have it. I don’t consider Windows Vista to be a failure, from an Engineering Perspective Windows 7 is nothing but faster Windows Vista. The reason I am bringing Vista is that Microsoft has proven it has the ability to recover itself from a failure as grand as Windows Vista and come out more stronger with Windows 7. Even in the development of Windows Vista, Microsoft did a complete over-haul, a complete reboot when it was known as “LongHorn”; to do something like that you need massive amounts of cash and resources and Microsoft has it. Even more relevant will be their Windows Mobile 6.5 (Windows CE) which was a failure, but Microsoft did a complete reboot and came out with a decent OS with WindowsPhone7. Compare this with the darling of the markets – Google with their Android. Google is struggling and delayed with their Google Chrome OS and they have no long term track record on managing & delivering a OS like Microsoft do. The only serious competitor to Microsoft on the Consumer Operating System who has done massive platform changes over the years and still succeeded is Apple – even their movement from PowerPC to Intel was not as smooth as Microsoft made the switch for developers and users not once but so many times from 16 bit to 32 bit or to 64 bit now.
Lastly, today’s smartphone it is all about Software & Apps. iOS has succeeded in making Apps the centre stage of activity in the Mobile world, and iTunes is the best marketplace out there for Music & Movies. In both these areas Microsoft has the best comparable offerings in terms of technology. For developers to develop great Apps, you need great developer tool & ecosystem. And no one knows developers & developer ecosystem like Microsoft do – remember SteveB shouting Developers, Developers, Developers. Yes, they have been late to the party with their Marketplace & Zune Marketplace doesn’t resonate anything with consumers like the way iTunes does. Still technically Microsoft has the best developer toolkit out there with their Visual Studio, SilverLight for the developers and it is free. Android can’t match this. You can show me number of Apps in Android is 100x like in WindowsPhone Marketphone, but look at the quality of Apps – Apps in iOS and WP7 platform are class-apart from the lousy Android Marketplace. And don’t get me started on the confusion with multiple Android Marketplaces and the fragmented Android versions and variations. Developers hate variations, users hate to spend $$$ and find the app not working on their firmware/device/OS. Lastly the one thing I hate in my Apple iPhone experience is their iTunes client software, Apple seems to have no clue on how to write a user friendly client software – I find it so confusing on how to organize my music files, editing meta-data of them, manage photos in iTunes (it doesn’t show photos at all). Microsoft makes the best desktop applications in the world including MS Office and Solitaire. I find Zune client software better with syncing, managing Photo Albums, allowing drag and drop and on many more. Compared to that, iTunes shows its age as a CD Music software.
Of course, all the above depends on how well the two companies (Nokia & Microsoft) are able to work together, execute and deliver. Overall, I will give the deal a 70-30 chance of success.
I saw this movie today, The King’s Speech out of curiosity that it got nominated for Oscar under 12 categories.
The movie is about King George VI (before he became the king), to overcome his stammering is introduced to an unorthodox speech therapist Lionel Logue. Rest of the story is on how they work together and the King was made to deliver comfortably the Radio message on World War II. The movie is not about politics, war or about monarchy but mainly about the struggle of a man to overcome his weakness. The movie is very nicely scripted and acted. A must see and a worthy contestant for the Oscars.
After I watched the movie, reading on Wikipedia, I learned that King George VI was the father of present British Monarch – Queen Elizabeth II, and it was during King George VI reign that India got its independence.
I am not much into reading Fiction but this book caught my attention and so I picked it up. The story was so captivating that I finished the book over this weekend easily. It is surprising that “Invitation” is the first novel for the author Shehryar Fazli and as the back cover reads he has kicked it off in high style.
The story is about Shahbaz, who is a young Pakistani from Paris who returns to his home city in Karachi, West Pakistan, to settle a family property dispute. He arrives in a 1970s Karachi preparing for democracy, seething with political machination, corruption and class tensions – and, above all, facing the prospect of a changing power balance between the dominant West Pakistani establishment and the Bengalis of East Pakistan. The property dispute pits Shahbaz against his father’s older sister, Mona Phuppi, a strong-willed woman with deep knowledge of Karachi and, unlike Shahbaz, certain of her place in it. More than defeating his aunt, Shahbaz wants to reclaim a place in a Karachi aristocracy he was once entitled to.
As an Indian I am used to the world around me which singularizes everything about Pakistan to Politics (Conflict & Terrorism). Reading this book gave me a small window to the true Pakistan, its people & their struggles. Overall, the novel was informative and enjoyable as well.
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), Music (A.R.Rahman) and the fascinating real life story. 
