A sunrise industry coming up in West Delhi’s Uttam Nagar - LiveMint on Eko

New Delhi: Shyama Kumari has a new-found sense of confidence. The 20-year-old college goer taught part-time at a local school for two years and saved Rs8,000, which she has put in a bank account. Her banker? The local drug store.

Kumari isn’t the only one who banks in a shop and shops in a bank. Around 1,400 people in her neighbourhood, Uttam Nagar—a lower middle class colony in West Delhi—have, through shops that include grocers and chemists, opened accounts that now have between Rs20 and Rs 14,000...

Here's the link to the complete article on liveMint.

Tracking a lost mobile phone - google map mobile?

I love the google maps mobile app and its 'My Location' feature - hats off to the innovators at google!

I have an interesting idea . Here are the factors:

1. I known MANY people who have lost their expensive Blackberrys etc

2. On a Blackberry and many new handhelds, where google map is installed; it can run in the background.

3. My Location feature can track my phone down to the nearest 1000m radius, even if the phone does not have GPS capability!!! ('... takes information broadcast from mobile towers near you to approximate your current location on the map to find your location' - whoa!)

4. Most people already have a google account - so they could sign-in to 'their' google maps.

Put all these ingredients together and viola! you have a lost phone tracker!

In case someone who uses google maps on the phone (signed in using google sign-on) and accepts their 'My Location' to be archived; he could be log in to google maps from any computer and that would tell him (and law enforcement, if required) a good approximation to catch the culprit (or simply find the phone - that you might have forgotten at a restaurant).

I really wish Google can get this running (I had made this post on their forum quite some time back) and I can ensure they'll have thousands of happy customers.

Success

(Happiness- Bill Anderson)

"...
A wise old man told me one time
That happiness is nothing but a frame of mind
I hope when you go to measuring my success
Don't count my money, count happiness.

Happiness, happiness
The greatest gift that I posses
I thank the Lord, I've been blessed
With more than my share of happiness...."

I'd agree that someone's level of happiness is a good measure of his/her success. Although I'll have to add that it is as difficult to find someone who has NO money and IS happy as it is to find someone who HAS money and is NOT happy.

Yes, I remember the childhood stories of the rich man who couldn't sleep because he was always worried about his money. I also remember the man I saw on the street who was crying simply because he had no money to feed his kith. Given a choice, I'd rather be the rich man ;-p.

Is the middle path the right path? Is there anything called a 'right path'?
Isn't it time we openly taught (this statement may not be valid for you ;-)) that it is no crime to work really hard trying to make money? And that money can buy happiness? And happiness is an indicator of one's success!

I'd love to hear your views.

Eko In Action - Video (Hindi)

An Eko video trying to track customer response to Eko at the Pilot site:

The language being used is Hindi. I guess someone might put together an English voice-over / sub-titles - till then, please catch hold of a Hindi speaking friend to translate ;-)

"Banking@the Grocers" - Dataquest on Eko

What if you could just walk up to your good old neighborhood general store or chemist shop, spend around five minutes (a few minutes give or take), and come back opening a bank account?...

Here's the link to the complete article on Dataquest.

An A4 sized problem

This issue shows how important it is for product and services companies to make sure that their offerings are localized for their target locations.

Now, the office stationary world is divided into two main standards - The (North) American and the International. (All paper size standards and figures courtesy: Wikipedia)

While the North American system uses the following:

Size in × in

Letter 8½ × 11
Legal 8½ × 14
Ledger[2] 17 × 11
Tabloid 11 × 17

The International system uses this:

Size in × in

A0 33.1 × 46.8
A1 23.4 × 33.1
A2 16.5 × 23.4
A3 11.7 × 16.5
A4 8.3 × 11.7

The most common forms of paper used for office/home printing are the A4 and the Letter size.

You'd notice, that the A4 is almost the same width, but longer than the 'Letter' size by three quarters of an inch.

Now, here is the real problem:

A4 is the de-facto paper-size standard in India. You go to any paper/ stationary shop and ask them for office printing paper, they will hand you a pack containing A4 sized sheets.

Unfortunately, most software (and printer drivers) used in India are thoughtlessly set to the American 'Letter' size. So when you make a document on say - MS Word, the document is formatted and margins are left based on the Letter paper layout. And guess what happens when you click the Print button? This 'letter' sized document gets printed on A4 sized paper and that leaves close to an inch of unprinted paper at the bottom (not considering the 'margins' one might have set). And most people printing them out are blissfully ignorant of this issue!

What a sheer waste of precious ecological resource! Roughly, for every 15 pages you print, 1 page is just wasted due to this simple setting! Add the numbers up for your entire organization and across the country - thats a COLOSSAL waste we can easily live without.

Here's my recommendation to all people who use word processing and printing on their computers - please, check your default print settings and match them with your paper sizes - especially if you are in an A4 paper country, forced to use a Letter setting.

And to all developing print products - please ensure that the default values for paper sizes match the standards prevalent in that locale.

Lets do our bit in cutting paper waste and making this world a better place :) Please spread this message around at least at your work-place.

Motorolling down

- Here's an icon that gave the world a technology product that would have the power to connect its people in a way it would probably have never imagined. Unfortunately, it is today an icon of what complacency can lead to. Its a lesson on how even a technology pioneer, a product giant, can be beaten in its own game by relative newcomers with the fire of innovation in their bellies.

Beginning of 2008, there were rumors of its mobile handsets division being spun off, then there were talks on its imminent fall, and finally signs on the ground - close to 10K layoffs reflecting its dismal state.

Sad, but thats what happens when a company like Motorola puts all its eggs in one RAZR basket. RAZR was an OK phone (I think it was pretty average) - but they stretched it way too far, refusing to come up with market-shaking new products at a time when the competition was churning new stuff by the dozen every week!

Sub-prime

The vagaries of the stock market have always confounded me. To me - a techie, the way economies run (or don't) is nothing short of amazing (random is another word for it).

One phrase perhaps best characterizes the state of what I'd call the US Corporate Confidence Index (yaay! I seem to have pulled off another one of those fancy acronyms ;) ). Despite its sombre tone, theres a sadistic beauty about it and years hence our descendants might study it in their history books. So I decided to frame it on my blog. Here goes:

"We're all sub-prime" - Kevin Logan, a US Economist, after the recent 'crisis'

I'm a dad!

March has been a month of drastic changes for me. A new location, new career direction and a newborn :). A cute little baby girl arrived and that makes me a dad :) - a pretty young dad!

And heres a snap of the stork who brought us our beautiful package. Though I could see the mother and child only on the 7th, thank God everything went normal and there were people to look after both of them :)

The future of communications - Neural Interfaces. Presenting Audeo

If you've read some of my older posts, you might realize that the way I see tele-communications developing in the near future is through Neural Interfaces - and I've been trying to follow a few cutting edge developments in this direction.

When we say neural - it does not necessarily have to imply 'implanted' capsules within our brain tissues. In fact, it seems the best way to neurally catch one of our 'senses' is to catch it someplace before it terminates into a sense organ :).

The latest comes from the world of sound (thanks to textually.org for the lead). The company is Ambient Corporation, its innovation is called Audeo and its tagline is 'Speak your mind'. I guess the tagline gives you a fair premonition of where this leads to ;).

What they have to offer is a neckband. Yes - a neckband that sort of eavesdrops on the neural signals sent by the brain to the vocal chords, interprets em and plays out synthesized speech based on its database of neural patterns and words.

And the good part is - you don't really have to even speak - just a careful trained thought that you are speaking something is enough to trigger this thingy. Awesome! A definite help to people who have problems with their vocal chords and just as helpful to people who might want to talk with their girlfriends right in the middle of a busy market.

Check out its demonstration video on YouTube:



Thats one of our five senses tapped digitally, others are well on their way. Soon we will be communicating in all our senses without - moving our lips, opening our eyes, reaching out our hands, sniffing with our noses or opening our mouths. Things are beginning to sound more and more like The Matrix to me!