path of sun from my room…

i did not expected that these will come but here is a pair of pomegranate fruits which are growing up in my balcony.

and here are few pictures I took at almost same time when the sun rises in morning in last 3 months to show how sun moved from just visible to fully visible from my room -

tata nano – not just a car

just got a glimpse of the tata motor nano – the $2000 car. I am not a automobile lover but first glimpse could not stop looking at it. And thinking that a parking lot in bangalore would cost more than this car. It could have been passed as normal car or even a better one. By no standard it looks as a cheap car but the one which every one would want to have. It is just the price which makes as if every one could afford to have, though I have no such plans.

Here are some of the photos which I clicked. This is where you keep your tyres and not engines.

Engine is at back side -

And some of the ways Tata is using to keep the marketing cost down, click the image below to go to their site -

• its official site is promoting presence on forums, blogs, facebook, orkut
• there are many videos which are hosted on youtube and the website embeds them.
• it allows you to book online
• and you would not miss seeing this as it is displayed at all tata retail stores like westside, croma etc and any shopping you do at their stores allows you to fill up coupons and participate in lucky draw to win a nano.

The only downside is that it has potential to nullify the goods that electric cars are doing for future.

twitter – the only thing getting attention

looks like twitter is the only thing that is getting attention if you are following technology trends now a days. Be it television or web suddenly everyone has started talking about it. Some report shows that 5 year students are using twitter as a way to learn maths and soon it will be part of curriculam in schools.

here is a gartner report on how enterprises are using twitter. it says “By 2011, Enterprise Microblogging Will Be a Standard Feature on 80 Percent of Social Software Platforms” and probably a way to earn money through this medium. Enterprises are using twitter in following ways - 

• Direct — The company uses Twitter as a marketing or public relations channel
• Indirect — The company’s employees use Twitter to enhance and extend their personal reputations, thereby enhancing the company’s reputation
• Internal — Employees use the platform to communicate about what they are doing, projects they are working on and ideas that occur to them
• and as inbound signalling - Twitter streams provide a rich source of information about what customers, competitors and others are saying about a company.

I have also jumped to twitter bandwagon after watching it from sidelines since almost 2 years. I use twitter to broadcast any interesting piece of news I come across internet. It is faster than blogging about it. If I can add any contribution to the news then I think about blogging it.

wordpress has also released its twitter widget today – read it here which I have added for this blog. Look at right hand side for my twitter feeds. You can add as many twitter widget as you want if you have more than one twitter page. And the links are fully functional…

is the world flat…

i have been reading “the world is flat” by Thomas Friedman. The author talks about how the world has changed from columbus times when he thought world is round to his time when he concluded that the world is flat.

He divides world into three great eras of globalization. Initially the world was big and people or kingdoms or societies knew only a part of it or did not know how big is the world. According to them the world was very big , so big that they did not know most of the thing about it.

The first era began with (1492 – 1800) when Columbus found that world is round and it opened trade between new world and old world. The world became of medium size. Countries and government defined the world. Energy was most precious thing , be it manpower, horsepower, steam power etc. Whoever has most was the king.

Next was Globalization 2.0 (1800 – 2000) – The world shrank from medium to small size. Instead of countries The Companies took the centerstage and they defined the world. This era saw East India company taking over India. Industries and hardware were the most important things and they defined the world. It started with falling goods movement cost due to better roads and rail roads and ended with falling information movement costs due to better optical fibre network which laid the foundation of next era.

Globalization 3 (2000 onward) further shrank the world from small to tiny. Here individuals were at centerstage and they defined the world. Softwares were the most important things. And they allowed individuals to collaborate in such a way that they had equal resources and opportunities available to them and everybody had equal chance to succeed. In rest of the book he goes on to describe how it became possible.

He lists 10 forces that flattened the world – which basically revovles around advancement in softwares, software as a tool to helping in workflow, open source movement, standards, outsourcing, offshoring, Y2K, google and finally mobiles. He envisions a world where mobile will be your second identity and will be a the closest bridge between individual and technology. But is it still a level playing field for entrepreneurs who are eyeing mobile software development. I came across a blog post which discusses the issues around mobile development. This is a interesting read. Some are seeing the problem whereas others are seeing it as possible opportunity.

google sky…

as if google earth was not enough google has released google sky. Now you can not only look down from sky but also look up to sky. Urban dwellars are almost forgetting Sky and it will bring stars closer to computers if not life.

people are divided on its utility. They say it is good for students and general public and bad for astronomers who has access to better tools. Google will still be credited with bringing it to general masses if not for the elite. It continues to surprise as to the range of applications it is touching. We can hope to see google sea next in the series. Lesser mortals would be more happier if only it updates bangalore imagery on google earth. Lot has changed since bangalore found place on google earth.

some of the other places to get similar functionality stellarium, celestia and skyscout

read about it here in google earth blog. to know more details and features read it here. and why some dont like it.

funpiper.com – express about your weekend…

after a whole lot of social networking sites which are center piece of web 2.0 phenomenon , here comes a dedicated place where you can discuss what you did on weekends and more what you plan to do on weekends. Weekends as they say too in their blog accounts for 29% of our life. So they are as important as anything else.

Here are the reasons I could think one would use this site for -

• first site where one could discuss about what to do on weekends. It might not become a global phenomenon but great place to find local information about the options available for weekends. Which means a very targeted place to find information and to advertise.
• there are dedicated travel websites but for weekends , no one writes there. The hotel sites normally offer booking for hotels only and they are not updated regulary. It would bring uptodate information.
• people are already blogging about what they did on weekends but we have to depend on mercy of search engines to give us the information. There is no common place. It fills that gap.
• if I am the one which own a resort or offer any such activity for weekends , this would be a great place to advertise considering the low budget I have for this and the audience I would find for my money.
• find answer to what I should do this weekend if there are enough ideas on this site.Right now there does not seems to be much participation but could become very useful if it catches up.

apple iPod in education

iPod is a great success story. It has changed the way people listened to music, specially in the times of internet where everything was supposedly free. It almost saved the music industry.

there are many other ways a iPod is used. One of them is in training and e learning (or m learning / iLearning..). Seeing the popularity of it among students it was not a bad idea to position it as a learning tool. See the apple education site and how iPod and related products fit into this category.

steve jobs – real and fake

ever since I read iCon which is unauthorised biography of steve jobs I was interested in what apple is doing, and what are the founders doing- the two steve – steve jobs and steve wozniak.

while steve jobs has always been in limelight, steve wozniak was living comparatively quite life. Recently one of house Woz lived in was remodelled and up for sale here . Steve jobs life is eventful with initial success, then struggles(ousted from apple, NEXT and initial pixar days) and then more spectacular successes(pixar, apple turnaround, iMac, iPod and probably iPhone). He has left his mark in personal computers, movies, music and now phone.

in the process of trying to know more of steve jobs I came across one of the blogs which was fake steve blog – http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/ – which I added to my google reader and it has been since there. The blogger got into persona of steve jobs and described world as would have been seen by real Steve jobs himself. I used to follow it quite a bit and Yesterday there were some news artices disclosing the identity of the blogger behind it who turned out to be forbes editor.  In the news article here it was “Daniel Lyons. He invented the friggin’ Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. Have you heard of it? Anyhoo, for the past 14 months “Fake Steve”, or FSJ, has been writing a fake blog that last month attracted 700,000 visitors including RSJ – Real Steve Jobs – and The Beastmaster himself, Bill Gates“.

and interview with the blogger – not sure whether this is real or fake .

planet earth – the series

“A hundred years ago, there were one and a half billion people on Earth. Now, over six billion crowd our fragile planet. But even so, there are still places barely touched by humanity. This series will take you to the last wildernesses and show you the planet and its wildlife as you have never seen them before.”

– David Attenborough’s opening narration

the celebrated tv series is being broadcasted now a days on discovery channel. It was first of its kind to be filmed in high definition format. It took 4 years, 62 countries and 204 different locations to complete the series. And the hardships like one year for a snow leopard shot, two month trek in mongolia and many more . Read about it more here.

The result is stunning combination of visuals. The shots seems to be taken from so many angles that it is more effect than any movie. Shots like dog chasing their prey in a group. One is from the top of a helicopter, then there are so many camera that every movement is captured. And bizarre scenes like elephant swimming and the underwater camera , aerial camera and many on the land capturing it. Every thing looks so planned and you get view from all the angles. Added with David Attenborough narration and the soundtrack you are just amazed at the scale and variety of planet earth.

The firsts as released by bbc – here.

“Our planet is still full of wonders. As we explore them, so we gain not only understanding, but power. It’s not just the future of the whale that today lies in our hands: it’s the survival of the natural world in all parts of the living planet. We can now destroy or we can cherish. The choice is ours.”

– David Attenborough, in closing

business logic and products

one of the examples of how business logic defines any product was visible when I started playing with flash authoring tool after long familiarity with solidworks. Flash is used by creative professionals whose thoughts has no boundaries and does not have any constraints. They are limited only by their imagination. And the tool they will use should help them by not restraining them.On the other side solidworks is used by engineers and designers who are bound by many limitations like the part they are designing – can they be manufactured by available tools and in how much cost . If they follow some standard then parts can be manufactured easily or they can be bought off the shelf also reducing cost. In this case the tool should not allow them to go out of bound and create anything they want.

Taking simple example – A Line always remains a line in solidworks or in any cad modellar. If any end point of line is fixed at any place it will always remain there unless you remove the first constrain of fixed point. And all the following operations has to be based on previous constraints. And a circle will always remain a circle.

In flash select a line and drag it . It change its shape to something else ofcourse it is bound by some equations but still slight change in selection and completely new results which suit the artist mind who most of the time is not wanting any fixed result and is experimenting for new shapes. A circle can be changed to star depending on selected point and dragging. Create two intersecting lines and they become 4 line!!