Scaling New Heights - Singapore Grand Prix

I have always been in awe of Racing and Formula 1 in particular. The sound of cars going vroom through the circuit pumps up the adrenaline and boosts up the morale on any given sunday evening (Raceday is usually around 4.30 PM IST). The amount of Engineering and innovation that go into these cars is tremendous. Even for someone like me who is a mechanical Engineer by chance! :-o)

I have badly wanted to watch a F1 Race. In Person. As the probability of me ending up in the US for the next few years grew last year, F1 announced that they are done with the circuit at Indianapolis. The only race in the North America. Boy! Isn't that Murphy working overtime?

Now, I feel that it was all for good. For, it paved a way to Singapore. The newest and by far the most beautiful circuit. Reason - Night racing and on the Streets. Even watching it gives you the same feel as doing a race in NFS or something!

I could only follow the race in the media and watch a few clips on Youtube. The Big picture on Boston Globe's website captures the essence of the race with a trademark photoblog. Sample this!







As for me, I'm keeping my fingers crossed to visit the Delhi Grand Prix (if it happens!) by 2010. And BTW, congrats to Alonso for going into the history books by winning this race!

The Singapore Grand Prix - The Big Picture - Boston.com

BCCI's New Selection Panel and the welcome changes...

The recent changes at the BCCI top brass is a welcome move. To be more specific, I like the changes with the New Selection Committee. Not that I don't like Vensargar or his team, the concept of being in a honorary post is something that should been done away with a long time back.

BCCI in the world and mismanagement have been inseparable for a long time now. For starters, it's income in the year 2007-08 alone crossed Rs. 1000 Crore (~215 million USD!!). Supposedly, It is also the second richest sporting body in the world only after to Bernie Ecclestone's Formula 1. Now there, we are talking about a whole sport. Not just a team or its governing body. Any organization of this size deserves to have a good "full time" administrative team instead of honorary members who are busy with their own full time schedules.

The job of the selection committee is far more demanding that it appears on the first sight. The committee consists of the chairman and a four member team. Each of them represent a zone - East, West, South, Central and North and they are responsible for hunting for new talent from their own zone. Even assuming that they are physically present for half the Ranji trophy matches of the teams in their zone, half of Team India's Matches and meet regularly before each tournament - it is one helluva job leaving you with no time for any other activities. And then there is the pressure of facing the media who never miss your bad move.

Only when you get paid to do something, there is this commitment to deliver. Well, there is definitely passion for cricket among any of these guys who take up this job. But the initial excitement wades off after a couple of poor performances from the team that you pick. Being constantly under the scanner, sometimes more than the players themselves can be more than frustating, ain't it? Add this to the bueracracy and the petty politics within the administration.

Hope that these changes bring in more professionalization into the game and its management. I'm a bit keen on this as I have seen Srikkanth voice his opinions on a wide array of things in the media in his trademark ishtyle.

All the very best to them and Lets see what he and his team have in store...!

Cricinfo - Four-year term for India's new selection panel

The New "I'm a PC Ads"

Okay. I have finally gathered all the courage in the world to write something positive about Microsoft!

Now that you know the title and this is a positive review, You can safely skip the portion below and go have a good cup of coffee.

Ha.. Ha! Just kidding. Read on! :-o)

A couple of weeks back, I had ranted about how pointless Microsoft's Ad campaign featuring Gates and Jerry Seinfeld was. It was one of those multi million dollar projects that failed miserably.

While everyone in the world was wondering what was the point with those ad's, the boys at Redmond quickly realized the problem and ditched Seinfeld as if he was at fault. Well, It turns out that it was only him who laughed all the way to the bank with 10 Million dollars for those 2 commercials (of what 5 minutes of screen presence in all?). Boy! Even Top Hollywood Heroes might earn lesser than that! Isn't it?

Anyway, Kudos to those whomsoever that made this bold decision. Finally, yeah - Finally they might have found the right way to hit the nail right on the head.

The idea is pretty straightforward. Take the 'PC Guy' who has been ridiculed all the time by the supposedly cool Mac guy for being monotonous. Now, this is one platform that has been laid out for years and years for them to exploit and boy, they have finally capitalized on it. The Mac Ad's too have become stereotype harping around the same subjects for more than a decade now and this is a welcome change!

Still, the ad's don't talk about how good / better the PC is over any competing platform. But, sure it does tell a message. Any Tom, Dick, Harry , You and me needn't be uncool just because you are using Windoze. That's true! Definitely. 

It also reaffirms one of the basic philosophies that you read in Marketing 101. K.I.S.S. - Keep it simple, Stupid!

Microsoft Windows - "I'm a PC"

Watch this space to know more about how this campaign takes shape in the future.

Saying G'bye to Summer, In style...

This Monday , The 22nd of September was the First day in Fall this year. The first day of fall is usually calculated to the Autumnal Equinox and it is different than the "Fall Season". Traditionally, the period between Memorial Day and the Labor day is the Summer and it is that time of the year where there is frenzied outdoor activity up here in the North (of the United States!).

If you have been following this blog long enough, you might remember that I moved to Boston, MA from Florida right on the first day of Summer, the day after Memorial. And boy, it was good to be in a Summer when the mercury barely touches the 80's. I had to do away with a sarcastic laugh when people around were complaining about the weather being so hot on days when the barometer read 90.

The Summer passed out quickly, but not before I had my share of touring around. Even before I could settle in the new place, I started with the typical desi type tours. First was the NYC trip on the Independence day Weekend only to come back in awe of the _fast_ moving life there and get caught in the T Station with no cabbies in sight. Not to mention the tour of the Old city of Boston, and taking a holy dip at the Holy Niagara falls. At the end, I did manage to add a few variations to this.

A day at Martha's Vineyard was a feast to my camera! Clear Skies, Deep Blue sea, Green fields and the Colored Cliffs! It was a day well spent around the Labor day. Then there was the day when we went Apple Picking! Boy, There was one too many around! Apples have long been the "elite" fruit for a long time back home and it was a cheap pleasure to pluck apples and eat it right there!

There was only one disappointment though! The lack of beaches, Quality beaches nearby. Well, anyone from Florida who is a beach bum is bound to say that, isn't it? I did manage to go to a few - the ones at Lynn, Martha's Vineyard and finally to Hampton Beach, New Hampshire.

There is still a few weeks of running around left before Winter takes, puts on its shackles making the world outside virtually unreachable. The days ahead are going to be interesting. New England has traditionally been the heaven for fall foliage and I hope to get a few great shots this time around.

The hustle and bustle of the summer might have passed. But a deep satisfying feeling remains intact.

I leave you with a couple of my best shots to come. There are loads of other pictures dumped on the computer waiting for post processing. Watch out for more of that in this space as the winter arrives!

Pic : The Gayhead Cliffs at Aquinnah, Martha's Vineyard - MA

Pic : American Falls, Niagara, NY

Android, G1, T-Mobile and more...

Today's tech news has been totally about the Android based G1 , a mobile phone based on the new open source mobile operating platform from Google. T-Mobile (in partnership with HTC and of course, Google) launched the world's first Android Phone today.

Thought the rumor mills have been working overtime for more than a year, the launch that happened today morning in NYC didn't even live up to half the expectations. That is compared to all the hoopla that has been surrounding the launch of the iPhone and the iPhone 3G.

Though the phone is attractively priced at 179 bucks, there are quite a few short comings of a top-notch phone. It is closed sim with T-Mobile and calls for a contract with them. I'm already with the carrier, so it remains to be seen what is the package that they are offering me for the switch. There have been a couple of powerful clients for Maps, GTalk and YouTube combined with ChromeLite - the mobile version of the Google Chrome browser that launched with great fanfare a couple of weeks ago.

Although the Google techies carefully avoided questions on what are the special offerings from the GApplications that are not on the iPhone, I'm curious. The main reason for this being open source and the powerful AppStore that they are coming up with. One of the major shortcomings that has been discussed vastly is the absense of Bluetooth and Camera Flash. On the positive side, it offers a full "Qwerty" keyboard in addition to the touch screen.

As of now, it is wait and watch until all the details unfold.

On a sidenote, here is the WTF article of the day from none other than CNN-IBN.



LOL! Wonder what is the state of affairs when such is the quality of the tech news from a supposedly top-notch news channel!!

The Microsoft Seinfeld Ad Campaign

The Microsoft Seinfeld Ad campaign has been a total disaster before it could kick off. This is what happens when you want to make ads just for the heck of it.

Apparently, these ad's are Microsoft's answer to the ubiquitous Apple's (Mac Guy - PC Guy Ad) Campaign over the years which has been a roaring success giving a lot of mileage for Apple. Well, at least, it gave a lot of satisfaction of watching M$ being the butt of everything. For starters, some more time on this blog will take you to a lot of Windoze bashing..!

I had high hopes for this campaign. I was pretty interested as they are on a pretty big budget - 300 million bucks to be precise. It had some of the big names from the industry. Jerry Seinfeld, Michel Gondry (Remember Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind?) and of course, Bill Gates, post retirement.

The first one in the series was pretty pointless and was a real turn off for everyone who was expecting at least something out of it. It had no real theme or a message or whatsoever that I could comprehend. Just in case you had missed it out (Believe me, you didn't miss much :-D), here it the first part.



Venturebeat today links to an uncut version of the second part of the campaign and it is pretty much as pointless as the first one. It is a four and a half minute version and the theme is Microsoft's (?) ability for "Perpetual Connecting"!! And I must say that it clearly ain't taking the campaign and image of the company any where.





zdnet reports quoting a spokesperson from Windows that Very shortly, they will move into another phase of the campaign that will be about Windows. You better do that sooner than later. Else, even the people like us, who are eager to watch the ad even for fun won't look forward to it.

Swype - The Next Generation of Input

Okay, a lot of hoopla is happening in the internet around Swype after its demo at Techcrunch 50. Just in case you haven’t heard about it, here is all the information that you need to know about it.

Swpe is the next step forward in inputting data into any computing platform and apparently is as fast as a standard, traditional keyboard. i.e., you can hit as high as 50 wpm with a lot less effort that you put into a standard qwerty keyboard. The system is intelligent and has an excellent error handling mechanism. So the paradox is you needn’t to accurate and yet be fast as the system corrects itself. Well, most of the time.

It is a brainchild of Cliff Kushler, the guy behind T9 predictive input for Mobile phones. I can’t even imagine life without T9 on any cell phone. And I believe that Swype will have even more penetration and will become a standard on most devices in the future. I still don’t own a PDA or a Tablet PC. Yet, this thing is brilliant enough to keep my fingers crossed.

If you have been only seeing that blurred video where TC judges tryout the product, here is a better one for you. There is one more on the Swype Website too.

Update: There is a Pre-Recorded Stream of Kushler's demo at TC 50's Website.