Devices of the Gen Nxt

I am at my home town in Trivandrum now, having a good time with my parents & grandma after so long. A break from the fast paced RIA world to stop me from burning out. Yesterday, my cousin came to visit us from a small village near Kottayam in Kerala. Though he is computer literate like most young indians, he still looks at a computer as a necessary evil, nothing more. As he came in, I was listening to music on my laptop and doing some work.

I offered him to play with my T61 and showed him some stuff on my system. He observed with a clam but nervous demeanor and I felt like he wanted me to stop. I offered him my laptop to play with and left him with the PC and went out of the room to get a drink.

I come back and I see that the PC was shut down, and he was happily playing with my mobile. A moderate Sony K750I at that. He wanted me to show him how to take pics, listen to music and even browse internet. He advised me to go for one with 3G support. He was immersed in it, long into the eveining until… He saw my iPod. He was instantly drawn to the iPod and handled it with poise as if he was born to play with it. He wanted to chat up on the new ipod Touch and its features.

I was left wondering. What is the device of the Gen NXT. A PC is defenitely not going to be on the top of the list for sure. A mobile? An ipod/iphone like devices? The best answer i could come up was that the Gen NXT devices will be all personal and compact. One that allows people to engage with it all the time uninterruptedly and not just in the confines of the office or home.

Product companies should take notice of this (I think they already are). Times of thrusting things down people’s throats is over. The current generation wants things on-demand, lightning fast, to work across devices and to be engaged in it always…

Have You Ever Felt?

Have you ever felt that you had so many things to do and so many options in front of you that its the most stranded you have felt all your life??

Business101 - for Software Geeks

I was at the Web2.0 conference in Bangalore and overheard a "uber-Geek" declaring... "This technology is awesomely cool... I dont care if it can do any good to business". I have been thinking about it for a while now. A thought hit me while i was driving today...

I have seen Geeks who consider technology as the "Be All and End All of Life". Technology is great, but only if it serves a purpose, which most often is business driven. But these geeks have a hard time digesting the whole concept of "Business". So here's my Business101 for Software Geeks, in their own language...

Business is the Framework
Technology the API... and
Management the Rendering Engine

Just a personal view... I know a lot of people will disagree and might think i'm too young to put forth these. But here's how I see it...

Business is the Framework within which all Technology and Management has to function. Any change in the framework will need considerable changes (possibly) in the API and also in the way it is rendered. Its the king which rules all and binds it all together.

Technology is the API... Without him the framework is redundant.

Management is the Rendering, putting into perspective what the APIs hav defined and the way it is used. It is the one that helps in finding the flaw in the flow. A kind of a high level QA infrastructure.

But just as in the Software Realm, They are all inter-dependent. Advancement in one forces the others to change. Innovation is possible at all the 3 levels, essentially taking the Business to greater heights of achievement.

I really want to hear what you think about this :)

Can God open source relationships??

Just a thought...

Can God open source relationships??
Or atleast provide Tech Support !!

Loneliness

Loneliness is actually a way of loaning time for yourself. A chance to go in retrospect and introspect about the person that is you. Your priorities, your passions, your possesions & your life itself...

self.life = rand()

Randomness
(A Screensaver i happened to come across)

The "Walk of Life" is always uncertain. You may chalk your path, but detours are always a FOL (Fact Of Life). How much ever you might plan to make your life toe a line, it always has a certain degree of uncertanity. And I personally believe this is what makes life exciting. This incident was one "geeky" reminder of that fact.

The Cosmic Crossroads

I went home this time as a happy-carefree soul. But during those few days, talks of "What Next for you?" kept popping up. Some people were talking rubbish like my wedding (which is not gonna happen anywhere in the near future) while my dad and uncles were trying to chalk out a plan for my future. I was literally dragged into the whole thing (which by the way is for me and not for them). But now I am a confused soul.

Once it was "to B.E or not to B.E. and where to B.E." Now the scope has grown much beyond. I was once at a crossroads, with may be 2 or 3 roads before me. I took a less trodden road (like Robert Frost and never regretted it. That road led to Manipal and to the best days of my life)

But now the scenario is very different. I’m at a crossroads again. But there are a zillion roads to and from that point. As if I’m stuck in a maze, deep within the Galaxy. There are signboards everywhere, pointing in every direction. Some of them read

MS, MBA, GATE, CAT, GMAT, TOEFL, IELTS….,

while others read

IIM, ISB, NTU, Caltech, MIT, Stanford, Kellogg……

The choice seems gruelling. More like words right out of Hamlet

"To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? "

I feel what I need right now is the “Hitchhiker’s guide to the Galaxy”, with the words “Don’t Panic” painted in Bold, Italic, Underline and in a very big font size. I need to find a grapevine in the desert.

It might be like Jack and the Beanstalk and I may find my version of Blunderbore there. May I conquer him and return to a life of prosperity, serenity, fun and frolic. Amen (or Tathastu in Sanskrit)