Month: December 2014

Things I wonder about

  1. Why humans need one set of accommodation to live in, another to work in, and a third to relax in. It seems we are using three times the number of buildings we should be using.
  2. Why can’t analytics measure the cost to environment (not just carbon output) in any product and service?
  3. What prevents a global effort for analytics  against corruption ?
  4. Why open source software underestimates the need of marketing and why proprietary software companies underestimate the need for open sourcing at least a small part of their extensive portfolio?
  5. Why is education and training still so expensive in the era of MOOCs and Internet and Skype?
  6. Why are expensive textbooks (and books and newspapers) still being printed on paper?
  7. Why does it take 15 minutes to set up the projector before any presentation despite the advances in technology?
  8. Why can’t I just 3D print most of my wardrobe and my gadgets?
  9. When will we have virtual reality movies?
  10. Why software companies focus on creating more and more languages, rather than use machine learning to create a language 1 to language 2 translator. How about a Google/Bing Translate for Computer Languages?
  11. Why they do a lot of checking for giving me a credit card but not so much checking for giving me a gun in the USA? Why do 2 billion Indians and Chinese put up with corruption ? Why do Europeans work so few hours and Asians so many?
  12. Why people who write packages in open source make less money than people who write apps for mobiles?
  13. When can software startups  focus on job search and dating search as the real problems humans care for- not just website search?
  14. Why is there a digital divide and what a donation of 1000,000 phablets in poor countries to kids can do for the future?
  15. When will we start consuming smarter rather than just less or more to heal climate change?

But mostly I am thinking of this?  aYpYmWV_700b1-560x559Happy New Year. Stay Awesome and Classy

2014 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 140,000 times in 2014. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 6 days for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Movie Review “PK” Bollywood December 2014

A heart warming movie from the actor-director combo that gave us Three Idiots, PK is a sometimes silly and always quixotic look at religion and superstition in India. The protagonist is an alien from outer space- who provides us with a logical and hilarious view of how silly we earthlings look as we go about trying to impose religion and God.

Watch it for the fun and with English subtitles as well. It got a top 10 entry in USA movie market, so its all good everywhere. Let the season of joy take you in it’s thrall.

aamir khan pk trailer 3

2014 A Year’s Odyssey

Some updates for regular readers of my blog here-

1) I completed 116 posts in Decisionstats.com in 2014 (TILL DEC 20) as compared to 174 posts in 2013

2) 2013 gave us 151,563 views with 106,851 visitors. 2014 gave us 139,069 views with 96,679 visitors (till Dec 20). Thus  even though quantity of posts was down by 33% approx, readership was down only by 5% approx. This is however the first time that it is down in 7 years of operation.

3) I finished one more book after the first one. This explains why there was a slight lack of attention.

4) Rest of detailed stats will be shared soon.

5) After 767 posts and 4 years and 210,000 views I wound up my poetry blog .

6) I will be focusing more on prose writing not including my technology writing. This includes using this software to build audio books and collaborating with more people and more selflessly to write more and better.

7) I discovered I am occasionally an arrogant jerk. Fortunately I get smoother at hiding that as I grow older. Faking maturity is also something that comes easier as you age and gray.

8) Twitter will be on and off as in previous years. I wound up my Facebook account. LinkedIn account has 11,000 connections. Google Plus has 1356 followers and 757000 views. I think I will focus on github and IRC for a change in 2014. Rest of social media is a waste of time and energy (and ergo a waste of money).

9) I am currently in more writing projects but will be updating you soon when I have more concrete things.

10) Consulting is going to be way up in 2015 compared to 2014-2013 as  I take a pause between books ( or not). So will be teaching , interns and conferences. I will be writing better and as much as possible to continue to make your time on this site productive.

Merry Christmas and Have a Happy Holiday.

EH-354-e1361297347123

 

What If India bans Facebook?

India bans Facebook for refusing to comply with Indian laws on sharing data to law enforcement and sharing data about Indian citizens to American law enforcement.

To fill the void left by Facebook, an Indian company decides to create Desibook- which quickly gains 300 million subscribers. Within a month life is back to usual for Indian users of social media, and a new hot tech startup is born which will be listed in Mumbai’s stock exchange?

What is wrong in the above scenario? What if —-