Valley Chai » 1

Amazon’s Moat

spandana — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 16:02:40 +0000

Amazon’s key strength is in it’s supply chain and distribution centers, delivering a vast array of long-tail products – this is how they started with books, and how they thrive with general merchandise today. Of course, excellent customer service.

So it makes sense they protect this strength from alternatives or duplication.

so taking Kiva off market is another way to ensure no competitor can best them in running better distribution centers, or, in the case of customer care, Zappos. The formula is clear – acquire any promising technology, and either embrase it or stub it out. but dont let it grow unchecked!

Kahaani is an Unusual Suspect

spandana — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 18:50:49 +0000

It’s one of the best movies i have seen in recent times, go watch it.

For what starts looking like a typical hindi movie with pity-inducing melodrama, it ends on a note that stuns even the most sophisticated indian movie goer. Not that we haven’t seen such films from hollywood before, but because a hindi movie was even made with this kind of a story line.

It’s awful to reveal how it ends, but it’s notable about how it runs.

The story goes like this: a lady turns up in Kolkata, fully pregnant with a man that disappeared while on an IT assignment to Kolkata, determined to find out what happened to him. At this point, this movie has all the hallmarks of woman-against the wold feel to it – replete with situational inconsistencies, character development flaws, even glaring holes in the logic of the story. Here it goes again i wondered. Another half-hearted attempt at a good movie.

As she follows an unraveling trail of feeble leads, her husband gets linked to terrorist attacks a few years earlier, and higher officials of the intelligence establishment get involved. At this point, it leading us to believe this is turning out to be a copy cat of something like Bourne Ultimatum, except the dashing hero replaced with a front woman to appease the ‘sentiment’ requirement for the indian moviegoer.

Just when you’d think the story will end with a happy reunion with her tormented husband, you’ll notice a third turn, albiet borrowed from hollywood. I was stunned at the audacity of introducing such sophisticated twist to indian audience, but the deftness with which it was delivered to the average indian movie goer. It has plenty of borrowed storytelling techniques – camera work borrowed from NYPD Blue, a well-used cultural texture for reliefs in story telling and an allegory to slam home the point.

While hindi directors have been successul in capturing the sprit of sophisticated youth, and southern directors mastered the art of the check-your-brain-at-the-door ‘entertainers’, quietly, bengali and kerala directors have mastered the art of telling sophisticated stories. I was stunned by Rain Coat, and I am amazed at Kahaani.

VoIP Multiplexing with Synchronized Actions

spandana — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 20:33:14 +0000

A grandmotherly voice introduced herself over a very unwelcome cold call over my Sunday morning. It’s hard to hang up on her, especially when she insisted that she wasn’t calling to sell me anything. She went on to walk me patiently through a series of survey questions, about a local measure on the ballet for an upcoming election.

How analog. The thought lingered in my mind as I chaperoned my kids through the San Jose Tech Museum later that afternoon. She was reading out a script on her computer screen, creating analog sound signals, which were then encoded and transmitted to my iPhone over a VoIP call, and my responses traversing in the reverse order.

How digital to analog to digital.

VoIP started out being the cost-efficient alternative, if not a grass-roots revolution against, a very overpriced telecom tariff structures. Almost a decade after initial widespread consumer use, the VoIP industry as a whole didn’t even scratch the surface of what’s possible when voice travels over IP.

Look at what else travels over IP – web pages, audio and video, email, and not to mention vast amounts of business data. Businesses find customers; deliver their products; and converse with their community, all done over IP.

It’s time for VoIP to grow beyond the niche of cost-efficient transmission medium for voice. How about PBX systems integrating with call center processes, rather than simply routing calls to agents. How about VoIP routers synchronizing voice and data delivery? Could a voice call from a smartphone transform seamlessly into an assisted product browsing experience? Or even a purchase transaction?

Returning to the lady taking the survey – she could’ve been focusing more on getting me to agree to take the survey, rather than the tedium of reading from her screen and writing down my responses. The survey questions could be presented nicely on the screen of my mobile phone, where I could tap my answers, while she focuses on keeping up my interest levels in the process. Or may be providing collateral information about the questions as web links. She could be ending the call with a small token of appreciation – may be my favorite song downloaded directly to my smartphone.

It’s the future, and it’s possible now.

A prelude to Apple TV?

spandana — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 05:50:19 +0000

Apple’s iOS5 features all point to preparing the operating system for TV. look at some of them -

PC-Free : TV needs to work out of the box, right?
Voice : Wouldn’t Jobs have wanted to get rid of the remote? Wouldn’t you?
Newsstand : how close is it to “Channel lineup”
Mirroring : wouldn’t be awesome to take the entertainment with you where ever you go?
Twitter : isn’t it clear by now, that twitter use follows broadcast/news media?

iOS is already ready for high-def video, streaming media, etc.

I am anticipating a few more rev’s of iOS5 before it is ready for Apple’s TV’s – to build out features like multiple-channel media streaming, local buffering, actions and interactive content overlaid on video streams, and multi-device media quality optimization – a ton of these are perfect for implementation on iCloud.

and may be.. a NFLX acquisition.

Quora Integration w/ Google

spandana — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 04:01:03 +0000

spotted in the wild.., driving social graph through search results

Beauty and Simplicity of the Least Common Denominator

spandana — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 16:31:28 +0000

there were two lines, both equally long, but nicely separated out into the ‘tamil’ line and the ‘telugu’ queues. outside the theater in milpitas that no regular desi would otherwise knew existed behind a ‘big lots’ store, which was probably showing a movie to a crowd that is not a pack of rats, was a bustle and a parking lot jam like no other.

not since i drove 2 hours from sacramento to fermont to watch ‘hum aap ke hein kaun’ in 1995, was watching a movie ‘an event’. mostly guys, but occasional momma’s, maami’s and grandmommas sticking it out through the night for a 11:45 showing of enthiran and robot. me and wife, i guess, could claim to still have caught the show on the day of it’s release : yeah it’s something you tell your grandkids.

and it’s special. a rajni movie demands respect – and a big realization that it’s OK to appreciate something just because people love it.

and people love the man because he portrays the aspirational elements of his audience with unabashed earthiness to the presentation. an ugly man pimping up with leather-and-shades. a vulnerable man with confidence that knows no boundaries. an auto-rikshaw driver that salutes no one. one that can’t dance for nuts, romancing to a gorgeous lady. bloke that travels to machu-pichu. dark/bald man in full youthful glory. which one of us doesn’t fit one of those buckets?

people don’t have any illusion of the man that’s different from the on-screen-mega-man. and that’s why over-the-top works! goes down smooth, without the need to for the audience to expend the mental energy of parsing the subtleties. there is something about the least common denominator that is simple and beautiful.