On January 17th, Indian Standard Time (the evening of January 16th Pacific Time), I received the dreaded phone call from my brother. Just like 3.5 years ago, it began with "I have sad news." That time it was to tell me that mom had passed away, and this time it was to inform me that dad had passed away. Mom had a heart attack and passed away before reaching the hospital, while dad passed away peacefully in his sleep.
It's been a few days, and I have been flooded with emotions. This has been one reason why I haven't been able to write this, but at the same time, I felt that writing something like this would help clear my thoughts.
Sadness The immediate emotion is sadness. I am deeply saddened that he is gone. I mourn the fact that he won't be here to witness more of his life and ours – more birthdays, career milestones, educational achievements, Diwalis, family gatherings. He won't be there with us to share all those milestones and events.
Emptiness Despite being far away physically, I feel a profound emptiness. His well-being and happiness were always on my mind. I used to call him every Saturday morning. Until a few months ago, our conversations would be about everyday things like cricket, sports, politics, election results, etc. Recently, the frequency had decreased due to his declining health. However, Saturday mornings remained my time to silently convey my thoughts to him and cherish his memory. I feel empty now.
Relief In recent visits – December 2023 and April this year – I could sense his frustration and helplessness due to his inability to care for himself. His attempts to communicate were often cut short, as if the signals from his brain arrived too late for his words to form. He struggled even to use a spoon consistently; helpers had to mash his food so he could swallow it because chewing became difficult. Despite all this, I feel a sense of relief for him. I'm grateful he no longer has to endure such struggles after living a life of independence and good health. He's found peace in heaven.
Reunited with Mom Ever since Mom passed away, Dad lost his will to live. His only wish was to be reunited with her. Finally, his wish has been granted. I believe he's happier now in heaven with her than he was on earth, suffering without her.
Thankfulness Although taking care of one's parents isn't "babysitting," and my brother and sister-in-law's dedication to Dad after Mom's passing shouldn't be called "parentsitting," I am immensely thankful for their unwavering support. Despite the challenges and unpredictable nature of caregiver services, they ensured Dad lived as comfortably as possible, maintaining routines familiar to him. They sacrificed their freedom to prevent emergencies and provided steadfast support. I'm thankful that they were there for him over the past 3.5 years as his condition worsened. I cannot imagine how big a vacuum they would be feeling!
Pearls of Wisdom Dad often shared pearls of wisdom on a wide range of topics – friendship, business, relationships, finances, health, nutrition, discipline, and more. I missed hearing those pearls over the past few months as he slowed down and stopped interacting much. I will surely continue those nuggets of wisdom in my life and hope to pass them on to the kids as a shared legacy.
I will miss you, Pappaji. I hope you are enjoying your time with Mummy. Please continue to bless us from above, and we will keep you informed about our lives.
This month I turned fifty. I don’t really like (my own) birthdays and don’t make a fuss of it.
But this is a milestone and I thought it would be good to repeat what I did for my fortieth. I had set up a charity: water fundraiser to help provide clean water to the people who don’t have access to it.
This year (decade) I have set up a similar fundraiser and I would love to see you donate to it. I would appreciate whatever you can help with.
It took me completely by surprise to read about Mint closing down and them moving their customers to Credit Karma, another similar financial planning service in the Intuit portfolio.
I don't blame Intuit for consolidating their brands, but I would have thought bringing Credit Karma features and users to Mint may have been a better option, but perhaps it is about organizations, talent, technology stack, and much more than what we see as outsiders and in my case, as a customer.
I have had data in Mint since 2013 and have been using it as a place where I see transactions from all my financial institutions and a place where I see general trends of my income and expense. I do not use it for budgeting or to monitor my investments in any way. For my use though, what is important is that all my institutions are supported, and I can search for transactions easily.
Once the news broke, I had to quickly start looking for alternatives and I was debating really looking at Credit Karma when through Threads, I found out about Monarch Money. The service seemed quite nicely designed and had a web presence as well as mobile, so I decided to jump into their trial. As I dove into the service, I found out that it was founded by one of Mint's original product persons, so I got some confidence that the service will be shepherded well.
Monarch Money
It was very easy to set up Monarch Money (MM) by adding accounts. Unlike Mint, MM uses third party data connectors like Plaid, MX and Fincity so it was an interesting experience going through the setups - some institutions bounced the authentication to their own mini windows, and some used Plaid's user interface. Regardless, in no time I had most of my recent data in MM and could start seeing some trends and cash flow analysis.
I also noticed they had a Help & Support interface within the app and on the web which created a support ticket on the back end. The response there was meh, but in my attempt to find some answers to questions not on the FAQ, I stumbled upon their subreddit r/MonarchMoney. This was a great subreddit where they acknowledged and welcomed Mint refugees and had a few employees responding to many threads which was a refreshing surprise.
I had exported transactions from Mint and MM had a Mint import feature which I used heavily to bring in the historical data from Mint so that I could start using MM as a true Mint replacement - seeing my income and expenses, over time, and also being able to search for random transactions from the past.
This is where I started seeing a bunch of nuances in these financial aggregation services
Balances for each account are independent of the underlying transactions: MM brings in balances separately from transactions which is good and bad - good because I don't need a proper accounting ledger of gives and takes to make the balance work out (flashback of nightmares trying to balance by desktop Quicken from years past!), and bad because I would never know if there was a glitch in the transactions like duplicates or missing data because the overall numbers would look fine
Brokerages are a beast: Some brokerages do not have transactions at all, some do but I can't import older data, and some can be hacked to get in the older data but may not reflect in any reporting and such. Frankly, because I never used the investment analysis portion of Mint and don't care about it elsewhere, I am fine with it as long as the balances look good and I am able to cross-reference deposits made from my checking account to the brokerages (somehow!)
Some key accounts either did not connect or had issues: My HSA provider Optum Bank did not connect at all so I had to create a manual account and import older data from Mint just to get a placeholder. Similarly, one of the several accounts I have with Ameriprise was missing. And Fidelity kept losing connection every other day. (Optum has since been able to be added but I can't do transactions import, Ameriprise continues to be an issue and Fidelity is resolved by switching providers)
What I like about MM compared to Mint at first glance:
The user interface and design: It is so much more lively compared to Mint. Also, because it is a subscription service, no ads! Wow, such a big difference!
Rules: In Mint, I was not able to created rules based on payee names containing certain characters, it would only set up for the exact name. So if the payee has some type of ID in their name which keeps changing, the rules would never execute. In MM I can do a "contains" type of a rule and it works like a charm!
Additional user: MM encourages co-management of finances and I added my wife immediately so she can participate in the financial management with me. And it works - she sees data and understands it much better than my passive updates from earlier.
Concept of review: All transactions in MM start as not reviewed and I could set it up so whenever there are new transactions to review, that it sends me a notification. This is excellent because I can look at the transactions every other day, review for correctness and update categories or rules if needed and clear them out. I am much more on top of individual transactions now than before.
Batch mode of fetching data: MM fetches data in the background and does it periodically. I like this because when I open the app or website, there is no waiting for refresh, I see the data immediately.
Public roadmap: This was another pleasant surprise - not only is there a section to request new features, but the actual features under planning and development are exposed on their website so we can see what's coming! So good.
What I am waiting for:
Fix missing and problematic accounts: I really need that one Ameriprise account added, and get some stability in certain problematic accounts which keep disconnecting frequently
Some weird duplication: There is an account which seems to be showing data from another account at the same institution and not its own transactions. The balance seems fine and I don't have much activity in that account, so it's not such a big deal but my OCD would sure like the transactions to be fixed
Support overwhelmed: Because of the huge influx of Mint refugees, their support has crumbled to a halt - the main customer support as well as reddit. In the past couple days I have seen some immediate responses when I create a ticket, but it is still something they need to ramp up on and I am sure they will normalize soon
Native Apple Card and Apple Savings Account support: Right now the card data is importable seamlessly by creating an Apple Card account (only from mobile) but there is not even a workaround support for Apple Savings account.
I am a fan so far and even though it is a bit expensive @ $95/year, I would subscribe to it. They have offered a 50% discount for the first year and extended my already-extended trial by another 30 days, so I know they are customer-centric at the core.
Quicken Simplifi
I had forgotten about Quicken since I moved to Mint in 2013 and I was surprised to see their online service Simplifi as a competitor to Mint and Monarch Money. The look and feel drew me in, so I decided to do my own bake-off between MM and Quicken Simplifi (QS).
Setup was similar to MM, but for some reason, the accounts got added more quickly than MM. I am sure it is a perception issue because by the time I started using QS, I had gone through a lot of bumps on the MM journey.
Maybe it's the typeface they use and/or the fact that they have pretty tiles and reports on the main dashboard, but at first glance, QS seemed more attractive than MM. I did the same steps as I did with MM - set up the accounts, and then import the Mint exported data one account at a time. QS, like MM, had a Mint importer that interpreted the Mint csv nicely.
Support at QS has also been impacted by the influx of Mint refugees and they also have a good subreddit at r/Simplifimoney and even though I have seen some employees respond, it doesn't seem like their primary form of support for end customers and instead it is more of a user community. Their actual website user community is very active and because it seems like an older product, there are a lot more articles and knowledge bases to tap into. Their support has a great generative AI-based bot which switches to human messaging-based support medium and that support is very prompt.
What I like about QS compared to Mint is very much like what I like about MM compared to Mint. QS does not do batch fetching so there is an occassional spinning I have seen when it refreshes all the accounts but that's ok. Also, the additional user can only be added from the web and I guess that's a temporary issue. Also, the support mentioned above is a big plus over MM.
One thing that I kinda like with QS is that movement of money from one account to another - credit card payments, loan payments, etc. is like the desktop Quicken experience: it changes the category of both sides of the transaction to the be other account name. So for example if I paid $100 to my Amex from my BofA checking account I would see the check account $100 categorized as "Amex" and the debit in my Amex show as $100 with category of "BofA checking". That's nice because there is no additional information I need on each of those transactions than the fact that it went from one of my accounts to the other. Both those transactions are skipped from spending reports, naturally.
To my surprise, transactions from accounts like PayPal which are transacted ultimately through a credit card also show up nicely where the PayPal transaction is duplicated so one of them can be categorized properly as shopping or whatever and the other represents the transfer of funds from credit card to PayPal to fund the original purchase.
What I am waiting for:
Performance: After I imported the 10 years of data in about 15 accounts, the performance on the web and on mobile has been terrible. It is almost useless right now because every update I make requires about 2-3 seconds of waiting before I can take the next action in the interface. If they don't fix this soon as a step function improvement, QS will be a non-starter for me
Venmo: After I added Venmo, I have not been able to make the sync work. It keeps asking for login credentials and I enter and authenticate and it fails to connect - hope that gets addressed soon
Better "review" notifications: I love how MM sends me notifications for new transactions to review. QS is not as good with the concept of review as a precursor to "finalizing" a transaction and I have a workaround where I enabled the notification for any transaction > $0.01 but would rather see a more seamless interface and workflow
Apple Card and Apple Savings Account: Same as MM comments above
I am also a fan of QS and it is less expensive than MM, so if they make the performance improvements, it will be a very tough call for me to choose between the two services.
I have made the decision to let the bake-off run for a year and decide which one to stop after seeing the progres or lack of during the year.
fwiw, I also tried Copilot Money for a brief second, but didn't even go beyond the trial because they did not have a Mint importer and they did not have a web presence. Also, their apps were only iOS and MacOS so it would have been a stretch. The interface and design was nice though.
Sound off in the comments if you are in a similar boat as me and what your experiences have been.
Goals and North Stars - set good goals based on what you want to achieve as a platform team
Partners and Enablers - build and leverage your partnerships because they will help sell your vision
How to thrive as a platform PM - put all of the above together and see how to succeed as a data platform product manager
Platform PM leader - as you move up and become a data platform product leader, understand what is expected of you, and what you should expect, including some limitations in this role
#Image credit: DALL-E 2 (Twitter symbol burning with a lonely man watching + variation on one of the generated images)
Last night and today, half of Twitter employees were fired by the new owner of the company, Elon Musk. Almost 3,800 people without a job because of no fault of theirs. They were doing good, meaningful work. While there surely was some fat at the company, as is the case at any company this size, I don't think Musk went about it with any real thought process business-wise. If he did, it would have taken a few more months to analyze the value of the various products and teams before he could make a decision.
Anyway, this post is not about the layoffs. I started losing interest in Twitter as a community when Elon finally took it over. It is because he believes that everyone should be heard and that is what he describes as free speech. To him, letting anti-vaxxers say what they want to say is equally important as doctors and medical professionals saying why vaccines are important. Where will he draw the line? Is a Holocaust denier's voice important to be heard? What about a racist? White supremacist?
Bottom line, I can see Twitter becoming more noise and much lesser signal. So I started thinking where else can I go to get a similar experience, and realized there is really nothing that satisfies what I love about Twitter (besides making genuine friends, even if they are online-only although some are also friends IRL).
So what is it that I like about Twitter that makes me somewhat of an addict? It's not doomscrolling. It's not idle surfing which is what I used to do with Facebook when I was active Facebook user. It is a combination of:
Freshness: I often see stuff on Twitter way before it hits a news publication's website. Also, it combines multiple parts of my interests into a single feed so I don't have to whack 15 different moles when news breaks. Sports, entertainment, politics, health and wellness, etc. all in a single feed refreshed 24x7.
Curation: Over the many years I have been on Twitter I have been very selective about whom I follow. I use Twitter Lists a lot and that's where a lot of "others" get shoved, but my main feed is very limited so I can see a lot of what they tweet vs the main feed being a giant firehose of information. By selecting people and companies that I have an interest in, I know I get most of what I need surfaced through them directly and indirectly (their retweets and quote tweets). Rarely do I see something that I should have known that I found out elsewhere vs my feed. Very rarely. (Thank you to the people I follow, you make my experience worth the while!)
Discovery: My recent jobs/positions have made it possible for me to consume Twitter voraciously even during the day. As a result, I see many tweets and as a result, Twitter has replaced my RSS reader for many years now. What I used to do in my RSS reader was discover new content and potentially share it with the world and now that experience is reduced to a single platform.
Access: Thanks to the popularity and "communication protocol" nature of Twitter, everyone is on Twitter. This has made it possible to be one tweet away from the biggest personalities whether they are celebrities in entertainment or CEOs of companies or founders and financiers of innovative companies. I love that many of them engage with their community on Twitter. I am not sure if this could have been possible if Twitter weren't the medium it is today.
Customer support: Often, customer support provided by companies on Twitter is faster and better and more direct than what they provide on the phone or online chat. Some companies have truly done this justice and one example of this is Comcast. Even though it is common to mock the company and their service, I have only had good experience with them on Twitter for sales support as well as technical support.
This combination of benefits is a killer. I am not sure if there is anything that can come close to this experience. There are some promising platforms like Mastodon but I will wait and see if they gain enough of a critical mass. I did the switch a few years ago from WhatsApp to Signal when there was this move regarding privacy policies at Meta but realized quickly that most people I'd like to chat with were not on Signal and stuck around on WhatsApp.
There are other services which provide some parts of this overall experience but fail because they don't provide the others - Slack, Discord, etc. have good community features but I think they are meant to be more like BBS's than a Town Square. Which means the community will be limited by design.
It's kind of ironic but Google+ would have been a great alternative to Twitter - it had a community of all GMail users, it had a feed although it was more algorithmic vs chronological as I remember but I may be wrong, it had Reader built into it for discovery aspects and I am sure if it gained enough momentum, companies would come to it and start providing customer support too.
With all that said, I am not leaving Twitter as yet, but if things devolve and Musk keeps giving the nutjobs an equal presence on the platform, I would be willing to disappear from there and rely on multiple tools to satisfy my needs.
So, what's a good RSS reader these days? What's a good public-y Discord server? Any Mastodon fans? What's a good starting point? :-)
I still remember the moment when I heard the sad news. We had finished dinner on Monday Jan 25, and I completed some pending work that was due the next day and I had came back outside to the living room. My wife got a call from my cousin and simultaneously I got a call from my brother. It was the shocking news that my mom had passed away. He was at the hospital so my brother could not give too many details but my heart sank knowing that she was no more. I could not believe it.
Immediately a flurry of thoughts started flashing in my head - what was the last thing I said to her? What was her last thought between us? When did we last meet and what was the highlight of that day? What will dad do now, knowing that he was completely dependent on her - not just for companionship since they have been married for 58 years, but also for providing him his medicines, reminding about various things he needs to do, cooking, preparing breakfast and snacks, and so much more.
More thoughts. What happens to the move that they were planning in a couple of weeks? How must my brother and his family be handling this news?
The thing is, this was absolutely unexpected. If a person is ill and deteriorating, you mentally prepare yourself. You run through various possibilities in your head, including unfortunately how you would handle the person eventually passing away.
Not for my mom. Not for the one who was super active both phyiscally and mentally. Not for the one who was willing to take on a residence move at their age (and perhaps the move was one of the things that may have contributed to her stress and anxiety, who knows?). The one who was planning to send some Indian snacks to us via courier *while* planning for and preparing for the move. Planning the move? She didn't have to pack or move but she had to get the bathroom done in the new flat, painting, new sofas, new dining chairs, clean up old and unwanted paper work, and so much more. All this with a servant who is not full-time and was not guaranteed to come regularly because she was sick off and on. She had mentioned that she was feeling overwhelmed about it.
I was definitely speechless. Numb, to a certain extent. Then I started getting calls from cousins and uncles/aunts. That's when it hit me hard - she was definitely gone. Oh my god, I had to start looking for tickets and figure out the formalities I need to take care of to be able to travel to India in this COVID time. I found tickets for the next morning's flight but I realized it may be complicated if I don't have a negative COVID test. I could of course take a chance and land there and figure out, but the more I read about the paper work, the more I was convinced that it would be better to get the test and then leave. So I started looking for appointments for the drive-through test that I had done in November. I got one at 7am, locked it up. Meanwhile, my cousin came over and he started calling some hospitals in the area to see if they can give me a rapid test - they all said I would need to wait and that someone with a heart attack will get priority over someone like me who is looking for a favor. I made the call to just stick with the test, knowing that we get the results in ~24 hours. I also informed my brother that they don't need to wait for me for the final rites since the earliest I could be in India would have been Wednesday night and that would be a good 36 hours after her passing and keeping the body for that long in the house would be inadvisable. Having settled on the plan, I got my airline tickets changed too.
Then in the moments of silence after this flurry of activity, various things started coming to the head…
She was the life of any get together - my mom LOVED to hang out with people. She would try to get people together whether it was for festive occasions like Diwali or Raksha Bandhan, or something related to her social work like Inner Wheel, or kitty parties from her past. It was not for gossip, she really really loved keeping connected with everyone. And connected she was! In the past couple of days, I heard from a large group of friends and extended family and the common thread has been that they all remember her being genuinely interested in what they were up to and taking great care of them whenever they met.
Extra - my mom was always extra in her party-planning. For as long as I remember, there was nothing "ordinary" or "simple" about any meet up or party. I remember birthday parties with fancy homemade cakes. I recall our daughter's birthday party at a restaurant's party hall when we were visiting India. I remember our son's birthday party she arranged at home but with fancy decorations and of course a professional photographer. Oh, photographer! She loved, loved, loved to have a professional capture pictures and videos even for the smallest of functions. Perhaps she wanted to ensure everyone in the family was captured in the pictures (so one family member who takes pictures is not left out), perhaps she wanted the togetherness to linger on in her heart as she would flip through those pictures the photographer would send. Perhaps she just wanted frame-worthy pictures of her family and get as many of those as she could.
Feed everyone some more - the above two items were combined with another consistent trait of my mom, which was to feed to the maximum everyone she loved. There was never a single lunch or dinner table discussion where she and I argued about that one thing I did not take or for taking one more helping of the stuff I liked. Not one, it was 100% true all the time. I had invited some US friends for my wedding and I remember them saying fondly that just as they were about to get up, my mom would come with a "wheel barrow of potatoes" to dump into their plates. I remember my two college friends who used to come up as part of a study group who till this day recall the food mom used to feed them and make them feel like a "wedding party" with the "come on, you can have one more of x" at lunch every single time. She would always have multi-course meal, most of it made at home, most of it made from scratch and almost always at least 3 different courses and many times 5 or 6!
Learn, learn, learn, and try until you succeed - mom was always willing to learn something new and as long as it had some benefit to her she would not mind if something came across as greek and latin at first. I recall distinctly teaching both mom and dad how to use the computer and mouse, some simple stuff. She remembered and practiced quite a lot till she became fairly knowledgeable about most of the stuff around Excel, Word, and of course internet. She started making greeting cards in Word, creating simple spreadsheets and once the e-commerce boom started in India she was buying AND selling stuff online fairly regularly. She became known as the Google aunty among her peers and was regularly giving tips to my aunties about how to book tickets online and how to look up stuff online to get more information. Naturally she took very well to the iPad and it was her single-most used "computer" where she learned how to use Apple's Notes to store important notes, how to use SkyDrive/OneDrive and Google Photos to back up all pictures and videos, print stuff from there to the printer, and play all kinds of free-to-play games. She was also able to get their home network upgraded to have a wifi extender so there is a good coverage in all parts of the house. I remember recently on a group FaceTime call her grandkids started putting animojis on their faces and she could not sit tight until she figured out how they were doing it. I remember getting calls in the middle of her night asking for some clarification on some tech issue she got stuck with. Or even better, she would send a screenshot in WhatsApp asking if it was ok to click on something that sounded obviously too good to be true. She knew the internet well enough to at least sniff out the bad scammers!
Travel some more, see something new - mom had a passion to see new places, try new stuff. She would never hesitate to go for some adventure (as long as her health permitted). It's not the lure of traveling outside India, or the lure of going to some exotic places, she simply wanted to see some new places. As a result she also visited a variety of places in India like Bhuj, Varanasi, inner Maharashtra, inner Gujarat, etc. The last two times she visited us in the US, she expressed wanting to go to Mexico. I am still extremely bummed that we never planned and made the trip.
Creativity - my mom was a bundle of creativity. From the innovative birthday cakes I referenced earlier, to cool games she made us all play at family get togethers. The arts and crafts she used to make for various occasions like us visiting India or some event with Inner Wheel club, or birthdays, anniversaries, etc. to the same type of stuff digitally with variety of collage-making and funny video-making apps. There was never a repeat, it was always a unique piece of art. The brain cells were working overtime for sure and the results were fantastic!
There's so much more I could write about my mother but I'll finish this with a few things that I personally will miss about her.
Her sacrifices when I was growing up - I remember distinctly that she was my alarm and more importantly, my snooze button. I used to prefer to study early in the morning vs later in the night, and in some cases I would request her to wake me up at 4.30 or 5 and she would diligently do so and I would keep asking for 5 more minutes and she would keep waking me up after those 5 minutes till I actually got out of bed, and washed my face and started studying. These unconditional sacrifices continued through college and of course the biggest was sending me off to the US.
Her reminders to me and my wife about not being strict with our kids - Having spent a few vacations with us in the US, my mom knew how my wife and I handled our kids. We are not super-strict, but we have some rules and if the kids break those rules they face the consequences (lower screen time, for one). My mom did not like that and felt like we should let them be and we should always teach them a lesson when they are receptive to the "lectures". So regardless of anything else, she would remind us and specifically my wife to let the kids be themselves and to give them a pass.
Be positive and optimistic - perhaps this was a principle she adopted later in her life but I cannot forget how positive and cheerful she was regardless of her situation. Whether it was her physical pain due to back issues or knee issues, or her huge insomnia problem, she was always looking to spin any situation positively and move forward instead of ruing over the past. She would often say aloud that she was frustrated with something and then also speak aloud that she was not going to give up and instead try to find another way to get out of that sticky situation. I did not hear negativity from here, except when it was self-deprecating. It's something I have tried to adapt very consciously in my life.
She and I were the opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to how we think - she claimed (rightly) that I was too logical and rational in my thought process and she was of course extremely emotional. We learned to live with each other's way of thinking because both of us realized there are so many more important things in life to worry about than argue about how one thinks.
I was really looking forward to spending my sabbatical with her and the rest of the family in India last summer but thanks to COVID, we had to shelve those plans. As a result my last memory of her was this past weekend talking about her choice of finally giving up on her 30+ years old couches and getting a new set for their new flat. She also talked about how easy it is to customize stuff in India, related to her getting a new set of dining chairs, where two were swivel-based so they are easy to get off of. And of course, what kind of snacks we would like to get shipped since she was about to send a courier package to us, now that she could send stuff via DHL.
The last in-person memory I have of her is celebrating raksha bandhan with the cousins and family and on the same trip, celebrating her birthday back in 2019. That raksha bandhan celebration was also as usual, extra, and showed off all of her traits I mentioned above. My aunt (her sister) and my cousin has his family were visiting from New Jersey so naturally it was show time for my mom :-) She asked everyone to come dressed up because, yes, she had called a photographer to take official pictures of the evening. She started looking online for local photographers, called up a few people and emailed a few more. Finally she and my wife settled on one of the candidates after some back and forth with her. For the event, it was not one item or two, it was a big spread of food and drink. She made everyone play unique games. For the prizes, she even custom-made the gifts! Every single person had a fantastic time as usual, and I am sure she felt a huge high off everyone enjoying that day.
We should all celebrate her life and how she lived it. She has only left us in this physical world and gone to hang out with her besties (sisters-in-law - brother's wife and husband's brother's wife). Her presence and her essence will be with us forever!
Rest in peace, mummy.
Addendum:
Couple things - one that I forgot and one I knew but discovered to a great detail in the past few weeks.
I forgot about her LOVE of shopping, and more importantly, getting a bargain. She didn’t necessarily buy stuff but she loved the process of shopping. Much to my dislike she would sometimes go all morning or afternoon or even the whole day just browsing, negotiating and ultimately not actually buying anything and still consider it a great day. Amazing stamina and strength to do that.
The other thing, she was amazingly organized. She had documented the smallest of things - petty expenses, codes, passwords, password change dates (no, I couldn’t get her to use 1Password but she was on her way there, her vault had 1 entry already!). More, she had labeled all her stuff everywhere. What was for whom, what was done, what was pending. When we finally got to a couple of her safe deposit lockers, we saw that she had left a bag in the locker in case she forgot to get one when trying to bring stuff back (!!!!) - so cool. There are instances like this one all over her life and whatever she touched.
I miss you, mummy. You amaze all of us every single day.
Power BI recently introduced a publish to web feature which I was dying to have (because the current setup only allows sharing interactive dashboards within the organization).
It is free while it is in preview, but I am not sure how they can charge for this feature, to be honest.
Some examples of the dashboards I have built just to play around with Power BI:
*** Please note: Because Wordpress.com does not recognize the iframe embed for Power BI, the dashboard will not show up as embedded here (as it should). Until Power BI is added to the Wordpress.com whitelist, you will have to click through on the link and it will open the dashboard in its own tab.
After what I can only describe as the worst two months (professionally-speaking) of my life, I am ready to start afresh this Monday, October 20. I can’t wait to get started!
Last July, when I joined this company I just left, I had no idea what to expect and what was in store for me. After I started, I realized the culture was too diametrically opposite to what I was used to, and what I was expecting. And mind you, it was not the “company” that was the issue for me, it was the “people” I worked with: they were stuck in the past and were absolutely not interested in moving to 2014. For an extremely transformational initiative like a new business intelligence platform, that kind of culture would absolutely not cut it.
However, what happened in August and September of this year puts that disappointment way lower on my displeasure list. A new executive comes in, has a major political agenda, finds a few “insiders” to make them her advisors on all matters, and starts making terrible decisions. Some of these decisions were reversals of crucial initiatives which were more than halfway done, and some of them were firing consultants who were the only ones with the skills to get their respective jobs done. As a result, the entire program moved out by at least 2 months. I didn’t like some of these moves, but my thought process was simple: if I can improve my own skills and execute to a goal, I will still be ok.
Alas, she had me on her agenda as well. As in, she wanted me out. She did not want to fire me but she made it extremely difficult for me to survive in that environment. The word that comes to mind: victimization. She removed the people who reported to me so I lost my management role. She passed judgment on my 9 months of work saying it was “nonsense”, without letting me defend it. She made the assumption that I did not want to be a part of “her team” and as a result, started pointing fingers at everything I had done and everything I was doing. Like for example, monitoring when I left the office and having me switch timesheet hours for every hour that she deemed inaccurate. EVERY HOUR. Even though we are not paid by the hour.
Ultimately, I went on a sick leave followed by vacation and then ultimately quit because by then I had a few offers in my hand and felt reasonably confident I won’t have to go back to that godforsaken place. The past two weeks have been great because I have actually had time to flush out all that negativity and get ready for a new beginning. Fortunately or not, the wife is in between projects so she was also around so we were able to spend some quality time together without the distraction of the kids around us.
I have seen extremely political work places and I have seen work places with negativity especially if the company is not doing well, but this lady has been the absolute worst person I have had the chance to work with/for and would highly recommend staying away from her and her employer as far as you can.
Finally bought a Surface Pro 3, and bought it from the Microsoft Store because it has a generous 30-day return policy. I got the 256GB/Core i7 model mostly to see if there are any downsides to going with the top-of-the-line model.
Our current laptop is getting a bit old and given that our use of the “home laptop” is mostly casual with AutoCAD being the key program that needs to run properly, I thought I’d give the new form factor a whirl before thinking about a proper Ultrabook-style laptop, or maybe even a MacBook Air. The latter is not a religious issue for me, it is just that AutoCAD does have not a subscription for their Mac version, and worse, the Mac version of the AutoCAD LT product is behind the Windows version in terms of raw features supported.
I will write up my thoughts on the device in detail soon!
We have an upcoming 10-day vacation to places we have never visited before and I have made the decision to not carry any cameras or computers. While this may be ok for some of you out there it is a big deal for us.
Of course, I mean “camera” and “computer” in their traditional sense of the words as in a point-and-shoot or DSLR camera or a laptop (Windows or Mac). I am going to use my Lumia 920 (and iPhone 5s to a certain extent) as my camera, and am planning to carry my iPad 2 and Dell Venue 8 Pro as my computer.
We are going with another family and they are planning to bring their DSLR, so we will see how many pictures end up having a huge difference in quality.
The surprising aspect of this is that I didn’t even think twice before making the decision about the camera. I am not 100% convinced of the PC, but I do believe it makes sense to leave it behind.
I have been wanting to test drive Android for some time now. I had briefly thought of buying a Nexus 7 to experience Android as an OS and the Android as an ecosystem in general. For whatever reason, the actual purchase did not happen. Earlier this week, an opportunity presented itself, where a friend was able to loan me his brand new Samsung Galaxy S4 Active device on Thursday and I could put the device through its paces over the weekend.
And I did. The experience wasn’t exactly smooth and the “getting acquainted” period ended up being longer than I expected. After much frustration, I realized Android as I experienced (via the Galaxy device and Samsung’s flavor of Android) is most definitely not for me. Some things that I liked and would love to see implemented in iOS and Windows Phone, but many things that are baffling and plain annoying in Android for me to seriously consider it as a daily driver.
What is there to like
Actionable notifications
I love that I could reply to a tweet directly from the notification center. It doesn't compose the tweet (like maybe the Me tile lets you do in Windows Phone) but it opens the Twitter app directly in the reply window so you can reply and be done with that notification. Rumors are that such a feature is coming to Windows Phone 8.1, and I would love to see something similar in iOS.
Widgets
If you know me and/or have read some of my thoughts on mobile platforms, you know that I love Windows Phone's live tiles. These tiles provide information at a glance for things that you only need to glance at, like top news or the next calendar appointment or the current weather. Widgets in Android do something similar and are very useful in providing snippets of information. I like that, and do miss it in my iPhone.
Screen size
After using a larger screen with Windows Phones for the past few years, I thought the iPhone's screen size would seem small. It surprisingly has not felt like that. So, using the larger screen on the S4 felt good but only for a bit. You will see the same exact bullet point listed under what I didn't like :-)
Choice
It is quite amazing that I can install multiple app stores on the device. I mean, it already comes with two - Google Play and Samsung App Store - but I was also able to install the Amazon Appstore and get some apps from there. There was an increasing sense as I used the phone that Android seems very much like Windows on the desktop from the previous era, and this "choice" is just another example of that. Just like screen size though, you will see Choice listed under things I didn't like.
So much not to like
OOBE
The out of the box experience, which was mostly how I experienced Android in the past (and didn't like at all), made me feel like I am doing something wrong for not "getting" it. I simply didn't understand where to start in terms of using the phone. Swiping to unlock was clear, and tapping the phone icon to make a call was clear. But why are there 4 home pages where one of them is to the left of the one marked with the "home" icon? How to create a new page or modify an existing page? Maddening.
Crapware
There were so many apps that came pre-loaded with the device! The worse part is that most of these bundled apps cannot be uninstalled, they can only be disabled. And because of how the home screen works, "removing" from the home screen does nothing besides deleting *that* shortcut (more on that later) from that home screen.
User experience
Not only was it confusing out of the box, the entire user experience is full of inconsistencies and confusion. These are too numerous to list but some that I remembered:
You can create shortcuts to apps on home screens. That makes sense, but you can create multiple shortcuts of the same app on the same home screen, and even in the same folder on that home screen. There is no difference between an app icon and a shortcut, which means when there are multiple shortcuts to the same app on the same screen, you have no idea why.
For the longest time I had no idea how to disable icons that show up in the system bar at the top of the device. I did not want my email notification in the system bar but despite going into the email app (GMail app, in this case), I wasn't able to find the setting to turn that off, nor was there anything under the main settings. Later, by accident, I realized that the first physical button triggers a menu and when I went into GMail app and triggered the menu, I was able to get to settings and uncheck the notification setting.
Why the heck do apps have a settings screen in-app and also trigger another set of settings via the button? The afore-mentioned GMail app is one big example of this nonsensical user experience, so we can't even blame "Android developers" as a collective. This is Google's own developers creating confusion within their prime app by having some settings exposed via app and some via the button.
I noticed that the lock screen showed a few app icons on the bottom that I could launch directly from the lock screen, but I simply couldn't find where to change that list. Help from the web seemed to suggest it was under Lock Screen settings but I just couldn't find it. Later, I realized I had to change the first setting (lock screen swipe) before I could edit that setting. If I had a PIN to unlock, I couldn't even see how to edit it but it was there by default. This one took a long time to figure out and involved removing my work Exchange account because that mandated a PIN to unlock. This item really frustrated me, more because it was so hard to figure out rather than the actual utility of being able to edit the list of apps.
Speaking of work Exchange account, when I set it up, I was asked to enable encryption. I understand what that means and why they need it, so I went ahead and agreed to that step. I was asked to set up a password which confused me because I already have a PIN enabled for the device. Regardless, I went ahead with it because I did not have a choice. After the process completed, I realized I ended up having to enter that password upon boot, and then enter my PIN to unlock the device. Both iOS and Windows Phone encrypt the whole device by default and keep the user out of this messy issue. I understand technically what they are doing in Android (encrypting only part of the device that needs to be encrypted for Exchange use), but for a common user, this is a hot mess.
Large screen
While a large screen felt good going from the iPhone's screen, it turns out there are more downsides to it than I had imagined. See, I got used to the one-handed use that is possible with the iPhone's size which I simply wasn't able to do with this device.
Choice
While it is cool (and amazing, really) that I can have multiple app stores on the device, the choice expands to all kinds of apps including keyboard replacements. But this choice is actually a huge problem for a first-time user because out of the box, there are multiple apps for Photos, Videos, Music, Messaging, etc. Samsung has duplicated most of the Google apps for these utility apps but Google itself has duplicated what comes with Android like Chrome and "Internet" browser, Hangouts and Messaging, GMail and Email, etc. I would think it would be a much, much better experience if there were a default app associated with each action at the least, but it would be even better if all add on apps are installed by user upon some sort of a prompt after the device is set up. The choice, in short, is overwhelming.
Wrapping up
The device is good but not great. I really prefer the flat edges of the iPhone vs the slightly rounded edges of this device or the even more rounded edges of my Lumia 920. The flatter edges make it much easier to hold the device. The operating system has all the power of what is expected of a modern smartphone operating system, but like Windows XP that was installed on PCs, the OS is full of stuff that a user should not be seeing and the device is loaded with crapware that is seriously unnecessary.
Of course I cannot deny the millions of devices that Samsung has sold and even more so, the billion devices that have apparently been activated with Android, but I can say one thing: Android does not seem like it is something I would enjoy using as a direct consumer of the system. If my next music player has Android built in, and that gets exposed with their iOS app, I don’t care, but I don’t think I have the tolerance or the patience to “work with” Android as it stands today. Now I can at least say this definitively, having experienced the same on (one of) the most popular Android devices.
ps: I realized after the experiment that I did not even care which version of the operating system was installed on the device
As you may or may not be aware, my personal email (with “vanity” domain) is hosted on Office 365. Yes, that business service which charges $6/month for Exchange, SharePoint and Lync Online. I have had it since they launched the small business and professionals plan.
Since then, Hotmail has gone from being the dull and boring email service no one wants to be associated with, to a beautiful and modern Outlook.com. While Hotmail always provided the ability to use custom domains, I never thought of using that option because it was not a great email service. For example, there was no easy way to connect to it from a desktop email client unless you use Outlook Express or Windows Live Mail. Outlook added a Hotmail Connector but it always felt like a hack. And of course, there’s mobile.
With Outlook.com, what’s nice is that it supports Exchange Active Sync out of the box. No connectors needed. No jumping through hoops. 2-way sync, push support and all that jazz. For free. I have been tempted to move my domain email to this combination except that my mailbox is fairly huge (5GB) and I was not sure if I will be able to move the entire thing and I was not even sure how long it would take.
So I did some quick experiments with my existing Hotmail account and realized that via IMAP, I am able to move my emails fairly quickly over Comcast’s speedy internet connection (and maybe a much better back-end on Outlook.com?). So, I decided to take the plunge and make the move.
I disconnected my email account from my domain on Office 365, “removed” the domain from Office 365’s management, added the same to Live Domains and set up my account there. With some small glitches here and there (my email was an alias on my existing Hotmail account, so I wasn’t able to add it as a new domain email account until I removed the alias), I was up and running with my new setup.
I used Outlook 2013 to connect to my Office 365 account (via normal “Exchange” connectivity) and Outlook.com account (via IMAP). I started moving emails by folders and realized most of the messages were showing up on the web fairly quickly. Except for two very large folders, I was done in a couple of hours. The large folders took a bit longer but not terribly so. Overnight, I was actually surprised that I was done with the email part. What remained was calendar and contacts, both of which created much pain.
I took it for granted that calendar can be moved as easily as email but I was in for an unpleasant surprise when I realized I was connected to Outlook.com via IMAP. That means, no calendar support. I saved the Office 365 calendar as an ics file (was not under “export” but under “save as” in Outlook 2013 - go figure) and imported it from the web. That was easy, except that the “save as ics” step did not save every single event! There was no obvious pattern in what was saved and what was omitted.
Another idea struck me: why not connect to Outlook.com via EAS in Outlook 2013 and then copy all calendar events from one account to the other? Great idea, except there is a massive bug in Outlook 2013’s EAS implementation which does not sync events if you mass-copy them on a calendar. If I did all 350-odd events one-by-one, it would have worked. But I was not in a mood to do that. So the workaround was to simulate an edit across all the events and that is easily achieved with marking them all as a new category. That seemed to trigger a forced sync and I started seeing the events show up on the web. What seemed to be missing was events that I had marked as private, or at least some of those private events. Again, the EAS bug comes to bite me because even after marking them all as normal sensitivity, I could not simulate a sync. At this point I kinda gave up on the sync and re-saved the calendar as ics and imported it from the web. Then, a sync happened that showed up in Outlook 2013. For all the stuff that was not correctly sync-ed, including some recurring events that ended up showing as one-time, I manually went to the web and added/updated. :-(
As for contacts, I moved to Outlook.com as my “single source of truth” for contacts long time ago. I have been pretty happy with the arrangement especially because most of the contact manipulation (adding/updating/deleting) happens on mobile devices and with EAS, I am seconds away from always being up-to-date. Additionally, I have linked my Microsoft account to LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter and as a result, I have the “master” address book under People on my Outlook.com account. However, there is no way for me to link that account with the new account I created. No sharing, no linking, no sync-ing, and that’s a pity. I was hoping that just like I link a Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn account with Microsoft account, I could another Microsoft account too. Not to be. So I went for the next best option, which was to export and import. I could export my Outlook.com contacts as a csv but shockingly, when I tried to import, I got a generic error that seemed to indicate that there are some special characters in some phone or email fields somewhere in that csv file. No partial import, no specific error on specific records, nothing. An all or nothing which to me ended up with nothing. In the end, I had to go back to Outlook 2013 and with EAS, I was able to copy contacts from one account to the other.
Despite those multiple hiccups, I am glad to say I am done with the migration much sooner than I thought I would be and most importantly, there were no issues with the email migration. I was afraid of duplicates and missed emails neither of which happened.
I will monitor for a few days after which I am going to cancel my Office 365 paid account but a practical limitation I am facing now is that at work where I prefer to keep personal email limited to a tab in a browser, I won’t be able to see my current Hotmail account and the new custom domain account in a single browser window. With Office 365 account, I was able to because they don’t share the cookie, I suppose, but with both the accounts now running off Outlook.com back-end, I am unable to. It is a pain to have two browser windows open, one of which is an InPrivate window, but I am sure it is something I can get used to over time.
And to finish off, can I just say that Microsoft has made a big mistake calling their webmail service Outlook.com which is very close to their email client Outlook. Searching for solutions to the various problems I had almost invariably landed me on help pages for Outlook the program vs Outlook.com the service. It was quite frustrating. :-(
Just read this post on Medium about backing up your data and I thought the setup was very similar to mine, so I felt like writing one to talk about my own.
My setup consists of:
An HP Proliant Microserver N36L which is a fantastic form factor for this purpose. Over time, I did add a graphics card to it so that I can get HDMI out to connect it to an external monitor for those times when I need to upgrade something that I cannot do over remote desktop, like when I moved from Windows Home Server 2011 to Windows 8 and then to Windows 8.1
The server is also great because in that compact form factor, it still allows for 4 hard drives. I had bought two 1TB hard drives and had let Windows Home Server run them in mirror mode. After I moved to Windows 8, I manually implemented that feature via File History. Not technically the same, but works for me in terms of keeping a copy of my data on a second hard drive in case it fails. Windows 8 also provides me the capability to restore to factory settings or to restore to a pre-determined point, in case I need to.
Since I have enough space on my hard drives, I haven’t deployed my other USB drives. Also, since this setup is in our closet, I also don’t want my wife to one day throw it all out of there :-) It would be nice to use Storage Spaces and make use of all my USB drives as a single shared pool of storage. After all, the server does provide a ton of USB ports on front and back.
I do not need VNC because I use the excellent Remote Desktop which now is available on iOS (and Mac and Android too but at this time I don’t have those devices).
Instead of Dropbox, I use SkyDrive for all types of file sync from and to multiple devices. Like Remote Desktop, the SkyDrive app exists on all the devices I use, and works quite well for me. In addition, on my home network, I have set up a HomeGroup and in Windows, I have set up all Libraries to point to the server’s respective locations (Documents, Photos, Music, Videos, etc.) and made that the default save location. That way, the need to sync is reduced when I am on the home network. Pictures from phones are backed up to SkyDrive from my iPhone as well as my Lumia automatically and show up on the server because of the SkyDrive app.
Finally, the best part: Crashplan automatic cloud backup running on the server, which is set to never sleep. In this way, I have multiple versions of all the files on the server, always backing up automatically to the cloud. I have been able to restore my backed up files on different PCs as and when I have needed to. It does not provide bare metal restore but I don’t need it because of the excellent Reset/Refresh features introduced in Windows 8. In fact, if I wanted to, I could even use Crashplan to do USB backups (it uses multiple “destinations” so cloud is the only destination I am using currently but there is no extra cost to add local USB as a destination).
One issue I have noticed and it comes as a result of using the server not just as a backup machine but also as a media server, is that videos take a long time to stream to tablets or TV. I suspect it is because the processor is quite old and slow and it is the server that is doing the CPU-intensive stuff so it ends up choking a bit. I also suspect the hard drives are a bottleneck as well in such cases. I don’t think I want to invest much into this setup at this point but I would love to see a modern version of this form factor. I haven’t found it yet. Most of the small form factor cases today skip the hard drive expansion slots and as a result make me afraid of losing the low-cost, big-sized storage capacity.
But that’s a separate story. I am just happy I have been able to get to a point where I don’t have to worry about losing my digital memories as well as important papers and hard work from my past several years. Huge thanks to Crashplan for making this happen via their inexpensive and unlimited backup service.
In light of the recent rumors about Amazon potentially increasing Amazon Prime fees from $80/yr to maybe up to $120/yr, I went into my order history at amazon.com. My first instinct when I heard the rumor was to unsubscribe (or more correctly, not renew) but upon further review, it looks like I should be fine even with the $40 increase, based on my consumption of amazon “stuff”: orders placed there, amazon video, amazon kindle “free” ebook every month.
But since I was there, I thought I’d do something with my order history, so here it is:
The order counts in 2012 and 2013 are "off" because we moved to India in late-2012 and moved back late-2013.
Looks like I went crazy with amazonmp3 when it first launched :-)
As you can see, if we continue at around 40 orders a year, a $40/yr increase means adding $1 to shipping costs and that is not even including the benefits we get via video and books. Maybe those bean counters at amazon did their homework :-)
I recently purchased a Dell Venue 8 Pro, an 8" Windows 8.1 tablet running on Intel Atom chip. I bought the 64GB version because I knew my app count (and size) would be high so it would be better to be n the safer side when it comes to storage. Besides, Amazon had a great deal on it, where I got it for $329 instead of the regular price of $399.
I kept the box because I was not sure if I needed another tablet (I have two iPads), or another Windows 8.1 touch device (I have a 27" Lenovo A720 all in one). Surprisingly, I am loving the device and won't be returning it. The following are just some of the reasons this is a great device *for me*:
Form factor: This thing is thin and light! I am talking in absolute terms, not comparing it to say, an iPad mini or a Nexus or a Kindle Fire. I can absolutely hold it in one hand for a long period of time. I was not able to do it with my iPad nor my Surface RT, despite both being relatively light.
Screen size and clarity: I feel 8" screen is great for all my consumption activities and feel it is way better than my phone for quick Office/Excel work. I don't care about the actual resolution, but what I see is pretty darn clear. There was an initial auto-dimming issue which was fixed by Dell via a firmware update.
Windows ecosystem: One may ask why I didn't go for an iPad mini in the first place. The issue is that my home setup is based on Windows. I have a Windows PC (used to run Windows Home Server 2011, now runs Windows 8.1) in the closet with a large hard drive that has all our music, video, photos, documents, etc. This PC is also a part of a HomeGroup which enables it to share all that content easily with other devices in the HomeGroup. With an iPad, I would have to move the files to the cloud, or find some apps which can somehow read data off the network, or maybe trick iTunes into reading all those files as part of its Library. None of those seemed to be as elegant as simply adding a device to the HomeGroup. With my Dell, I have zero issues browsing our entire photo library or even more fun, watching some random old home videos of our kids.
User profiles: I didn't do this until a few days ago, but I decided to add my kids accounts to the device because I realized my "games" area on the Start Screen was exploding in size and I wasn't using any of them. I created two child accounts and added all the apps/games that they would care about on their Start Screen. They love logging in with their own Picture Password and their own game progress, achievements, etc. This is simply not possible, but highly desirable on an iPad.
Win32 fallback: I have not had to jump into the "old" Windows on this device much. Recently though, I wanted to play a DVD (ripped as an ISO, stored on my home "server") but I couldn't. Tried a few apps that promised that functionality but they couldn't do it. Ultimately, I gave in and installed the ever reliable VLC player. I know they are working to bring it in a Windows Store app, but until then, the only option is to use their Win32 application. It worked flawlessly (no surprise) and I was able to stream the video on my device in seconds! Really handy to have that fallback, although the counter point could be the poor ecosystem that does not fill the gap. I believe the issue is DVD playback involves royalties which is perhaps one of the motivations Microsoft had in removing that feature from core Windows 8, and making it part of a "pro pack" on top of Windows 8 Pro which then includes Windows Media Center as well.
Office: Sure, this is not a touch-friendly version, and sure, it is dorky to use Excel on a small device but for quick updates like one or two entries on a common budget file my wife and I share, it is great to have a full version of Office connected to SkyDrive.
Bottom line, this device is actually so useful to me, I have used my iPad even lesser in the past few weeks than before. It also helps that Brandon Paddock (@BrandonLive on twitter) is actively iterating on his Metro twitter app Tweetium. It is a really nice app that works well in Metro, and more so, in portrait mode which is how I use this device most of the time. The official app is decent but Tweetium is way friendlier. Awaiting notifications support :-)
I admit, this may not be the device for everyone, much less everyone in the Windows ecosystem, but boy, at $250 or so, it is very close to a no-brainer.
I am not one of those who care for specific days in the year. You know, birthdays, anniversaries, Fathers' Day, Thanksgiving, etc. I believe that most of these days are artificial milestones and should instead be observed daily. For example, why give thanks to others on one day? Why remember Dad on one day?
Similarly, the end of a calendar year (be it Gregorian or Hindu) does not mean much to me. I celebrate it because that is one way to spend the holidays with friends and family. At the same time, I do not resolve to do or not to do things as part of the New Year. I resolve when I realize I need to start or stop doing things.
However, I am writing this post because 2013 has been a very odd year. It is one that I would like to end and only if for symbolism, I cannot wait for 2014 to be here so that emotionally and superstitiously, I can start afresh. There have been some ups and many downs in 2013 in my life and here’s hoping for a more stable, mostly up 2014!
Life-changing stuff
2013 saw us moving back from Bangalore, India to the Bay Area. It was obviously not an easy decision, and the relocation and the re-relocation set us back (so to speak) by a year or more. Kids were unsettled most of the 15 or so months, my wife and I were unsettled for longer and in general, a lot of things ended up being in flux most of the year. This is not including the huge financial hit we took in moving ourselves back. One-way flights back for the family, moving expenses, re-buying 2 cars, down payments, lease breakage fees in India, etc.
Hoping 2014 is much more stable from a family perspective. Kids are getting older and we need to focus on them way more than we have been able to in the past one and a half years.
Family health and loss
I’ll start with the worst: I lost my uncle absolutely unexpectedly. He was in his mid-70s and outside of some minor issues, absolutely healthy. More importantly, he was the rock in my aunt’s life and an absolutely selfless caregiver to my nephew and niece as they were growing up. He will be missed and it is one of the big reasons 2013 sucked for me.
My wife fell sick and started losing vision. She ultimately underwent a brain surgery. That one month period in the summer was perhaps the most trying for us. She was helpless (pain medication didn’t seem to work at all), I was helpless and the kids were clueless. Luckily, we reacted in time although it was quite a scary period. All’s well that ends well, I guess, but another shaky moment of 2013.
My mom underwent a knee replacement. After a couple of years of terrible pain in her knee, she was forced to undergo replacement. She is ok now but at her age, any surgery is a risk especially considering she has had a major heart attack in the past. Again, all’s well that ends well, but worrisome for all while she went through pre-op tests and the surgery itself.
An aunt has started showing signs of speech loss. Hard to explain and I won’t go into detail but she has been one of my closest aunts and she has been a bundle of energy all through her life and it is really, really sad to see her get into a shell because she is subconsciously afraid of goofing up as she speaks.
The wife of the uncle who passed away has had to push her own knee surgery multiple times because of some or the other issue that comes up before the surgery in the pre-op testing. She is in terrible pain and she definitely deserves better than suffering through the pain. Let’s hope 2014 changes that.
Some good things too
It was not all bad. We did complete the experience of living closer to our families and even though the end result was that we moved back, the learning was valuable. The experience was worth the effort, mostly because now we won’t regret not giving it a shot when we had a chance to. I thank my previous employer for giving me the chance to move back while keeping my job.
As part of the relocation back, I was in some ways forced to look at other opportunities and I am glad I took the one that I ended up taking. This is a good thing because I have a feeling I would have got too comfortable in my previous job if I had no motivation to look elsewhere.
My kids, especially my younger one, transformed quite a bit when he was in India. I am not sure if it was a natural transformation at his age, but the kid who left the US and the kid who re-entered the US are night and day apart. Most of the friends and family we met after returning back have expressed a pleasant surprise in seeing him be more bold, more mischievous, and in general more extroverted than he was before. I take that as a huge plus.
Looking forward to 2014
I am an optimist by nature. I am hoping 2014 sees us settle down a bit, and prosper as a result. I am certainly hoping my aunts get better and that we don’t see the kind of issues we saw in 2013.
And while I don’t resolve to do something just because the year rolls over to a new one, I do have one that I want to put it out in public. No, it is not fitness-related (although I do want to work on that), it is that I end up reading books at least for 20% of the time I spend on twitter. I fear that being engaged on twitter and using it as a primary source of news and information, there is a tendency to over-use it even if it is in the form of “consumption of news”. I just want to enforce a way for me to spend some of that time away from the info-snacking and get reading some “longform” stuff like books. Wish me the best on that :-)
Wishing you all a Happy 2014, and thanks for reading!
Over the weekend, I had a twitter conversation with the Wordboxer developers, trying to get them to port their game to Windows Phone. It brought to light an important point about the Windows Phone (and for that matter, Blackberry) app problem: most cool games and apps are being built by small shops or single developers who just don’t have the time to build and maintain more than one or maybe two versions of their app/game. I really hope the Windows Phone (and Windows 8) teams realize this and create ways and means to reach these folks and help them out with the education needed to have them port their apps.
I know with the addition to C++ and support for cross-platform game engines on both Windows Phone and Windows 8, things are easier in terms of porting, but the point is most devs look at market share numbers and shy away from the platform. Of course, the market share going up and reaching some level of respectability (10% in the US?) may automatically help, but until then, Microsoft has a tough problem on their hands. They have to increase sales of devices, they have to attract the big brands and they have to make sure the indie devs also consider Windows Phone, if not at launch, at least soon after.
Small devs really don't have time to develop and maintain code for more than one or two platforms. Even though Windows Phone dev tools are arguably better than anything else out there, and porting is easier with Windows Phone 8, it comes down to resources. Here is a great example of that.
I got an invite to play this game from someone on iOS. As usual, after not finding the game in the Windows Phone Store, I ping the developer twitter account.
Seeing the opening, I ping a good twitter friend and a prolific developer and now a Nokia Developer Ambassador. They can help and in fact, they encourage developers to port their apps.
....but, Windows Phone users are more loyal to the platform and the early adopters tend to support developers who bring their stuff over from other platforms.
My turn to throw some reality into the mix. It is easier to develop/port to Windows Phone because testing involves a finite number of resolutions and device types. Especially if they focus only on Windows Phone 8.
Yup, continuing the reality trend - if they can re-use much of their code then the incremental effort to bring the app to Windows Phone may not be too much, but the upside is huge.
Manan Kakkar just blogged about how some of Microsoft's iOS apps are a bad thing for Microsoft, and how the SkyDrive app for WP7 is useless to him. I'd like to use this blog post as a response to some of his remarks, criticisms and rants.
Kinectimals for iOS leaves no USP for the Microsoft ecosystem in the living room
I agree with Manan that there was an implicit promise of Windows Phone working very closely with Xbox and Windows in a way that iOS and Android could not and would not. At the same time, you have to remember - Microsoft is clearly pitching Xbox as a platform. If they want the Xbox to become a platform, they will need many more consoles out in homes. At the same time, the reality is that most Xbox users are most likely users of iOS devices of some shape or form.
Giving a taste of how a mobile device can work tightly with the Xbox gives Microsoft several wins:
Exposes a Microsoft Studio game (in this case) to iOS users. If they don't have an Xbox and they like the game, they may start thinking about it.
Shows how Microsoft can integrate the mobile phone into its console. "With Windows Phone, the experience would be even tighter" could be the carrot.
If the iOS user already has an Xbox, they may be tempted to look at other add-ons for the game, perhaps other games, other content, etc. In other words, fueling the increased use of the console, leading to potential increase in revenues related to Xbox content.
All of these create the vicious circle of creating a bigger market for the console as well as selling more content off the console. For a platform company, is there a better recipe?
Microsoft is at a very interesting stage in its history. For the first time since it became the most dominant company in the world, it is facing a world where its operating system (note: not "software") may not be the most popular system. The world is moving towards smaller, lighter computing devices where so far, we have not seen Windows at all. Until we see Windows 8 succeed, we will continue with the argument that Microsoft is not a player in this new world where PCs will be outsold by smart devices which do not run Windows.
Why should I own a Windows Phone and not an iPhone, if the Xbox integration is going to be so tight with the iPhone?
First, I don't think every game is going to be made available on iOS. Kinectimals is one of those games Microsoft may be toying with, to see if there is any sense in pursuing that market.
So from a user perspective, you can be assured that Windows Phone will continue to have Xbox LIVE games which won't be on any other platforms, it will be the only platform with Xbox Achievements, and if there are games which get on iOS, Windows Phone will get them first for sure. It may not be a convincing argument, but frankly, if it were a convinving argument, Windows Phone would have sold way more than it has already.
Clearly, users don't really care much about Xbox on their phones enough to keep it a strict exclusive.
You bring one game, you have to bring all
I am not sure why they should be forced to bring every game with such tight integration. They chose this game just like EA Games or Pop Cap Games chose to bring one or two games to Windows Phone. I don't see any logical reason to bring every single title to iOS necessarily.
WP7 SkyDrive app is useless
This one confused me. Not because there is no basis for Manan's point. WP7 after all has an extremely efficient concept of Hubs which in fact avoid the need to have separate apps for each service. In that regard, my SkyDrive pics/vids can, and are available in the Pictures Hub. Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote can, and are available in the Office Hub. So I'd call the new SkyDrive app redundant in some ways, but not useless.
SkyDrive app provides a single place to see "your personal cloud". What about generic files on SkyDrive you may have uploaded, like for example, an AutoCAD file? Where would you find that file on the current WP7? Nowhere, actually.
SkyDrive app allows creation/modification of folders and deletion of files. Given that Microsoft is pitching SkyDrive against the likes of Dropbox and box.net, having a "drive" to access in one place would be better than spreading it all over the place.
SkyDrive app allows you to selectively share files/folders via links for read and read/write scenarios. Again, tying this back to using SkyDrive as a cloud storage option, it is easier to have all the stuff in one place.
Hubs are meant to make it easy to see and share stuff that you care about like Pictures, Music, Office docs, etc. The purpose of the SkyDrive app is not to just let you browse the stuff, but also allow it to be selectively shared with others.
Finally, I believe Manan has concluded that the app is useless because it does not serve two of his wishes (more than being really useless) - being able to save an attachment to SkyDrive, and being able to see files on other PCs and devices from SkyDrive. The former is a missing feature of the Mail application and perhaps of the OS itself (not exposing the file system) and the latter is a missing feature of SkyDrive the service. Neither is a shortcoming of the SkyDrive app.
By having an app, Microsoft can also rev it faster than the OS updates, much like Google's apps on Android which are now de-coupled from the OS itself.
I feel bad having the need to write a long response but twitter's 140 characters were just not enough to make my point.
Manan, cheers :-)
SkyDrive app? It's as if the Gods at Redmond have finally heard the prayers of the peasants! Not very useful on WP7 though.
The Valley Fair Microsoft Store opened last week. I intended to go for the opening, but saw the long lines being reported, and decided not to bother.
So finally, today I went to check the store out. It is almost exactly opposite the Apple Store in Valley Fair, but I didn't care about that too much. My idea was the check out the Microsoft Store and see if there is anything to like, and then compare the experience to that of being in an Apple Store.
The store is big, and has a lot of open space. The first thing you see from the outside is a bunch of people playing Dance Central on the Kinect. That is clearly the crowd-puller, both to get the people to come in, and also to get people to gather around.
As you enter, you notice the red color like the new Windows Phone theme across the entire store. You also notice video running on the giant screen that wraps the store. It has videos of Windows Phone, Xbox games, PCs, etc. showing in a loop.
Another thing I immediately noticed was the familiar fonts from Windows Phone and elsewhere, identifying the various sections in the store, like Windows Phone, Xbox and accessories, Service, Business, Cloud Services, etc. The middle of the store had a few tables with various laptops. The all-in-one PCs and tower desktops were lined up along the side. Xbox games and accessories were on the back and so was boxed software on the other side at the back.
The Windows ecosystem has a huge benefit in terms of choice it offers customers when it comes to buying a PC. I saw several laptops, from the regular and boring types to ultrabooks/ultralights and large-screen, gaming type of machines. I saw slates running Windows 7 from multiple providers, all-in-one PCs of different sizes and desktop PCs with large monitors set up for gaming and high-end graphics work.
I saw the new Windows Phones (and in fact, witnessed a regular guy buying a Windows Phone!), many custom Xbox consoles including a Stanford themed box and of course the "Service" desk which imitates the Genius bar from Apple Store. I saw a lady who had brought what seemed like at least a 5 year old laptop, trying to get something addressed there.
The very back of the store had a giant (~70 inches easily) screen hooked up to Xbox (I think). Since I went so early (almost at the time of store opening), I didn't see that area being used.
I settled down at the Samsung slate and was playing with it when Foo (seriously, his name tag said that!) came by, introduced himself and started a casual conversation about tablets, technology, etc. No sales pressure, mostly consulting/advice and product stuff ("yes, all these PCs are upgradeable to Windows 8"). After a few minutes of discussion I went over to see the other PCs. I was actually impressed with the various ultrabooks on display. I liked them a lot and can't wait for one of my PCs to die so I can replace it with an ultrabook.
The other PCs I liked included an HP laptop with red accents (seemed like a gaming machine?) and the Samsung Series 9 laptop, which I saw for the first time. After seeing those ultrabooks, the Series 9 seemed just-ok.
Finally, the had Windows Phone placed in multiple places and I especially liked the HTC Radar and the Samsung Focus S. The Focus Flash, which looks chunky (to me) in pictures, is actually quite cute. Speaking of the Focus Flash, as I entered the store, I overheard one of those consultants talk to a customer and the thing I heard was the customer saying "what? it's only $50??". Later, I saw him buying the phone. I guess the hard cost of the phone is in fact important sales factor, never mind that the cost of the phone with the 2-year contract includes a $15 data plan for 24 months.
Finally, the "Service" area, aka Genius Bar for the Microsoft Store. I did not actually interact with them but while I was waiting for closing out my transaction I saw a lady who had got her old (seemed VERY old) laptop with keyboard, extra battery, power, etc. and was talking to the consultant about the problem. Compared to the Apple Store, these "geniuses" have to understand/handle such a large variety of software and hardware combinations. Wonder what kind of quality of service they provide.
I ended up buying a Nyko Kinect accessory (to reduce the distance requirements in my house) and the 320GB Xbox hard drive.
I typically don't go to Apple Store, and I don't see myself going to the Microsoft Store much either. However, I do see that the store becomes a place where Microsoft can show off their consumer-related stuff like Windows Phones, Xbox, Kinect and also a place where they can aggressively sell "pure" PCs with the Signature image. In my limited experience with the Apple Store in the same mall, I felt the Microsoft Store was more cheerful, happier, colorful and generally, more fun.
These things will not be making money for Microsoft anytime soon, but will definitely help in increasing awareness among the non-tech crowd, brand recognition, and hopefully for them, therefore, sales.
I own an iPad 1. I love it. I love it because of three main reasons:
Fantastic battery life: I don't really have to worry about plugging it in for an entire day's use. I really exceeds its rated battery life.
iOS apps, specifically iPad apps: I used to own an iPhone. I bought several apps then. And since I have bought my iPad, I bought several apps which were specifically made for the iPad. My kids love their two pages full of games/apps.
Form factor: Right, it is not a 7-incher that you can put in your jacket pocket or even back pocket of your pants, but it certainly is not as big as a laptop even a thin-and-light version. The iPad is thin enough and light enough to allow me to do casual computing tasks like looking up stuff on the internet (via browser or apps), checking and quick responding to emails, looking at my work calendar, etc.
There is another feature which is huge for the iPad: its price. Having the lowest capacity iPad start at $500 has now become essentially unbeatable at the moment.
Which brings me to iPad alternatives. Today I see virtually no company which can deliver a tablet with the price, the ecosystem and the battery life which will make me reconsider my iPad purchase.
Android tablets at the very low end: There have been several no-name tablets in the $150-$200 range which are good on one point (price) but horrible on the others like battery life or even Google's official support (lack thereof, of course, seen by the absence of Android Market in some cases).
Android tablets at the top: The Galaxy Tab launched via the carriers and required data contract with the purchase. Tablets are essentially not a giant phone despite what the form factor might suggest. Tablets are smaller computing devices which should be available more at stores like Best Buy and Fry's than at at&t or Verizon stores. The XOOM had promise with its super-awesome specs, but it was priced too high and again, launched by carrier. Both of these have now WiFi-only versions now, but even with the price being slightly above or about the same as the iPad, the Android ecosystem is pathetic. Yes, there are hundreds of thousands of Android apps but there are no tablet apps (or to be correct, less than 100 or so). Also, Android out of the box is pathetic for media purchase/rent capabilities. Yes, there is amazon mp3 app and maybe the Samsung Media app may do something but there is no coherent message from Android about the media experience. Maybe the upcoming Google Music initiative will help, but what about TV and movies? What about sports? As a result, Android tablets have a very very long way to go to catch up with the iTunes store.
HP/Palm: I have not seen this thing in person, it has not launched yet and we don't know what it is going to be priced at or what kind of battery life we can expect. Of course webOS app and media ecosystem is also a huge unknown at this point. So I am not going to consider this device in the conversation at all.
RIM Playbook: This one sounds promising at the moment and with their strange move to include a way to run Android apps, they can at least claim the same depth and breadth of the available app catalog as Android does. But again, I am not sure if developers have a clear understanding of what the heck they are going to develop for. There are so many environments to possibly program for the Playbook. Also, the battery life is unknown at this point.
Any Windows 7 tablet: I actually don't mind the full-blown Windows 7 on a tablet but the problem is none of the tablets I have seen are light (3lbs may be light for a laptop but not for a tablet. I am looking at you, Asus EE Slate) and none have the battery life even close to the iPad's. Sure, they can run the full version of Microsoft Office but I don't need that in a tablet ;-)
The mythical Amazon tablet: This to me seems like the big unknown, but the one with the best position to attack the iOS platform. Amazon has been making devices so it knows manufacturing. Amazon recently added the Appstore for Android which from most reviews seems to be a delightful experience (minus the initial setup). Considering they have a large mp3 music store, video on demand and now subscription-style instant streaming of movies and shows, I think they have a decent competitor to the iTunes store. Since we have absolutely no idea on the type of tablet, I cannot comment on the battery life or the price. But Amazon knows retail and it has an ecosystem to support a tablet-like device. Should be interesting. It's not if, it's when.
What about the next Windows (Windows 8 for this post)? Someleaks have startedcoming out, and there were some rumblings earlier about the platform and the application model earlier.
I must say, I am just a little bit excited about how things seem to be shaping up for Windows 8. As I understand, Windows 8 will be running on all platforms (well, just exclude Embedded, Compact, etc.) including phones and tablets along with "normal" PC's. The core will be shared and most of the stuff will be modularized and will be included or excluded in the install based on the device. And most importantly, the UI will be different based on the device on which Windows is installed. The leaks show Metro-inspired tile-based UI for touch-centric devices like phones and tablets and a standard Windows UI for PC's. In this way they have taken the beauty of the Windows Phone UI and put it on core Windows which is good news for people like me who love Metro.
The common core and split UI makes a lot of sense - combine this with the fact that Windows 8 will run on low-power Intel CPU's like Sandy Bridge series and Oak Trail along with the newly announced ARM-based architecture support, it promises better battery life on Windows 8 devices. Already, my 3-year old PC can do instant on when I replaced my hard drive with an SSD drive. So tablets with Windows 8 and flash/SSD storage will have a decent form factor, good battery life and will not take 30+ seconds to boot up. So far, all awesome.
What about the ecosystem? Here's where it gets very very interesting. Windows Phone already has about 12,000 apps and the developer interest is increasing (maybe the Nokia deal has increased the interest, maybe not) and the Marketplace is adding apps at a pretty decent clip. All these apps are written in Silverlight so they should run on Windows 8 with minor adjustments rather than complete re-build.
At the same time, Microsoft is pushing extremely hard (esp. since the availability of Internet Explorer 9 with HTML5 and other modern web standards support) the concept of rich apps in the browser without plugins, even their own Silverlight. This push should ultimately result in a lot of apps that rely mostly on the cloud or webservices to be web apps rather than native apps.
And one last point re:app ecosystem - it would be reasonable to assume Microsoft will have a bridge for their existing Windows developers to port their apps to Windows 8 including enabling those apps to run on devices like tablets and where applicable, on phones. This is an if at the moment but safe to assume that there will be some path provided and enough time given to developers to prepare for the new Windows.
That was just app ecosystem. What about the media ecosystem? Well, they do have (in some countries at least) the much-underrated Zune Marketplace which has a pretty rich catalog of music, music videos, tv shows and movies. That marketplace, under whichever name it takes, should be a huge boost to the Windows 8 platform compared to its non-iOS competition. A media market owned by and fully supported by the platform maker goes a long way in creating a singular identity for the platform rather than having disparate music and movie stores from different providers.
What the big unknown (to me at least) is, is the price. Apple has a lock on some of the crucial components which go into making a tablet. This lock not only ensures that Apple gets a great deal on prices for those components for its own devices but it also puts a squeeze on the market supply, creating a spike in the cost for the same components for the other manufacturers. As a result, I am not sure anyone can truly compete with the iPad on price, given the current supply-demand situation.
Regardless, I feel there is more to be excited about a non-existent Windows 8 tablet than say the webOS Touchpad if it has no app support or a RIM Playbook if there is no music/movie store or an Android tablet because there is no such thing (there is a Motorola XOOM or a Samsung Tab or an HTC Flyer, but not an "Android tablet").
What do you think? @ me on twitter or put your comments here. Would love to discuss this fascinating period in our lives as we move from full-blown laptop PC's to more thin-and-light tablet type computing devices.
I just read this article on CrunchGear and could not help writing something about what has been irritating me for quite some time now.
That article is an example of how the Internet and the smart (no sarcasm) reporting that happens on it, can really bring the core issues up to the so-called mainstream, and fast. And increasingly, traditional media outlets are picking up on blog trending topics, and we may finally have reached a critical mass where the tech blogosphere is almost as influential as mainstream media would be and in arguably, even more so.
Part of the reason this change has come about, is that the mainstream press doesn't have the resources to go deep into technical issues and topics. It is just not their core competency. The second reason is that a lot of these blogs are actually getting paid for these analyses and insights. So they are actually trying to dig deep and find sources, get "common person" feedback via their polls and comments and generally beefing up their research so they can provide genuinely good content for their readers and listeners. All this is great news for journalists as well as consumers/readers/listeners. The quality of what is put out on such blogs/sites is very very good.
The tabloids
So what irritates me? The "tabloids" of the blogosphere. These are the blogs/sites who are trying hard to get the pageviews because that is their source of income. These are the sites who find it easy to come up with inflammatory headlines knowing fully well that they are bound to get the clickthroughs, and therefore get paid a ton. They don't really care about the depth of their writing, the research, or in fact whether there is any truth in their reporting. They care about scoops even if they are untrue, they care about getting their readers all riled up because of some nonsensical headlines. I am not going to link from here but Silicon Alley Insider/Business Insider recently posted a headline "The odds are increasing that Microsoft's business will collapse", and Infoworld had a post about the upcoming Windows Phone 7 claiming we should not bother about it, it is a disaster. And that was without even seeing the system in action in person. Both those posts got a lot of pageviews I am sure and both of them did make it to Techmeme.
The Ad Model
The business model is the problem. If I start a blog and get syndicated ads say from Google, as long as I can generate pageviews, I am virtually guaranteed to get some ads and I have no accountability. I can publish any number of SEO-friendly articles and I will be able to generate the pageviews and ads to hopefully get paid well enough to continue writing as a job. The crucial pieces of this business are getting click-friendly headlines and SEO-friendly, buzz-worthy content in the posts. You know, like a tabloid in the newspaper/magazine world.
However if I were getting sponsors to my site I automatically become accountable. I know the sponsor is looking at their own ROI, their own brand image and that they will not tolerate anything that may tarnish either of those things. That way I am forced to be judicious in my writing and put some integrity into what I post. I am still going to try having a good headline to get the clicks, I am still going to try to get pageviews and I am still going to try to put SEO-friendly and buzz-worthy content. The difference is, now I am doing it as a service to known advertisers whom I actually refer to as sponsors. They are not just advertising on my site, they are actually sponsoring my site. And in that capacity, they have a right to check what I write and how I write.
The tabloids irritate me because they have a steady stream of anonymous advertisers which pay almost directly proportionately to the number of articles and pageviews. It is in their best interest to create headlines with a bunch of superlatives (best, killer, new king, destroys, collapse, end, etc), make up a story out of nothing, take an angle which is bound to polarize the readers and keep seeing any news item from that angle irrespective of the justifications, logic, truth, etc.
The spiral
Going back to the Antennagate story, one of the reasons the news became so widespread is how quickly it went from being one or two articles to the whole blogosphere talking about it. We are now in a frictionless medium called the internet where Techmeme, twitter and the like make it possible to get a small story noticed by a large group just through word-of-mouth, in a manner of saying. So what was reported by some commenters on some site became a full-on post with a question mark which then went from being a snowball into a huge avalanche.
The problem with this spiral though, is that it gives very little chance for fact-checking because everything is moving so fast. Now those tabloids can spin up a great juicy story and just with the headline, create enough momentum in this frictionless medium to make that made-up story become a so-called reality. Now we have people who have no idea where the story started, but who feel like they need to contribute something about it so their site gets picked up too in this spiral. So we have more fringe players getting into the spiral causing even more belief in the made-up story. And once it catches fire in the technosphere, the "mainstream" media picks it up and publishes their own take! Now, we have the common person getting hit with a story which may or may not be true at all. But it is enough to create fear, uncertainty and doubt in their minds, or on the flip side, cause them to believe something will happen "because everyone is talking about it". The Verizon iPhone rumor is one good example of this phenomenon. How many times have people said they have a source who has confirmed it is coming and how many times have those dates passed?
Camp Apple or Camp Google?
Separately, for one reason or the other, we are seeing an intense polarization among the tech community in that you are a fanboy of one company/product or the other. And as a fanboy of one company, you are forced to start hating on anything the competitor does. This has created Camp Apple, Camp Android/Google and the favorite punching bags called Microsoft and Facebook. If you like the iPhone for example, you are almost expected to post something about why you like the iPhone better than the Nexus One or if you like the DroidX you are almost forced to write on why you dumped the iPhone and went with the DroidX. This is perhaps because everyone wants to justify their decision by putting the other system/company/product down rather than rationalize it by talking about the features and benefits of their purchased product. Every time a feature is praised, it has to be compared to the other company's lack of either that feature or two other unrelated features, regardless of how useful those may or may not be.
This polarization is hurting us because then we start seeing such vitriolic writing, we could see luminaries write just for the sake of taking sides and start picking nits about the other system. These nits could then be picked up by the tabloids and made into a bigger "story". Also, the tabloids could see that being fodder to start creating artificial rifts between two or more companies which, if unresolved at the personal level, could unfortunately escalate into something real. And these tabloid-style "scoops" are then sucked into the spiral, creating enough noise for the common man to start seeing these things in their morning paper via the mainstream media and therefore start believing them even more.
So what now?
I believe the bloggers should take it upon themselves and behave maturely and be responsible for their words. They cannot be playing to "vote banks" or in this case "reader banks". Just because most of your listeners are techie, does not mean you say "Facebook is horrible because their so-and-so API is limited". Just because you cater to a techie crowd does not mean you state that "the iPhone sucks because it does not have widgets". This techie crowd may be the first touch point but three levels later, some layperson may end up deleting her Facebook account or someone else would give up on getting the iPhone because of what "everyone seems to know for sure". A good example? The iPhone4's antenna issue has now become "the iPhone4 cannot make phone calls". That is utter rubbish but who can stop that tidal wave now? It is already out there.
We need to have that journalistic maturity and since there is no certification required to publish an article, we need to make sure whoever writes, especially if they have a large readership/listenership (for podcasts/online shows), that they are aware of the fact that more than just techies may be getting this information. I know it is very idealistic thinking, but that is the only thing I can hope for, right?
Someone called me a few minutes back from San Jose Mercury News, which I subscribe to. They said they tried to charge my credit card which is on file for auto renewal two days back, and it got declined, and that they would like updated credit card information.
Now, I have caller ID and I saw it was from San Jose Mercury News. Also, I know that I had my credit card replaced in the last year and I could very well have not informed them about the updated card information.
Given those two things, I did not even hesitate to give my new card number and expiration date.
As I was giving that information, the wife was gesticulating at me, telling me what the heck! And at that moment I thought to myself, that here I am, in the heart of Silicon Valley, with all the information around us about credit card scams and fraud schemes which work EXACTLY like it happened with me. And yet, here I am, giving away my credit card number and expiration date without thinking at all.
I gave it anyway, but it is worth thinking about it - why did I not think about this before giving up vital information? Could caller ID be spoofed? Maybe so. But intuitively I did not think this was a fraud case.
Only time will tell if I was had, but in a few days I will know if it was genuinely the Merc.
The day started like any other day - shut off the alarm after 20 snoozes and got up and ready to go to work. Got into the car and started driving.
The traffic on 101 going North was the usual too. Slow going, speed up a little, and back to slow going.
After the typical slowdown near Mountain View, I entered Palo Alto, continuing the slow-and-go. And all of a sudden I hear a loud slamming sound from the back, I get shaken up and my car just stopped.
After 2-3 seconds of being totally blanked out, I realized my adrenaline was pumping, and that it was because I was in a car accident. I had someone rear-end me, and just when I realized that, I heard a sound of a guy running up to me and asking me if I was ok. I was shaken up, but was ok. So I got off the car and told him ok. I could never have imagined I would be in the second lane of highway 101 in the middle of Palo Alto, chatting with another guy with our cars stopped!
He started explaining that he may have looked down for a second to pick up his tea from the cup holder and that’s all it took for him to crash into me. I nodded and said yes, that’s all it takes.
Both of us called 911 and an officer came in about 3 minutes, and asked us to pull over to the shoulder. I told him my car was virtually undrivable because the plastic from under the trunk had almost scraped the tire top. There was no way I could drive. He requested to slowly drive and move the car to the shoulder so that the traffic is not slowed down.
Both of us somehow took our cars to the shoulder. After the usual formalities, the policeman took a statement from both of us and registered the report which he said I could pick up from the police station the next day.
I have never been in such a situation before - I had rear-ended my roommate many years back, but it was at a very slow speed and the damage was minimal. This was bad. Very bad.
So the tow truck came and picked both our cars and took his car to the body shop he liked and since I did not want to mess with the insurance company, I requested that my car be taken to the tow garage at that time.
From there, I went to the rental car company near there, and got myself a rental car.
By that time, it was about 11.30am and I decided to work from home and not go to work. Met with some co-workers for lunch and went back home and iced the neck/back.
Well, we spent most part of Saturday in the city (San Francisco) trying to find a place for tatoos, and then, trying to find a good design.
Two people I know have successfully made it to the ‘other side’. I did not. The wife did. So did a cousin. The cousin got an ‘om’ symbol. The wife got a complicated ‘sun’ symbol with some streaks around it.
But it was not easy. First of all, I was not supporting my wife’s wish to get one. She’s been wanting one at least since the time we went to Venice beach in LA. I kept telling her to get a temporary one not only because of issues with the needles and all that, but also because it is so easy to get sick of the same symbol.
Then, as we started walking on the (in)famous Haight street in San Francisco, we noticed quite a few tatoo stores. We walked into the first one, which seemed to be a consensus choice as the cleanest and the most organized. The wife was still looking at me to tell her that it is ok to get a tatoo. I was trying to push it back to her. After a lot of such discussions, she decided to go for it. After spending quite some time there browsing the designs, a decision was made. Both of them knew what they wanted.
As they went to the guy to start the paperwork, he said that he had an appointment at 4.30pm and that it would be a 2-hour job after which he would gladly take us in. Since we knew there were other stores, we quietly walked out from there.
The next store was so-so, and there were some designs that they showed which looked better than the first one, but ultimately, they were also booked till much later in the evening. So we passed and went on to the next store.
These tatoo businesses look quite shady at first glance, but in the end, they are not so bad. So we entered one such shady-looking store and were brave enough to actually start looking at the designs and stuff to see which tatoo to get. The choices were made. The ‘om’ symbol was pretty simplistic, so there was no time to be wasted. My cousin signed the disclaimer and pre-paid and waited in line.
My wife was still not certain if she wanted to get a tatoo. I think she was certain that she wanted one, but she was not sure if I was ok with it. But in the end she said that she was going to go for it. She asked for some design suggestions from the lady at the counter, who gladly drew out a nice pattern for her after about 20 minutes. It was pretty good, and it was approved. Then, after some more waiting time, she filled out her disclaimer and prepaid.
Meanwhile, the ‘om’ was completed. The experience was not too painful, and it seems getting a tatoo is like getting a good high. As a result, after getting the ‘om’ done, my cousin has already planned out which other tatoos she wants to get (three, as of now). The ‘om’ took about 20 minutes to complete.
After some more wait, my wife took her turn and hers took about 35 minutes to get done. It came out well, and like my cousin, there is already a plan to get some more stuff done!
Both of them are quite proud of what they have done. Good for them. We got out of the store at about 8pm, after starting the tatoo-getting experience at about 3pm.
After all that apparent trouble, they want more. Is it worth it? Ask them. I did not think so before it started, and I still don’t think so :-)
