Microsoft announced recently a new Sync Framework. This is a CTP release that is targeted for release in Q2 2008 and it supports P2P and Online/Offline synchronization of data. Currently though customers require Outlook like Offline/Online Sync scenario, it means developers doing custom coding. The Sync Framework is claimed to support P2P sync of any type of file including contacts, music, videos, images and settings. And has built-in support for synchronizing relational databases, NTFS/FAT file systems, Simple Sharing Extensions for RSS/ATOM, devices and web services.

I welcome having a standard framework for doing this repetitive job, it also removes the complexity of handling multiple connection types, scenarios, fail over, retry, etc. Download CTP from here.

Today I saw in The Hindu/Business Line newspaper an advertisement from Emirates Airlines about their new route from India to Toronto. It talked about Toronto having the world's longest Road - Yonge Street at 1900Kms. I was surprised on this for two reasons - 1) I thought the longest road will be in Russia just like the longest train track which is the Trans-Sibera rail which runs for 10,000Kms, 2) How come a city have 1900kms of one road, no city can have a diameter of more than a hundred kilometres, so this road had to be running across the country and I thought the longest road will be US I101 which runs from Canada to Mexico - some of the stretches of this which I have been to in San Diego county happen to be beautiful pacific coastline drives.   

When I searched in Wikipedia I learned that Yonge street was called as the longest road way back in 1998 when people wrongly attributed it to be the same as Highway 11. Currently as per Guiness Book of Records the world longest road is Pan-America Highway. Pan-Am Hwy is a network of roads nearly 48,000 kilometres in total length. Except for an 87 kilometre rainforest gap, the road links 15 countries in mainland of South and North Americas.

WOW, writing the above headline made me wonder how far software has come from the time you bought it from guys with coat and suit, to online, to free and now to rental. And what better product to signify this, other than MS Office.

I read in news that Microsoft India has announced MS Office 2007 in Prepaid model - which for me essentially resembles a rental/subscription model, as software always has been prepaid in the true sense. May be MS didn't want to use either subscription or rental words, they probably want to embrace, extend and change the game. Whatever said this is certainly a welcome move especially for a country with low income like India, where MS Office at say Rs.15,000 can be about 50% of a PC price.

The price of Rs.1499 for 6 month usage is affordable, but each extension there after at Rs.1299 for 3 months somehow looks exorbitant. Hopefully they are testing the waters on the pricing and will come to their senses. Ideally for bottom of the pyramid (for whom this is targeted) I will love to see a price of in the range of Rs.100 to 200 per month (in the same range as your cable TV fee per month) and it should include license for usage of Windows OS as well.

I am a fan of Bruce Willis - not so much for his Die Hard action series, but for his other master performances in movies like The Sixth Sense (where he brings the Night Shyamalan's creation into life) and Armageddon. The first time I have watched Bruce Willis on screen (small screen) was in late 80's TV serials Moonlighting.

Today on the flight from LA to Taipei (14:30 Hours journey), after getting some sleep completing all the comedy shows I had to watch some movies to burn the time - so it was Die Hard 4 and Tamil Kreedam (next post). The actions performed by Bruce Willis was just like any other Die Hard movie and were good but not impressive, the story line was pathetic. It was about an ex-government IT security expert turning bad, who tries to shutdown all the computer systems in USA including Traffic, Power, etc. Bruce Willis along with a teenage cyber-hacker saves the world. The screen play could certainly have been fresh, it reminded of all many previous Hollywood movies. This post will go for pages If I listed all the goof-ups I noticed, but select few here:

• Why is that all Hollywood Action movies have their villain operating out of big trucks - is there no other mobile offices available?
• How come the villain get high-speed connectivity to all places around the USA from the truck - even with satellite dishes you can't get high-speed
• You can't even get a webpage rendered correctly even on 3G with Mobile phones, but it was interesting to see a Nokia 9300 (my previous phone) used for connecting into high-security computers
• Even on any critical banking back end applications, the entire architecture is not known to one person. Here the entire countries backup strategy was build and known to one guy
• How come the teenager effortlessly connects and accesses all computers?. How does he know the commands of all systems, understands Power Plants, Nuclear Plants, etc. In practical world, even moving from a Windows PC to Unix Workstations is difficult for best of geeks out there
• Won't the government have at least one equally intelligent guy like the villain or at least better than the teenager, surprising
• Finally, how on earth can you hit a helicopter with a car

May be I should have not watched the movie.

இது ஒரு சண்டைப் படம். வாழ்க்கையில் சாதிக்கும் தருனத்தில் கனவுடன் இருக்கும் சாதாரண ஒரு இளைஞனின் வாழ்க்கை விதியால் எப்படி மாறுகிறது என்பது தான் கதை. கண்டிப்பாக கதை புதிதில்லை, ஆனாலும் அழகாக அதை எடுக்க முடியும் என்று காட்டியுள்ளார் புது இயக்குனர் விஜய்.  அதற்காக அவரைப் பாராட்டலாம்.  அஜித் அசத்துகிறார், அச்சாரிமாக இருக்கிறது - எப்படி மனிதர் நாளாக நாளாக வயதைக் குறைத்துவருகிறார் என்று.

சினிமா தனம் இல்லாத யதார்தமான முடிவு. வாய்ப்பு கிடைத்தால் இந்த படத்தை கண்டிப்பாகப் பார்க்கலாம்.

From LA I went to Redmond (WA) where I will be in our US Office for a week before returning to India. Since I have been to many places around Seattle, I decided to go to Vancouver (BC) for the weekend. This is my first trip to Canada. Canada requires Indian Citizens to have a valid VISA to enter, I had got mine from India itself.

We booked for the trip from Seattle-Vancouver-Seattle through Clipper Victoria for about USD 212 per person including the hotel room at Vancouver, entrance to Aquarium, hotel transfers and Grayline tour on Day 2. Today morning (Saturday) we left by Amtrak from Seattle at around 7AM and reached Vancouver at 12PM. Just like in an airport, you have immigration happening at the arrival. We stayed at Fairmont Hotel Vancouver, which is a nice hotel and well in the downtown accessible to all places easily. Taxi's are easy to get by calling in Vancouver and many places cost about $10 per trip. Since this is Winter, it was drizzling almost through out the day, but it seems to be a beautiful city.

The Vancouver Aquarium at Stanley Park is hyped a lot, I found it ordinary especially after seeing many of them around the world. One show that was worth seeing there was a live Necropsy (autopsy done in a fish) performed for a dead Shark - though the event was staged it showed live the inner organs of a shark. In the same park we walked for about 20 minutes or so and saw a live Rugbe match being played and little far the Totem poles.

After this, we went to IMax Theatre and saw a 3D Movie on Dinasours, on our way back we went to Chinatown - where most of the shops got closed at 6:30PM itself. For the dinner, we went to a nearby Indian Restaurant (Original Flavours of India) on 1232 Robson Street, though the food was little pricier it did tasted good.  Sunday when we went back to the area in Robson street we found atleast 2 other Indian restaurants with in the same block.

Vancouver Nov 2007

On Day 2 (Sunday) we took the Grayline half-a-day tour of the city which took us to Lookout point, Chinatown, Stanley Park, Lions Bridge & Granville Island Public Market. The public market was an World War II abandoned warehouses (5) that were converted to shops - now they house few hundred eateries. Being a Vegetarian I didn't find anything that interested me. Post lunch we went around the shops in Robson street.

In the evening we took the Amtrak back to Seattle. Unlike in an airport, the immigration for USA happens in Vancouver Station itself, customs happens only after the train enters the first station in USA - just like in India State to State buses border checking, the US Custom officials come into the train seat by seat and check.

I was recorded on Day 1 of Digital Hollywood to say our pitch about Vishwak by Vator.TV and it was published now (click the above video). Vator.tv is a professional network and marketplace for ideas and businesses. Anyone, across all industries, at any stage, can share ideas, products, services and businesses with the rest of the world, mainly through video.

When they recorded with a small handycam I doubted on how well it will come. Not only it has come out well but they have published our About us and also enrolled us in SDForum Competition.

Today is the last day of DH and I have my panel discussion in another hour or so. I am sitting currently in The Next Generation in Mobile & Broadband Platform Personalization: Widgets, Search, Information & Commerce.

Joyce Schwarz, JCOM Emerging Entertainment Marketing, talked about her blog at Hollywood2020. You should give some content free, so that consumer will upsell, upgrade, etc. It is sickening everytime you have register when you want to see some content. She says she is an active believer that move toys will connect to Internet - Nicholas Negropante has said you will have more Barbies connected to Internet than PCs.

Martin Russ, Chief Architect, Real Time Content talked about documentary where you can give consumer a small teaser and then that keeps expanding as you go into it. There should be able to have an open API for exchanging profile from one social site to another. It is not possible to automatically move the profile content from facebook to linkedin. Future always has the habit of being what is least expected. 3

Jonathon Wolfe, CEO, Maxiem talked about his company having a framework around MPEG21. And content producers in future are going to let go of the content to be distributed over all places, but have embedded transaction points and revenue shares.

Collin Bruce, Director of Marketing, Embedded Business Group, Hitachi America Ltd. talked about their investments on embedded database for search. We will accept adverts when we want to do something/buy something. If we force advertisement with content, people will move to free options.

Scott Fedewa, Executive VP & Executive Producer, LiveNation.com talked about how they are building technology that shows text and picture sent from SMS go through moderator and appear on the screen in the front during a concert. A spam is a spam only if you are not interested. If you target correctly then you will want it, even rich people will want it, done correctly advertisement becomes programming.

Jim Benz, BDM, CSG Interactive talked that they are 1.2 Billion USD company there customers are most of the cable companies. DRM seems to be come and go depending on which seminar you are in.

Dan Nguyen, Director of Product Management, OpenWave provides the client and server software for mobile browsing and location based services. On Google OpenSocial API - if you can't buy them, neutralize it and this is a best way to do it.

Digital Music & Its Transformation

Artistnation has been recently launched which brings under one umbrella the pandora of revenue sources for artists including Music Rights, Mobile Rights, Merchandising, Product branding, touring, etc. It has recently signed up with Madonna for 150 Million over 10 years. Artists are now being realized as the center of universe and they never had distribution going better for them than now. Another speaker says he wants to dispel this vision of artist quitting their day job, over the weekend distribute music and make millions. Traditionally there has been an adversary relationship between label and artists - now they will move into more collaborative relationship just like artist and managers. Labels were controlling 90% of video distribution, now you have MSN, Google & Yahoo! doing it. There was mention about Ruckus which is legal music free for college students.

Alby Galuten from Sony says it is a myth that labels makes artists. Music sales in their heydays had users immersed in music when they buy a CD put up their headphone and hear it, do nothing. Now they do many things. It is going to be very difficult to get subscribers to keep paying $15 per month.

Jessica Stoner of Pandora (Radio) talked about how users will get more ways to get music easily - as easy as get getting terrestrial music, now they are getting broadband music in PC, later it is going to broadband in their cars. People want to discover/get introduced to music in their radio and then hear it till they drop from their iPod. 

John Jones talked about how music will be mixed / consolidated in everything that MSN, Yahoo! does.

Charlie Moore of Ruckus feels that students feel comfortable paying money per semester terms, they are comfortable for charging through mobile/landline numbers than through credit cards. They will feel better to pay $50 per year one time, rather than $5 per month.

There was a question of where Microsoft is with Zune with all their monies and where is there $50 million campaign equivalent of iPods. Microsoft historically leads in 3rd round, they have patience and perseverance to lead. They did with software, now they are likely to get it in entertainment with XBOX leading. 

Reinventing Advertising: Broadcast vs the New Platforms

Dean Scheu from Charter Media says That the 30 seconds spot is not really dead, it is evolving into interactive spots. The thought process that went into creating it is changing. Charter is in 300,000 houses in LA. Lot of people want to know more if the product advertisement is targeted and appropriate for them.

Mitch Oscar from CaratDigital says The ads are now made to work wherever they are, whether it is time shifting, place shifting and all that. When technology people come to the advertising agencies like his, they say they have done a new technology before but they don't add value like what worked what is the ideal time how users are behaving to this, etc. Agencies need this information to understand this and are not getting help, also the manpower shortage in agencies is also not helping.

Charles "Chip" Meehan from Comcast spotlight talked about their Telescopic spots that helps to cross promote their 110 other channels to people who normally watch only 16 of them and are not aware of the others.

Kenneth Papagan from Rentrak Corporation talked about how their company measures user behaviors in theatre and DVD just like in Internet. When advertisers have tried to make their 30 seconds into 21, 11, 5 seconds consumers are moving out of it lesser.

Jeff Schultz from CONCERT who were the first on demand TV channel in US. There is no inherent thing fixed about 30 seconds spot.

Most of the talks were about Mobile content, everyone seems to be obsessed with that single idea, the next idea is social networking in online space. Some of what I heard in the day:

The biggest challenge is the variety and difference of off-deck sites and the way you work with careers, the consumer experience is so different that you have to teach them to get each site working. The other challenge is I watch two videos, do a call my battery dies. You have now plenty of content now available, the real need is how to discover the. The reason why YouTube is successful it makes the finding of content like what people are watching made very easy.  2% (or 6 Million or so) of the 240 Million subscribers in USA have downloaded ever a video in their mobile. The offdeck world is important because you can do sharing of content between subscribers of different careers. The careers have no big interest in scaling video downloads in their network.

Bernard Gershon Sr.VP of ABC News says it is 2 years away where people are going to be very comfortable watching videos on Mobile. Tammy Franklin VP of Turner broadcasting said Phone is still a Hardware business, the phone needs to have the capability to play videos and people are stuck in 2.5G and their present plans before you can move them. There was a mention on how OEM and Device manufacturer would like to get into the service revenue, they feel left out and now with iPhone they are tempted again.

In another track there was a demo of Titan TV that helps local Television stations to go broadband, titan does the encoding, geographic based advertisements, etc.

I was interviewed today about Vishwak twice in Digital Hollywood at Vator.tv and Nowlive.com

I am here in LA with my team for the Digital Hollywood 2007 Fall event happening at Hollywood & Highlands (which is where the Oscar Awards famous Kodak theatre is). As we went up and down the floors between the conference floor and the exhibit floor I noticed this big piano complete with sitting stool hanging in air above 5 floors. What a creative use for a old piano!. Click on the photos above for a larger view.

DH Fall 2007 just started. The first session "Media, Entertainment and Social Change" talked about how Digital Film Making Tools helped the campaigners behind the "Darfur Now" movie to produce it. "Ted Braun" said how they are using the Community tools to spread the message through viral marketing (embed the original videos produced during the movie). Participant.net company's "Adrian Sexton" says their goal is to be make entertainment meets social action meets social media. For them using the community/social networking technology tools means not only making profit but action social awareness. Most of the Social causes sites and places are not engaging and compelling, they are largely inert communities and no entertainment proposition. People want to be in active communities and have entertainment as well. Good Philanthropy should also give good entertainment and they call "Social Action Network". There tenets are to "Connect, Collaborate, Engage, Activate" basically take part!.

I was pleased to know that the technology we feel is only for the urban elites are helping greatly in effecting a social change.

Few other points - YouTube has a new initiative "Broadcast your cause" where they give free cameras to community journalism, Al Gore has launched Current.com (2.0) Digg Like System for social causes sites, Kiva.com is about loans that change lives (based on Micro finance) and Clinton plugged it in Oprah on Sep 4, 2007 and they got more money they can give, MSN Messenger works with the IM donations model, Development of original multimedia content based upon community engagement in a subject area.

"We Make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give" - Winston Churchill

Mobile TV & Video: Content & Commerce: A movie clip was demoed by Motorola using Mobiclip player from Actimagine corp. Transpera demoed their solutions to connect multiple devices, multiple gateways, etc and also social community sharing features. MediaFlo (Nalco) shows their TV Experience in Mobile and channel surfing as fast as in tv and not battery draining, uses Qualcomm's nationwide 700Mhz spectrum. Actimagine says they expect the Nokia, Motorola & Windows Mobile Smartphone will be 400Million+ by next year. Choicestream talked about their personalized recommendation software. Verisign talked about their DNS Services, SSL, Mobile Messages (60% of world wide messages are routed through them) and they have more TELCO integration than anyone else. Fun Little movies demoed their family/kids/international friendly comedy in Sprint Mobile channel.

• How do you make people watch the content they have already paid for, say by $100 per month for their cable connection
• Internet has taught us that Media houses will have significant share, but the hockey stick long tail approach/inflexion point is user generated content
• Discussions on whether content programming (like what they cable networks do) is important or not. Or is only the content producers (professional or user) important
• In the question hour I talked about how in India people wait for 5-10 minutes to download a paid content; it is about empowering people who don't have access to content (connecting the unconnected)
• There was another question - In TV advertisements happen because it was free; why will we watch advertisements while we pay for Mobile. It was answered as the same scenario that happened 10 years back - why see advertisements while we pay for ISP for internet, why we watch advertisements in TV while we pay for cable.