Great online collaboration tool

Google Drive and Google Docs have made online collaboration easier than ever before. Google Docs allows many people to edit a single copy of a single document at the same time, and allows each person to see the other's cursor's as well as his/ her own, at all times when the document is open. 

Now, Mindmeister, which is a Chrome browser plug-in that integrates with Google Drive, carries this a step further. It allows multiple persons to edit or work on a single mind-map. This is mind-blowing. It allows, for example, multiple persons working on a large project, to create a mind-map of the project and keep updating progress on the tasks of the project - the updates become automatically visible to all those entitled to share that project tracking mind-map document. What's more, it supports entering percentage of work completion on every task. Any other digital artifacts related to each task etc., can also be uploaded and shared.  A task can be configured to remind you or other persons with the project is shared, of tasks to be done on a daily basis - making it akin to having a secretary. I might add, that it brings slick graphics to mind-mapping. Compared to Mindmeister, open source tools like Freeplane and Freemind, in terms of graphics, seem very basic.

Best of all - you can try all the features for free, and decide whether or not to subscribe much later. This will allow you to play around and imagine a 100 ways of being able to use Mindmeister before agreeing to become a paid subscriber. There are three subscription plans to choose from, none of them very expensive, compared to the benefit one can get from using it. Once you experience collaborative working on Mindmeister, you will really want it - so be forewarned!

They even have iOS and Android apps to allow you to view the mindmaps while on the go. I have tried the Android app, and it works great for viewing even very large mindmaps, but I haven't yet used it to actually create or edit the mind-maps yet, at the time I write this. 

What victims will Smartphones claim?

When television was introduced, initially, there was no impact. Then, there was a seconday impact on our social habits - we stopped visiting relatives and friends as often, lest we disturb their watching Chhayageet or the Sunday movie. Apart from that, the generation gap between children and their parents grew wider - with TV viewing being the commonest friction point.

When Desktop Publishing arrived, for some time, it was a curiosity - because only 2 fonts were available and the software was terribly slow on PCs. But within 3-4 years, jobs of "Cut-and-Paste Artists" at phototypesetting units disappeared totally. Of course, they were replaced by KPO Companies offering Pre-Print Services.

Similarly, when the Internet and mobile telephony was upon us, we did not initially realise the impact. Then several impacts happened:

• Email went from being an esoteric, nerdy mode of communication, to an absolute essential (What?! You don't have an email account?!) in less than 5 years.
• The Post Office lost one major source of revenue - post, now pejoratively dubbed "snail-mail" - almost for ever. In the same period of time.
• Porn - an deluge of it - was upon us. The parents of teens among us either remained blissfully unaware, but kept wondering why their wards had become so withdrawn or rebellious; or wrung their hands with worry about the warping influence that it could have on our kids. Now, it has become so commonplace that few parents, if any, worry so much anymore.
• When adoption of mobile phones (more or less contemporaneous with the Internet) exploded, the Post Office got another body blow - how many send greeting cards today? We use SMS or MMS or e-Mail. We innovated the "missed call". 

Now, smartphones, phablets and tablets are well and truly upon us. They have already washed away the PDAs - PIM devices that were not mobile phones. Now, I am counting what else has been washed away (at least as far as I am concerned) by the computing revolution that the smartphone represents:

• No more "mobile stereo music devices" like Walkman, Discman, or Radio. Even iPods are on their way out. 
• No more radios or even Car FM Radios for music - we can choose what we want to hear on a 16GB USB stick that can carry a zillion songs. And we can get FM Radio on some of our smartphones. 
• For important news on the go, now, there is Twitter - anything that I really need to know will be on Twitter quicker than I can hear it on radio. 
• No more wristwatches except as a style statement. 
• No more alarm clocks. Anyway, I can no longer imagine leaving home without my Google Nexus 7. 
• If there is a choice, today, I would choose e-Books over physical books. Imagine book that can be read at night with the lights off, without disturbing your spouse! And that does not burden you any more? I am now reading more books than since my college days - due to the sheer convenience. A book often weighs more than a Tablet.  
• Newspapers and Magazines will die out too. Newsweek, and Martha Graham are two big marquees that have gone online only. There are several online-only publications like Huffington Post (which recently bagged a Pulitzer) and Business Insider.  I am still to wean myself off newspapers, it is too ingrained a habit - but that can happen, very, very soon. Already, I don't remember when I last bought a magazine at a newsstand. Not because I don't read them -  but because I get a host of Indian and foreign newspapers and magazines on Flipboard or Google Current; updated automatically every time I open it. Sameeer and Vineet Jain need to really worry - their huge, profitable franchise is likely to decline, but before they do, almost the entire newspaper industry in India may wither away. 
• I now use my Netbook (already written off by many as a dodo, but still surprisingly useful and convenient) only to write - and rarely to read. That includes work-related reading as well. So probably, PCs and laptops will fade from my memory. Already, all working in my office have their own tablets and smartphones. They often share documents using Google Drive, which could be done using a Tablet as well. 
• Much less spending on movies - with smartphones capable of HD video, Teenagers will watch movies in cinema theatres only for the company, or for new movies that they cannot download and watch. For the older generation, it is easier to watch old movies or song clips, or listen to old songs on the Internet; and what can be more convenient than watching it on a tablet in Hi-Def? 
• The jobs of watchmen and security personnel will disappear - but not so fast - what with cheap DVRs and security cameras with output viewable on a Tab wherever you are, proving to be more efficacious - my friend, an industrialist, keeps tabs on his factory using his Tab over wi-fi or using a SIM-based Internet connection, no matter where he is. He actually caught one of his security guards stealing copper wire by playing back CCTV footage; and nabbed the thief before he reached home!  

Can you add to this list of possible victims of smartphones? 

Gender, Privacy and Ethics

Long back, I had blogged about why, when it came to procreation, people are seduced by technology to sally forth into uncharted moral and legal waters, instead of simply accepting the morally and legally acceptable solution called adoption.

We are now finding a similar set of dilemmas coming into focus thanks to the Pinki Pramanik case - that of the concept of gender and its intersection (or shall we say, collision?) with rights to privacy and our sense of right and wrong (ethics and morality). Here, too, a simple solution exists.

Pinki Pramanik thinks she is a lady. That should be enough for the rest of us to treat her as one. If our law allows ladies to be exempt from being punished for rape, that is a defect of our law - and anyone consistently claiming to be a lady should be allowed the benefit of such a law.

If our culture can tolerate, and indeed assign roles (however peripheral) to transgenders or cross-dressers in our culture, and give them the right to proudly say that they are hijras, and even give Shikandi (who thought she was a lady), the right to be treated in battle as a lady in the Mahabharata, there is no reason why, when it comes to a case like Pinki, she should be harassed and humiliated.  She should be treated as a person with due solicitousness - just as we treat the differently-abled in society.

If it is proved that Pinki has committed violence, she should definitely be punished for it. But, here again, the allegation is a private criminal complaint, and the only person who has the right (locus standi)  to prosecute Pinki for the offence alleged is her partner who alleges the violence. Hopefully, the decision will go though without the taint of the controversy about Pinki's gender clouding the decision, because that is really a non-issue. (In fact, just as I get ready to post this entry that has been a few days in the draft stage, comes the news that Pinki's partner has admitted to have been spurred to make the rape and masculinity charges by a person who was engaged in a bitter property dispute with Pinki). Whatever is the truth, what becomes clear is that Pinki's suffering was unnecessary and avoidable. She has fallen victim to the general intolerance of ambiguity in our Society. Everything has to be right or wrong; black or white - no space for grey!

In sports, at the international level, the case of Caster Semenya has brought out the difficulty of "proving" gender. Instead of learning lessons from that episode, we are going headlong into committing the same mistake, forgetting that mandated gender testing is an affront to the target's right to privacy and human rights.

On a slightly different note, Bidhan Barua's case - of his right to undergo gender-altering surgeries - has also got its fair share of headlines. Here too, the simple  solution as I see it, is to allow people like Bidhan do what he/she wants - like we do not raise eyebrows for cases of Botox shots for eliminating wrinkles and crow's feet.

Re-visiting Modern Accounting Standards

Should acquisition cost of an asset depend on how it is financed?

To my mind, and to most non-accountants, the simple answer seems to be No. But that is not how modern accountants see it. Costs incurred (including interest) till the time an asset is ready for use is treated as part of the cost of the asset. Whatever compulsions may have been behind adoption of such a treatment as standard, it tends to militate against simplicity, and creates needless (in my view) complexity.

Can a company have Net Profit After Tax equal to double its turnover for a quarter?

Common sense tells us that this is impossible. How can profits exceed turnover, that too profits after tax? However, modern accounting is not all common sense. Or maybe, it is such highly developed common sense that it takes truly uncommon levels of sense to understand why this can happen. As it happens, there are several reasons why this can happen. Deferred Taxation Accounting (DTA) is one of the reasons. DTA is one more area where accounting has been made dreadfully complex. So much so that it creates situations occasionally as the one described in the question above, where quarterly Net Profits After Tax of some companies exceed even quarterly revenues! How can accountants explain to laymen this paradox – where, say, the quarterly turnover of a manufacturing company is Rs.50 crores and its NPAT is Rs.90+ crores? Most accountants trying to explain this situation will end up tying themselves and their listeners in knots. This happens in the relatively rare instance when a company has just turned the corner after several years of losses. One argument in favour of the currently favoured treatment of deferred taxes is that it makes clear the differences in expected tax provision on reported profits, and the actual tax provision. However, we lose sight of the fact that the net result of the income statement becomes almost impossible to understand, even to reasonably financially literate individuals. Surely, this could not have been the intent of introducing such accounting treatment!

Is it a bad thing to allow retired employees medical treatment for life in hospitals run by the company?

Certainly, one cannot fault managers in Tata Steel if they begin to think like this. Accounting for Employee Benefits is another area where accounting complexity has reached ridiculous levels (in my view). Tata Steel used to routinely allow their retired employees and their families to be treated in the wonderful hospital they have built in Jamshedpur; and absorb and meet the net losses or cash shortfalls of that hospital quite routinely, as part of its employee-friendly initiatives. Let us say their costs were Rs.30 crores per annum, give or take a few crores. When AS 15 was made mandatory, suddenly they realized that because they allowed their retired employees and their families to enjoy these facilities for life, they suddenly had to recognize the present value of all the costs they expected to incur over the next several years, as a cost in a single year. This resulted in a hit to their Income Statement to the tune of hundreds of crores in the year in which the new Standard was made mandatory (if I remember it right, it was over Rs.250 crores). Why? Could not well enough be left alone? Now, it has accountants and managers thinking closely about the impact of such facilities to its past employees on its current profits, way beyond the actual cash expenses of offering such facilities. Simplicity flies out of the door, to be replaced by dreadful complexity. What I wonder is, what purpose is served by such complexity?

Why did Warren Buffett call derivatives "weapons of financial mass destruction'?

Buffett should have included "securitised, structured products" which are a class of "innovative" derivatives, by the same appellation. We know now that derivatives and securitisation have made financial life, and accounting for the new-fangled "innovations" they spawned infinitely more complex. Banks in the developed world are still facing the consequences of the complex accounting legacy of the millions of securitised structured note transactions it entered into almost without thinking in better times. They are now realising the impact of all that complex accounting – it only passed the parcel of risk onto others. It did not eliminate risk. Ultimately, every bank in the developed world was left holding such risk parcels to varying degrees. But they did not simply pass on risk to others. Some structured products passed on risks to a distant tomorrow.

We have yet to see the complete impact of such contracts that, in addition to passing the risk around to different people, also passed the risk to a future date. There are several apparently innocuous deals and assets sitting on the books of several companies (not just banks) which represent accounting legerdemain of pushing losses off to a point of time in the distant future, so that the current management came out smelling like roses though their results should have had the faecal matter hitting the overhead rotating cooling device. They are the financial equivalent of mines in modern warfare. They will go off and claim the lives of innocents at any time in future, without warning. This is because several best-selling "structured products" designed by mathematical geniueses sitting at investment banks the world over, were designed to hide losses from shareholders, future management and regulators alike. We have yet to see the full impact of such deals. Liabilities under such contracts will crawl out of nowhere, as it were, and trouble future managers and bankers alike. This is the long-term legacy of allowing untramelled financial innovation. AS 30, 31 and 32 (collectively dealing with accounting and reporting of derivatives) is something that almost 90% of practising Chartered Accountants – those charged with implementing them and checking their implementation incompanies, will privately admit to not being comfortable with. I think these Accounting Standards is a gigantic case of GroupThink – the management phenomenon where even a unanimous decision taken by a Group is completely at variance with what almost all of those participating in taking the decision privately think and opine. We need the small boy who points out shrilly that the Empe3ror is not really wearing clothes!

Why should we bother about all these complexities?

Almost all the modern accounting standards that have contributed their bit to making accounting more complex and less understandable have behind them the objective of making a company's Balance Sheet more "realistic". What they have actually succeeded in doing is to make the Income Statement almost impossible to understand or predict. Why should one prefer Balance Sheet accuracy to Income Statement accuracy? I think that the Balance Sheet showing assets at unrealistic low values based on historical cost is a form of desirable conservatism in accounting. We have succeeded in making the Income Statement, which is a good indicator of how well a company is being run, almost too volatile to be of any use – whether to compare results with past years, or to compare results with those of peers. Therefore, what I make above is a case for a complete re-thinking of the basis of modern, fair-value based accounting, and slowly going back to the traditional historical cost based accounting.

Steve Jobs, RiP

He was a technical AND marketing genius. I do not remember a single person who has had such deep impact over such a sustained period, as Steve Jobs has had, on the state-of-the-art in multiple consumer-facing industries. Personal computing, animation films, portable music players, music and entertainment marketing, smartphones, and hand-held tablet computers – all these are markets which he created, and in which he led his company to success at a level that can only be dreamed of by other companies. He did not make products – he made objects of desire. He changed the ways of working of every industry that he touched.

He built the first commercially successful personal computer in 1982 – the Apple II, after first developing the prototype in a garage, along with another technical genius, Steve Wozniak, whose autobiography is titled iWoz. This was the first commercial computer to have a mouse and an OS with graphical user interface. For several years – maybe 10 years, no machine came out on the market with comparable graphical OS. This probably represents the longest period of a technical monopoly ever.

He then went on to build the successors, called Macintosh computers, or Mac for short, which has been through several avatars. They became the gold standard for ease of use and stylish looks. Like every product that Jobs introduced, they were objects of desire, that sold even though they were usually far more expensive than the competition.

The famous story of how he got thrown out of the company he had founded is too well-known to recount, but genius that he was, he continued to develop cutting edge technology, in a company appropriately called NeXT. While the company never did come out with a commercial launch, several technologies developed there were incorporated into later versions of the Mac OS and other products. During that phase when he had nothing to do with Apple, he also bought and spent time on building a young startup company called Pixar Animation, where he learnt and taught the world how to to create full-length ultra-realistic 3D animation feature films using cutting edge computing technologies that his company used, as well as nifty software that it developed for internal use. The only other company that had successfully made animation films before, Disney, had made 2D films. Toy Story, Pixar's first film, was a blockbuster hit heralded a new genre in personal entertainment. It was inevitable that Disney and Pixar would merge, especially after Apple Inc reclaimed Jobs as its own. However, the success of Pixar and the deal with Disney made Jobs wealthy independent of Apple – an important factor that allowed him to dictate his own terms when he came back. Apple had become a basket case in the nearly 10 years that it ran without Jobs – to the extent that Jobs got arch rivals Microsoft into the company to continue to make Office for the Mac, and also a significant stake in Apple. This horrified Apple loyalists, and people felt that Microsoft had bought into Apple at a throwaway price, that allowed Apple to raise some much needed money and to stay alive, something that Microsoft also needed to defend themselves against charges of monopolistic behaviour. The reality was that Microsoft needed Apple to be alive, not kicking. But he had not contended with Jobs' steely determination to reinvent Apple.

Jobs' speech at Stanford's commencement, Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish, is an all-time classic with advice for anyone who aspires to be a creative success. It is a story of persistence and resilience, along with curiosity and willingness to question the weight of collective wisdom. It is something that every young person on the threshold of a career would be well advised to read and internalise.

Jobs' second innings with Apple has been even more exciting than the first, by almost any measure. He revived a moribund company to become the most valuable company on Earth by market capitalisation and profits. Jobs has left behind a company that has more liquid cash resources than the US Government. It sits on the largest cash pile in the world of any manufacturing company. It may be surpassed probably only by Berkshire Hathaway, which is mainly an investment company.

Jobs' second innings at Apple began with the i-Mac – with transparent plastic-encased monitors, computers and peripherals, not much functional difference, but great looks that evoked gasps at first sight made it the first hit product that gave Apple its second wind. Thereafter, there has been no looking back. i-Pods,i-Tunes, i-Stores, i-Phones, i-Pads, and the yet unheralded i-Cloud have all followed in monotonous succession; each redefining rules of the marketplace, and creating new standards to such an extent that Apple blazes the trail, and the entire world simply plays catch-up. It seemed as if Apple was unstoppable – till, cruelly, cancer took hold of Jobs. He battled on for a few years, but all the medical knowledge of humankind could not extend the life of this great man.

I don't envy Tim Cook – while he has been Jobs' close aide and confidante for several years, and been the de facto day-to-day head at Apple for a long time,  stepping into Jobs' shoes won't be comfortable – he will feel like a pygmy wearing three-league boots. The world will keep comparing him with Jobs. Like the i-Phone's latest version (4S) released a couple of days back, even though it has almost all-new innards, looks no different from the earlier version. Early reports suggest that Apple loyalists seem to be disappointed – quite possibly because it was the first product in more than a decade to be launched without Jobs' involvement, either at the launch or in its making.

Steve Jobs, RiP.

Algorithmic Trading - Why Indian Stock Markets are Endangered

A few months ago, I had blogged about tight coupling in financial markets. In that entry,I had explained at a micro-level the impact of algorithmic trading. Given below is a "macro" story about how high-frequency trading in securities using computer programs played a big role in (though I would stop short of saying that they caused) a violent fluctuation in shares' and securities' prices on Wall Street last year. In less than 15 minutes, the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index plummetted and lost almost 6% of the opening value - and then recovered almost all of it in the next 15 minutes.

What happened on May 6, 2010 on Wall Street?

Major equity indices in futures as well as securities markets, already down 4% from the earlier day's close, suddenly plummetted a further 5-6% before recovering equally quickly, all in minutes. This affected almost all the 8,000 securities and ETFs in similar manner. Over 20,000 trades were reported to have been transacted at prices 60% from their prices just a few moments earlier.

Why did this happen?

At 2:32 pm, on an already volatile day, Waddell and Reed Financial Inc (not named by the joint CTFC-SEC report dated Sept 30, 2010, but named by many news reports) started a computer program to sell 75,000 E-Mini futures contracts worth close to $4.1 Bn. This was programmed to sell at any price and time, so instead of an orderly sale over a few hours, it sold this huge quantity of contracts within the space of 20 minutes, accelerating the sales as prices fell.

What actually happened during the crash?

The contagion spread to the equities market when arbitrageurs noticed the growing gap between the equities and futures prices. A significant finding is that 6 HFT (High Frequency Trading) firms (i.e., firms that extensively used algorithmic trading) remained active in the market even during the crash period of a few minutes. A blow-by-blow account follows:

• Five minutes into the crash, at 2:37 pm, data feeds from computers groaning under the huge numbers of contracts, started slowing down, leaving both, exchanges and investors uncertain about where share prices stood.
• The NASDAQ went into “self-help mode” at 2:37 pm where the transactions were not routed through NYSE's Arca electronic trading platform. CBoT and BATS exchanges (BATS at 2:49 pm) followed and also went into “self-help mode” which means that trades on NASDAQ, CBoT and BATS did not need to honour an Arca quote from NYSE.
• By 2:40, some trading and market-making firms started pulling out, due to algorithms that pause when they sense large price movements that could be due to questionable data feed. This left the market short of ready buyers and sellers. Apple, for example fell by $23 in 2 minutes, with the buy-sell spread going up to $5 instead of a few cents.
• Volumes of E-Mini contracts that normally mimic the S&P 500 surged but liquidity dried up. As a result, at 2:45:17 pm, E-Mini prices plunged 12.75 cents in half a second. This set off a circuit breaker that halted trading for 5 seconds.
• As individual stocks declined as much as 10%, ETF traders started withdrawing from the market.
• Then, at 2:46, even more strange things started happening because of the sheer speed difference between trades being put through and displayed – P&G shares were offered for purchase at prices higher than offered for sale! This is never supposed to happen in an electronic exchange.
• At 2:47, Dow reaches its nadir for the day, down 998 points or 9.2% from the opening level. Accenture, trading minutes earlier at $40, was offered at 1 cent.
• Then, at 2:49, the Dow rebounded by 300 points in 1 minute.

• There were no takers for ETF shares – iShares S&P500 Value Index Fund traded for 11 cents. But the broad recovery continued. By 2:58, indices reached the level they were at 2:30 pm.
• At 3:01, almost a half-hour to the minute since the crisis began, NASDAQ snapped out of its self-help mode and resumed routing orders to the Arca trading platform.
• At 4 pm, the DJIA closed 340 points below its previous close.

The Joint CFTC-SEC investigating committee reported that several HFT firms they interviewed had algorithms that took trading decisions based on direct proprietary data feed from the exchange directly rather than on consolidated market data, to reduce “latency” or delays measured in milliseconds. These algorithms went awry when the data feed from the exchange slowed down. Those HFT firms that did not depend on direct feeds for trading decisions got contradictory feeds that led to unease in taking decisions. Yet others that were not concerned with data latency in milliseconds simply withdrew from the markets.

The HFT firms that depended on their algorithms for trading decisions were not affected by the “self-help” declarations of NASDAQ, CBoT and BATS, and continued to rout orders to these exchanges. Therefore, the “self-help” declarations were ruled out as a cause of the volatility.

While no clear single cause was pointed out, HFTs using algorithms to trade rapidly (in one documented case, 200 trades exchanged hands 27,000 times in 14 seconds) were commonly thought of as the villains. It must be said, though, that there have been spirited defences by algorithmic trading experts, who point (among other factors) to volatility when markets are closed (ie difference between closing prices and opening prices on next day) as the real villain of the piece – on the logic that overnight differences can only be caused by humans, who are prone to panic unlike computers.

Even so, the SEC has since instituted a system of circuit breakers to arrest rollercoaster falls like the one experienced on Wall Street on May 6, 2010. This is another lesson that they have learnt by experience – instead of simply looking eastwards and learning from Indian bourses.

What can we learn from this?

But now, the stage has come to re-learn from our own wisdom. Algorithmic trading is now allowed on Indian bourses. Reports have suggested that over 40% of all trades are done by computers on NSE and BSE. Add to it the other dangerous fact - that FIIs that invest "hot money" that can fly out of the country in seconds account for over 70% of all floating stock (ie, stock that gets traded on the bourses).  See this in juxtaposition with the often displayed behaviour of FII fund managers who, like a herd of sheep, make a beeline for the two exits (NSE and BSE) for their investments at the merest sniff of danger anywhere in the world (even if it does not endanger their holdings in India), and it becomes clear that we have set up our bourses for spectacular volatility where securities' prices falling off a cliff in minutes will become sickeningly regular occurrences.

Linux at 20, and My Personal Experience

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Linux has turned twenty, though there might be more than one known "birthday".  
A few months back, I moved my whole office progressively to Linux. 84% have Ubuntu and the rest have Fedora. Since then, I have moved almost everything to Linux and OpenOffice, StarOffice or LibreOffice (I have all three whose files are perfectly interchangeable. 
Recently I read with pleasure the following paragraph: 
Linux runs everything from air traffic control systems to infotainment systems to nuclear submarines. Linux also powers the $10-billion CERN super collider, the special effects in Avatar. Zemlin also pointed out that Linux-powered stock markets now trade “72% of the world’s equity trades in 2010.” This, I might add, was before the London Stock Exchange went to Linux earlier this year. And of course, there’s been a “complete inversion” in supercomputing. In ten years, the top 500 supercomputers have switched from 96% Unix to 96% Linux. (taken from here). 
Looking back, I think I made the right decision. I had hardly any teething troubles,  got my assembled OS free machines much cheaper, and now my employees actually prefer Linux because of its speed and its cool graphics. They also regularly raid the Ubuntu software store and use nifty little and large applications for a variety of purposes. We have a script that automatically backs up contents of each machine in the office, including the Windows partition on 2 hard disks, onto a 2TB hard disk every day between 10 am and 12 noon.
Large part of the thanks for this transition are due to Nandan Bhat who runs Linux-based certification training courses from Novell and Red Hat in my city. My only gripe is that our heavy-duty printer, a scanner-cum-printer from Canon, has a Linux driver that for some reason does not work. So occasionally, for long print jobs, I need to switch one machine to Windows.
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Google out-googled - and that too by an Indian company!

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Google features quite often in this blog for all the interesting things it does. However, here is an offering that out-googles Google - and that too, on GMail and Google Apps! What's more, this quiet, really useful product (you will really be missing out on something if you don't check this out) has been developed by an Indian company, headquartered, where else, but in Bangalore!  More ...

Google's mother-of-all business model

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Google makes its money from search. We all know that. But how many of us know the crushing blow that Google is delivering to several small and big companies in several industries? We are not speaking of the rude shocks that thousands of small businesses get from displacement from their usual place in search listings when Google tweaks its search engine algorithm. More ...

Google Public Data Explorer: Now visualize your own data in 3D for free!

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In May, 2010, I had commented about the Google Public Data Explorer. At that time, I had said that the next step would be to allow users to upload their own datasets to take advantage of this excellent visualisation engine.
This has now happened. See this. At last, I am happy that something really good that I predicted has come to pass. 
You can now use this great visualization engine to display your own data in three dimensions, with the third dimension being time.
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Are Web Apps the Next Big Thing?

Nowadays, everyone and his dog seems to be extolling the virtues of web apps. Examples:

• iPod first created the concept of an “ecosystem” built around a product, with integration with iTunes. They followed it up with iPad and a huge App Store to go with it.
• MS Office 2010 buyers get free online applications of Office that run under most browsers. This is a significant “webification” of MS Office 2007 which transitioned from creating binary objects to XML objects for the first time.
• Google's Chrome browser has created a Web Store and several of the apps available on it (I have only checked some of the Free ones) are stunning. The browser now reads PDF files natively without need for a PDF reader plug-in.
• The Chrome browser will eventually become the OS itself – where you directly boot up and go online. The browser is the OS.
• Splashtop offers a Linux OS of that kind, with a difference – it is is installable like any Windows app, from within Windows (indeed, that is the only way you can install it), and offers a quick boot option that actually boots and goes online in 10 seconds on many machines.
• Much electronic ink is being expended on whether Firefox will survive or not, revolving around the preesence or absence of its App strategy.
• The CEO of Nokia, in his now famous “burning platform” email to Nokia employees, says that Nokia failed to see the “ecosystem” concept that Apple, Android and others were building around mobile handsets, and lamented that Nokia tried to replicate feature after feature, but not the ecosystem. It's Ovi Store is an attempt to catch up.

Tablet PCs were touted as the rage a few years back (Gates demo-ed a device running Windows XP Tablet PC Edition at Comdex in 2001), but flopped. So did e-book reading hand-held devices like Treo, Palm, et al, that were PDAs and e-book readers but not phones. Both these concepts were a little ahead of their times, so today, e-book readers like Kindle and Nook and hand-held tablet PCs have become the rage. Smartphones like Blackberry and iPhone have e-book reading apps pre-loaded, or downloadable free.

For some time, now, Google has been evangelising the idea of storing and depending more and more on “the cloud”, but it will be some time before people learn to depend completely on the cloud, to the exclusion of local access and storage. The same way that news reports that the Nano caught fire has deterred many potential Tata Nano buyers, I am also a little cagey on reading recently that some 150 users of Gmail had the entire content on their Gmail account deleted. What if I was among those 150? A simple hard disk crash is something we have learnt to take in our stride, using the redundancy in the form of cloud storage plus regular local backups and redundant copies. But what is the alternative in the cloud? Is there redundancy ? How can it be affordable? Now it is free, but for how long? These are concerns everyone has, and until these are taken care of and seen to be taken care of, web apps will not become universal.

So, while I think the concept of web apps will take off finally, currently, the apps are curiosities that early adopters are adopting; to accelerate that into a burgeoning “movement” where all will migrate to web apps will take many many more adopters. I can see it happening in 3-4 years from now, but not now. Now, many will begin co-opting “the cloud” into their redundancy plans, for non-secure data.

What do you think?

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Have you tried Splashtop OS?

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If you are afraid of installing or migrating to Linux, for whatever reason, here's an option that will warm the cockles of your heart. Here's a flavour of Linux that is easy to use (the browser is the OS) and easy to install (you download an executable like any Windows application, and reboot after execution - that's all. And it is available for download (approx 317 MB) from today! It does not override Windows, it simply is available as a choice at boot-up time, in case you are in a hurry to do something online; to get back to Windows, simply re-boot and choose Windows on boot-up.


Splashtop OS is a Linux kernel based OS that uses the Chromuim OS developed by the Open Source community with support from Google, and is an instant-on OS. It boots in less than a third of the time it takes for Windows (any flavour) takes. On solid-state disks, it claims to start up in 5 seconds flat! So no more World-wide-wait for Windows users.


Do let me know how SplashTop is. I think it is great. I have just now installed and run it on my home machine, and my first action was to write this blog entry.
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Google Chrome is getting better!

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Chrome now has Apps and Extensions. Hundreds of them are available in the Chrome Web Store, and many of them, are Free, at least for now. Each extension brings a new experience of browsing. I use Chrome on Ubuntu Linux, and slowly, these extensions are changing the way I am using browsers. And thus, the way I use computers. Some of these extensions: 


Le Newz is a totally new way of keeping up with the news - the experience beats Google News hollow. Something equally interesting, that does something similar is NewsSquares. The latter led me to a story that I had never read anywhere else - on how the Mumbai terror attacks were planned and executed, with minute-to-minute direction from Pakistan.


GreTouch is a new way of improving one's vocabulary: It has a word visualizer -- you can browse a word at a time -- and it shows a picture that helps you visualize the meaning of the word. For example, the word, "abusive" shows a photograph of Harbhajan Singh and Symonds eyeball-to-eyeball.  The word, "canter" shows a picture of a horse in mid-air while cantering. The word, "Hedgerow" actually shows a picture of one, which makes it so clear and understandable, and hence, easy to memorize.


Ge.TT is a file-sharing utility, without the need to upload! Regardless of size, you can share files on twitter, facebook or email. I cannot understand how it works, but it does work. 


And many more - I am still exploring.
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Product Development is fun!

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My first attempt at product development resulted in a great software product (a copiously hyperlinked textual database of the tax laws) ahead of its time (before computers had CD-ROM Drives, and before people knew about the Internet (I had to explain what hypertext was!), but I failed miserably at marketing it. However, I had a clear idea of what the customers liked. And when I went out to sell, I sold successfully. But if I did that, continued product development suffered.  I just could not manage both. Even now, I think managing both is very, very difficult. But what I learnt was that you need not be a big moneybag with thousands of employees to bring out a great product.  That was between 1993 and 1995.


Later, my second product was not really MY product. I was on the board of a co-operative bank as non-executive, honorary Director and during the three years there, my single big contribution was to make them believe that they could develop their own software. A small team of two staff and one consultant driven by me alone from the Board, developed a branch-level banking software (everything on liabilities side, and quite a few aids on the asset side) that had built-in linkages for centralization of data. This got implemented in 6 branches on a shoe-string budget. Then I left the Bank's Board to go on to other things.  Till this day, that Bank remains one of the few banks anywhere in India (or probably the world)  to run on its own software. Today, with RBI approval, they are selling the software and their implementation services to other Banks and this has become a profit-centre. Now, of course, the IT Dept has become as big as a small software company. This is something I had envisaged when this product was originally developed. I suspect that my Board colleagues okayed the project because, with the minimal resources I demanded, it was worth allowing me to fail - less than the cost of  software for one branch - they never expected me to succeed, and when I did, I learnt that success needs many fathers, else, the real father gets swept away in the first flush of success. (I know I am stretching the metaphor, but I think it conveys what I want to!) This was from 1995 to 1998.


Then, from 2000 to 2003, I joined a KPO (that acronym wasn't invented then) with responsibilities that covered the "D" in R&D. I developed processes that increased throughput, accuracy and allowed scaleability and replicability. I thoroughly enjoyed the daily technical challenges -- of designing services that allowed us to create more employment here in services acknowledged by our most demanding customers. 


Now, I am back on my own, and am developing a few exciting products. This time, again, I am on a shoe-string budget, but I am harnessing the sheer enthusiasm of young people by taking up projects that allow them to learn and that they are passionate about. And creating wonderful products that those working on surprise themselves. 

I also benefit from knowing up close a friend in Chennai who is successfully running multiple businesses and yet loves bringing out new products, services and technologies all the time.

What I read a few days back inspires me to improve the aesthetics of these products. It also encourages me because Jobs too has discovered that great products can be made by young people passionate about what they do. While not everyone can be a Jobs, anyone can benefit from his "methodology" and crazy attention to detail.


Watch this space for knowing what these products are!
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More about Linux

I  now have all my office machines on Linux. The only concession is that on 2 machines, I have a Windows partition too. Just in case I need it. I now have the following delightful FREE packages installed on my personal Netbook:

1. Squirrelmail - an email server with browser-based client interface for internal email across my virtual office. No more need to browse the folder on the network . Just attach and email anything to your colleague(s) (each colleague gets a user ID and one desktop also serves as the email server during the day.
2. A package that allows me to edit the contents of the clipboard, and keep a history of clipboard entries (upto 100, configurable). I have not seen the edit clipboard feature in Windows -- need to think how to creatively use this unusual capability.
3. A mass file renaming facility, again another shiny pebble on the beach. Unusual, attractive, but what use to put it to?
4. An "Art Manager" that allows me the choice of nearly 350 themes, with multiple colour choices for each, besides font rendering choices, icon set choices and cursor set choices (the last two in the hundreds).
5. A beautiful, transparent analog clock with a second-hand that can unobtrusively stay on top even in applications. Handy to keep time during Powerpoint presentations.
6. A 3-D modelling and animation software called Blender (haven't used it, though).
7. VLC Media Player that can play almost all formats, a Video Editor (Pitivi)
8. A Desktop Video Recorder (I can videotape something that is running on my desktop).
9. FreeMind, the mind-mapping software under Linux, is much more advanced than its Windows equivalent, I have found to my delight.

The biggest benefit of all is the speed -- I feel like I have changed the chip on my Netbook. The enhanced animation effects for all windows are really pleasing.

Have you experienced Linux for the desktop?

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First about how delightful it looks and feels. 
It has configurable, semi-transparent menus and panels. I can have four panels, on each border of the screen. I can configure them either as Auto-Hide or with Show/Hide Buttons. These leave only an unobtrusive patch or arrow sign which, if clicked, exposes the Panel when needed. Allows me to make best use of the 1024x600 resolution of a NetBook.

It offers multiple, exciting desktop themes, way ahead of Windows. When I drag a window, the entire window animates like I am pulling a piece of cloth or paper. More like Mac than Windows (I haven't used Mac very much but have seen that the UI is way ahead of Windows). Linux is probably somewhere in between, and catching up with Mac much faster than Windows is.

Then about how efficient it is.
I have installed Ubuntu on 4 machines - two Intel Atom-based desktop, one Intel-Atom-based netbook and one really old, Intel Celeron-based Toshiba Satellite laptop, which I had stopped using because it ran Win XP so slowly that to start up, log in and finally open a blank Excel 2003 file took not less than 20 minutes (and I am not exaggerating!).

On the first three, I installed Ubuntu, and on the last, I had a much lighter version of Linux called Fedora, because of the extremely slow chip in it. 

On the Netbook, I already had Win XP Home Edition pre-loaded. The performance was acceptable, but barely so. I needed to regularly defrag and be careful not to have too many apps in the startup because degradation in performance would then become obvious. Now, on the same machine, everything moves like greased lightning under Linux. The Netbook could well be an i3 with a fancy graphics card, looking at the speed at which applications run on it.

OpenOffice Word Processor, Spreadsheet and Presentation files open up (after the QuickStarter is loaded once)  instantly. No WorldWideWait.

Not only that, I have choices: AbiWord as a Word Processor; GNumeric as a Spreadsheet, and choices of KDE, GNOME, XSCF or other desktops  environments (ie, desktop along with theme choices are a product that one has a choice of).

Then, about the applications.
Ubuntu Software Centre has equivalents (equally sophisticated, and in some ways, better than popular Windows software). GIMP (Photoshop clone); Dia (Visio equivalent);  Scribus (PageMaker equivalent); Planner and KPlato Project Management software (MS Project clones); and several PDF Creators and viewers (OpenOffice allows export to PDF format directly from within the software itself).

All of these are FREE, stable and completely compatible with the operating system. They are almost as feature-rich than their Windows counterparts, and in many ways, are more intuitive and easier to use.

I have choices of browsers, too. I have Firefox and Chrome installed currently, but have at least 6-7 others to choose from. Similarly, there are a host of applications for sound and video applications, including VLC media player.

There are applications that have no free/ shareware equivalent except from the Open Source community itself, like Mind-mapping software (4 choices: FreeMind, Labyrinth, Semantik and VYM), Stellarium and Celestia Planetarium simulations that can interface with a range of models of USB-compliant motorized telescopes and become a personal astronomy tutor at night-time, and molecular modellers (Avogadro).

Oh, I forgot. Two things:

• All these softwares are available for single-click download from the Ubuntu Software Centre, that simply queues all applications that you want to download, and installs them using spare bandwidth.  No fear of applications that interfere with one another.

• Under Linux, one does not need to bother about viruses or virus guard software, because of the way Linux is constructed. A file does not execute unless the user specifically allows it to run. If all software is downloaded from Ubuntu's servers, one does not need to bother about infection. One need not, for the same reason, worry about viruses on USB drives. They simply won't replicate because Linux presumes that all files are not executable unless instructed by the user to execute them. If you are affected by a virus on a Linux machine, you have only yourself to blame. And windows viruses do not run on Linux because they cannot reach the Linux kernel at all; and there is no "registry" where the virus can ensconce itself.

Then about Compatibility with Windows
Excellent range of Export and Import filters and options in every software ensure compatibility with any Windows software. For example, OpenOffice documents can be saved as Office 2007 .docx formats, or Wind 95/XP .doc format. Any of these format files can also be perfectly converted and opened. Ditto for Excel and Calc, the OpenOffice Spreadsheet. Impress, the presentation software, is impressive, and has an impressive constantly expanding template gallery online to choose from and use free of cost. Open ClipArt installs a huge clip-art library onto your disk (nearly 200 MB download) which is completely integrated into OpenOffice. Bibliographic References can be tracked and maintained using JabRef, again free. These can insert bibliographic citations within the articles written in OpenOffice. Equivalent under MS Office is EndNote, an expensive, separately purchaseable plug-in.

OpenOffice now runs Word macros (ie, VBA) but a bit patchily. It supports macros in 4 programming languages (OpenOffice.org BASIC, Python, Beanshell and Javascript). It has a competent Record Macro feature that allows you to hit the ground running with macros.

My employees and my daughter have changed from reluctant converts to complete evangelists in barely 3-4 weeks. They are users and creators of OpenOffice.org BASIC macros as well.

Chat clients abound in the Open Source world. As also mail handlers like Evolution (Outlook clone) and Thunderbird (which has a Windows version as well, and can import from Outlook .pst files.

Linux machines are part of the same LAN as Windows machines in my office. Linux machines can browse Windows networks easily, but Windows machines cannot browse Linux machines. Transferring files over the LAN is done easily because I need only one way network browse capability.

Databases like Post-GRE SQL and several other open connectivity database applications allow me not to lose hair (I don't have much left to lose, so peace of mid is that much more valuable) over usability of data in existing databases.

WINE (a WINdows Emulator) is an extreme form of Windows compatibility. It allows me to run Windows-based software from within a Window running on the Linux OS . For example, I can click on Excel.exe and have Excel that is "installed" for use under Wine run. I can even open *.chm (Compiled HTML Help) and *.hlp (Win32 Help files) by simply right-clicking and selecting Open With|WINE Program Loader. This is still a Work-in-Progress, and not all software, and not all features of all software, are currently supported. But they are getting there. I am not yet Microsft-free, but, like the OpenSource movement, I am getting there. The effect is that I do not any longer have to worry too much about missing drivers or what to do with files and data created under Windows OS applications.

All HP Printers are supported by printer drivers. There is a Universal Printer Driver that works with almost all printers, but it may not be able to use some of the more model-specific features like Document Autofeeders, etc.. In case there is an issue with any printer, I can always create a PDF, transfer it to a Windows machine and print it onto any printer with a Windows driver installed.

The Open Source community has left hardly any reason now for Windows afficianodos to continue to justify their use of Windows on any ground other than inertia. All-in-all, the stage has been reached where one no longer needs to hesitate to shift to Linux. It is now time to ask why Microsoft does not support Linux. Indeed, in many ways, where they cannot beat them, they are joining the. Example: The xml-based file format, which OpenOffice had adopted probably 10 years back, and made its debut in Office 2007 for the first time, is an example.

Then about the economics and ease of installation.
After making the USB drive as the bootable drive and creating the partitions carefully, the OS and several bundled application software including OpenOffice loaded in 10 minutes flat. The Internet connection configured itself, as did all peripherals.

What can be cheaper than free? All I needed was assurance of technical support. I got that in the form of Nandan Bhat, who runs a consulting and training business for corporates on Linux. He is based in Thane, which is also my base of operations. I requested him to give me either a software support AMC or an  incident-based chargeable support at a fixed charge per visit, beginning with installation and configuration. For large corporates, there are companies like RedHat who do the same.

While an Intel Atom-based desktop is available for Rs.15,000 or less, with an LCD flat screen minotor, Windows 7 Professional Edition costs nearly Rs.8,000. Add at least Rs.5,000 for MS Office and 3,000 for Adobe Acrobat, and the software cost rivals the hardware cost, if one chose Windows. Choosing Linux meant only one visit charge payable to Mr.Bhat for making 2 machines usable under Linux immediately. He finished installing Linux (including OpenOffice) on one machine before the hardware supplier had fixed the wires on the second machine, which astounded him. The hardware guy told me that Windows takes at least 45 minutes to load, and MS Office took extra time, after Windows installation was completed.

My pleasant experiences meant that I called Mr Bhat twice more, to convert two more machines to Linux. On these machines, Linux and Windows are both available under different partitions. But Windows feels like driving with the handbrake on, after having used Linux.

For those who are hesitant, I suggest: Add Linux on a partition on your home machine, experience it, and then decide.

Another Great Feature from Google Labs

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The guys at Google are really something.

Now, it is an app still in the Labs stage (i.e., pre-beta) that I noticed today. It is called Google Public Data explorer. What it does is that it brings Economics and Macro-economic indicators alive.Way, way beyond what any spreadsheet applications have done. This feature currently works on specific datasets that Google has compiled. I am sure that the next step will be to allow you to upload your own datasets and use the same engine to animate the stuff.
Take for example this picture.  It clearly shows how hypocritical the developed countries are, when they refuse to talk about sharp reduction in emissions, and expect countries like India and China to commit to emission reduction. See their per capita profligacy over the last few decades by clicking on button below the graph. The underlying data is from the World Bank.
Take this picture, that shows how the preparation for the Olympics and the huge increase in steel manufacturing in China made for a sudden acceleration of China's absolute CO2 emissions.
Macro-economics and statistics will never be the same again.
I salute Google. This would be a godsend for researchers and for number-crunchers in companies, once it graduates to allowing us to upload and analyse our own datasets. No more huge money to be spent on data mining and analysis software. 


PS: Those of you who read this and some of the other entries on my blog are invited to comment  on the entries they have a thought to share, and to subscribe to the blog feed. I promise interesting posts, and not too many of them. Nice to know that someone is reading all this!

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Is SBI's foray into general Insurance wise?

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A few days back, I criticised LIC's intention to get into banking.

Now comes a report that, to top its foray into Life Insurance, SBI intends to enter General Insurance business before end of April, 2010. They have already been recruiting managers for this venture for the last 10 months, and are almost ready to launch.

The same logic and criticism applies to SBI's joint venture with Insurance Australia Group too. It is bad enough that they have ventured into Life Insurance. This makes it worse, in my view. Why?

Banking and Insurance are the two most risky businesses worldwide, and involve two completely different challenges. Insurance companies have to deal wisely with a surfeit of liquidity (usually) and banks have to constantly manage threat of liquidity shortfalls. Combining both reduces the strength of the combination to overcome threats and severe demands on liquidity that affect both industries. The recent global recession is an example of a threat to both industries simultaneously. Enough financial pundits (Nouriel Roubini, Nassim Taleb, et al) have predicted that this could happen again, and in our lifetimes.

We in India escaped the impact of the global crash because of three major factors: 

1. Our financial institutions were just not allowed to invest in derivative securities and there was consequently hardly any significant secondary market trading in debt securities;
2. Our banks had a very significant liquidity padding (SLR/CRR) that was nearly absent in the first world; and 
3. Our banks were not major players in any part of the banking business, and our insurance players were similarly almost absent in the banking sector.

Now the situation is set to change -- in the name of development and liberalisation. 

Banks are getting into insurance, and insurance companies are getting into banking. This in my view magnifies the riskiness of both businesses, and does not diminish it. I am not even talking of conflict of interest here, which can also rise considerably.

There is constant clamour for reduction in SLR/CRR, which, in my view is nothing but an operating profit cushion against the banking industry's inability to extract risk-adjusted returns on their lending and assurance intermediation (L/Cs, Bank Guarantees, etc) businesses, which the RBI has, in its wisdom, resolutely resisted, and I really hope they continue to do so..

In addition, our stock exchange margining system and transaction settlement system worked even better than in the US in containing huge negative exposures of individual players, mainly because algorithmic trading (which can very rapidly put through transactions involving mind-boggling amounts) was not permitted in India. Now algorithmic trading is permitted, and probably accounts for about 20% of all trades today. This percentage is set to zoom, giving traders with access to this technology a huge edge, and reducing retail investors to mere peripheral price takers. Given that our markets still do not have depth comparable to the first world exchanges, a runaway rogue trading program has the potential of putting almost the entire exchange settlement and margining system at risk, leading to a possible rapid stock market crash or boom. 

I hope I am wrong.  

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When Technology Runs Ahead of Laws and Ethics

Ever since safe abortions were made possible and test-tube babies happened, our laws and ethics are being left hopelessly behind by technology.

• What can one say of the paternity/ visitation rights of a non-anonymous sperm donor who is not married to the mother?
• Or to the pregnant lady who is not allowed to abort in the third trimester, after she has come to know that her unborn child is condemned to lead an poor quality existence?
• Or to the lady who got the wrong fertilised egg implanted in her womb? Does she have an obligation to carry it to term? If she does, what right does she have in relation to the child born?
  
• Or to the Passport Officer who did not want to issue Indian passports to the children born in India showing a German lady as the mother, when the twins born of an Indian surrogate mother with sperm of the father but an anonymously donated egg?
• Or to the parents of a child whose grandfather will also be its father because of the sperm donated by the father-in-law? 

I wonder why all these people are seduced by technology into uncharted moral and legal waters when a perfectly acceptable solution called adoption exists?

 

Did you know what artificial strawberry flavouring contains?

Just read this in a 2001 Issue of the Atlantic Monthly.

A typical artificial strawberry flavor, like the kind found in a strawberry milk shake, contains the following ingredients: amyl acetate, amyl butyrate, amyl valerate, anethol, anisyl formate, benzyl acetate, benzyl isobutyrate, butyric acid, cinnamyl isobutyrate, cinnamyl valerate, cognac essential oil, diacetyl, dipropyl ketone, ethyl acetate, ethyl amyl ketone, ethyl butyrate, ethyl cinnamate, ethyl heptanoate, ethyl heptylate, ethyl lactate, ethyl methylphenylglycidate, ethyl nitrate, ethyl propionate, ethyl valerate, heliotropin, hydroxyphenyl-2-butanone (10 percent solution in alcohol), a-ionone, isobutyl anthranilate, isobutyl butyrate, lemon essential oil, maltol, 4-methylacetophenone, methyl anthranilate, methyl benzoate, methyl cinnamate, methyl heptine carbonate, methyl naphthyl ketone, methyl salicylate, mint essential oil, neroli essential oil, nerolin, neryl isobutyrate, orris butter, phenethyl alcohol, rose, rum ether, g-undecalactone, vanillin, and solvent.

Yummy, isn't it?