The Inconvenient Truth

well, the world has changed a lot since i last blogged.

Tina Fey blew the world away with a better Palin than Sarah.

Kim Jong II is trying desperately to prove to the world that he's still alive and kicking( or hasnt kicked the bucket).

i finally saw two programmes in HD that finally justified the promise that my LCD tv held, apart from being spectacular for gaming.

have spent 50 hours in Oblivion and have only finished 30 % of the game.

biggest whammy of all though, is that Obama won the race to the white house.

i'll admit, i was one of the skeptics who thought there was no way an african american would ever win the presidential ballot. 

i admired the guy ever since he decided to advertise on Burnout Paradise. more than his acceptance of internet donations, the burnout  decision proved to me that this was finally a 21st century candidate.

but that was always tempered with a realization that it didnt matter an iota what the world thought of him. what would matter is whether the american voting public would buy his message for change.

did they ever.

but while Obama basks in congratulations for a much deserved victory, New Delhi is rightly concerned. while the indian news media went gaga over O's victory, not ONE of them bothered to check his views and thoughts on matters pertaining to the subcontinent.

strange as it sounds, democratic presidents have never been good for India.

Obama is a guy who's against the following:

• he's gone on record saying he's against outsourcing and would like to introduce legislature that makes it financially inviable to move jobs offshore.
• He's also against increasing the number of H1B visas quota that industry giants like Microsoft have been clamoring for.
• Days into his election, he issued a statement saying that he was looking into placing Bill Clinton as an interlocutor between india and pakistan, to resume the stalled peace process
• he also represents the traditional Washington thinking that always hyphenates India Pakistan together, rather than deal with each seperately.

ironically, the greatest improvement in indo us relations after the 98 nuclear tests was reached when there were two right wing governments in respective centres.

the congress would like us believe that the whole deal was a personal endeavor for manmohan singh, but the truth is, the seeds and details were sown in by Jaswant singh and Robert mulford in the previous administrations.

Obama inherits an america that is being broken slowly in financial terms. good old companies like Ford and GM have announced they are on the verge of bankruptcy.

the 150 billion dollar bailout package that obama has proposed seems highly impractical. where's the money to put into this scheme, when america has spent more than a trillion dollars on needless warmongering?

in fact, the american press has proved more questioning of fairy tale packages, while the indian press largely ignored the 12000 crore bailout package that the government put into UTI when it crashed.

methinks that once the party is over and housecleaning begins in january, new delhi might be in for some nasty surprises.

The Pieces Fall in Together

Yawn!!! Sorry. Couldn't help it. Been a long night keeping tabs on the Google Android launch. More on that later.

The big G is one of those companies that seems to inspire a lot of love on the net. Which kind of makes it an antithesis to Microsoft, which inspires (almost) universal hate. I mean even Jerry Seinfeld couldn't help Bill Gates.

Admittedly, Google is a brilliant search engine. No other search engine comes close. However, hints of a Microsoftesque ambition unravelled one by one.

Take the foray into desktop search, Office document management, Maps, Street view, Earth, Blogger, Orkut etc. The list goes on, and is diverse. In fact, Google is trying to be omniscient and omnipresent.

The only thing that held them back however, was a compelling platform to integrate services. For a myriad of reasons (maybe they're cooking it up in G labs, as we speak), the integrated one stop point for their services has been a tough sell to the PC market.

And then all of a sudden, they released the Chrome browser. That was when one had to say " Aha!! The game is afoot".

As a Chrome user for more than 2 weeks, i can say that it doesn't offer anything revolutionary over other desktop counterparts. Other than  the ability to run each browser tab in separate memory threads, it's a run of the mill browser and didn't make any sense as a Google product. It wasn't like it loaded Maps or Docs or Talk at start. Those still require visiting the website or downloading the App.

No, what was interesting though, is that it was an attempt to launch a platform for their web services, and gain some developer feedback. Much like Apple's Safari was. Now you see where we are heading, aren't you?

A couple of hours ago, T-Mobile launched the G1 phone(aka HTC Dream). Like i was telling a friend of mine, the Dream looks like a nightmare, but it's the underlying software that's the talking point.

Hardware wise, it's a decent package, although the lack of video recording and stereo bluetooth support is galling for a 2008 phone. we can assume that developers will get cracking on those issues with the Android SDK right away.

Android!! The cornerstone of Google's strategy. The reason d'etre for their 'Be there, everywhere' syndrome. All of Big G's plans seem to be tied up with their mobile OS. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than the G1.

For starters, the phone requires logging in with a Google Account. thereafter, it ties up you phone contacts with the Google Address Book. it also treats Gmail as the default Email client.  Gtalk is ubiquitous as the default chat client. Maps and Street view are presented in all their glory. Docs come preloaded, and there are default Facebook and Orkut and Blogger(YAY!!!) apps as well. and for browsing, you get the Google Chrome(AAH!! Now i see)

and there's a wonderful App Market that is better than Apple's Iphone Apps, simply because it doesn't tie you down to using a proprietary software to sync.

 Oh, and it comes with a direct Google Search App(well, duh!!)

look, tying up contacts with the google address book can be a wonderful idea. the worst case scenario that the ads are showing, is where you drop your phone into water, and get a replacement phone. then you simply login to your google account and presto, all contacts restored!!

this is the closest we have come to mass cloud computing. Cloud computing is an approach which stores data in a central server, and treats every thing else as an access terminal. the benefits are that the end user's computer needn't be all powerful. all the configuration expenses are met at the server end. the only thing needed on nodal ends are input, output devices and a strong network connection.

what concerns me however, is that with the million handsets that HTC is going to sell for sure, and with the beautiful Qwerty keypad plus WiFi means that surfing on a mobile will be terribly attractive.

what it means for Google, is that with each user logged into a Gmail account, they now get more user data, which can be used to main profiles. granted, they say that all user information is deleted in 9 months, plus that user privacy is respected. i admired the way they stood upto the Bush administration and refused to hand over search tracking data. Something that some other companies didnt have the guts to do(Yahoo, MSN anyone?)

But it seems that with Android out, and the way it has integrated all it's apps to the moblie platforms, that user statistics and potential ad base for the Ad sense are the only reasons for the strong push Google is putting in.

Big Brother is finally here. and it's name is Google.

and finally, if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then apple must be blushing right now. not a single touch screen phone has deviated from the Large Screen and minimal buttons approach that Apple Pioneered.

should you buy the G1 with the attractive 179 $ plan? i would suggest waiting to see what Nokia cooks up with the Tube(AKA Xpress Music 5800) before jumping in.

A Well Oiled Machine

Look at that header again. Pun intended.

Here’s an activity. Take out the commodities listing for the last month. Note the price of a barrel of petrol .  And now, plot a graph.

What you will get, is a wildly oscillating Sine Wave.  The same kind of graph you get, when you plot the average blogger’s interest in blogging.

It was at 148 $ a barrel two days ago, fell to 136 a pop yesterday.

Why was the difference of 12 dollars created? Simply because a bunch of Brazilian oil workers had threatened to call a strike. Threatened to call a strike, mind you,  not an actual declaration of a strike.

What is going on with oil? Sudden spike of demand? I find that hard to believe. It’s not like consumers have found an alternative to oil. So our dependency on oil Is still intact.

Are there problems on the supply side? Saudi Arabia, the largest exporter of petrol, has increased production levels to way beyond theoretical levels.

So, what gives?

The OPEC says that it hasn’t raised its prices at production level. The refiners say that they haven’t raised their costs of refinement. The governments say that they are doing all they can, to reduce prices.

As a responsible global citizen, all I want to say is, enough with the officialese. Let me have an honest answer.

Why is it that when a Russian oil minister sneezes, prices go up( “ Fears about a slowdown in oil production”)why is it, that ( for the Indian context) in the same country, a person in Bombay pays a different rate for petrol, than a person in Bangalore? (I know, petrol duties and all that rot)

Of course, as long as we have eminently sensible people like George W Bush, who have been renowned for taking wise steps to secure oil supplies.

Here is Dubya’s solution to decrease oil prices. Cut down forests and nature reserves, so that American oil companies can drill for oil.

Never mind that it takes around 8-10 years before an oil field can begin mass production. Never mind that all that drilling will not have any benefit for the next 5 years. Never mind that all bush’s plan will achieve, is more deforestation of the American Greens.

Like I said before, Dubya is a sensible guy.

The Great(?) Depression of the 21st Century

Reading the newspapers of the last six months, one would get the impression that all the action lay in the business section.

Day after day, we’ve been fed data that suggests that we are in the midst of a recession that will rival the Great Depression of the 1930s. Some experts(who seem to appear on all channels, speaking the same words again) have claimed that this is the BIG ONE!!! That doomsday is at hand.

Rchi has a rule of the thumb. Which says that if there is an earth shattering announcement on page one, the real news will lie on page 4 of the following day.

Of course we all know there is massive inflation in the economy. Of course the prices of commodities have risen to ridiculous levels. But my point is, prices always rise over a working cycle of a generation.

To wit, let me quote my dad, who never ceases to point out – “ You youngsters have a starting monthly salary, that equals my annual salary, in my mid career stage.”

To which I point out – “ Uh Yeah dad. But your starting monthly salary, was probably greater than grandpa’s annual salary”

Prices rise, with rising income levels, which ensure that no matter how much the middle class earns, things which are considered ‘a luxury’ (middle class speak, dear Armani toting reader), remain in the realm of luxury, no matter what your income is.

The golden rules still apply from the dinosaurs age –

• ·         SAVE as much as you can.
  
• ·         If any item has more than 3 zeros, ignore it
  
• ·         If you don’t have the cash for it, ignore it
  
• ·         Credit cards are a taboo
  
• ·         Always Ask – Do I ABSOLUTELY need this
  

The last one is the most painful, but the most important nevertheless.

Of course, the haves will always be sheltered from the ‘The Devastating Effects of a Slowing Economy’™

Me? I will continue to burn in envy, every time I see that Ferrari whiz past, with a Rolex hanging out of the window