Customer Service...What's that?

I recently replaced my sneakers with a top of the line pair of running shoes from Reebok that cost me 8000 rupees. I started using it on my daily run and on the first day, noticed a pain in my left leg. I attributed it to running-in difficulty and thought it would go away after a couple of days. But it only got worse on the second day. When I inspected it closely, I found that the seam where the flap under the lace was joined to the shoe was not proper in the left shoe and was pressing onto my foot causing the pain. So, I took it to the shop where they acknowledged the problem and said that they would replace it in a day or two. So far so good.

I gave them an extra day and went three days later, expecting to pick up the replacement. They said that the approval for the claim had still not come and may take a few days more. I blew my top and told them that if it wasn’t done the next day, I will place a hold on the payment through my credit card company. That seemed to help matters, as I got a call the next day stating that the claim was approved. But, when I went there, I was told that they did not have another piece in stock. I gave them another extra day before I went back. They had got the shoe but they found a similar problem in it. I had enough and demanded my money back, but there was no refund. I had shortlisted a second pair initially, but even that was not available in my size. Finally, I settled for another model that cost me 6500 rupees. Wherein, I was told that they could not return the balance and I would need to purchase something. I finally ended up with a couple of t-shirts that I didn’t really need and paid an extra 400 rupees to those idiots.

I was trying to think of how the experience would have been in countries where the customer is truly king:

• I would have been able to return it anytime without any reason (defective or not)
• I would have been given a replacement on the spot or my money back
• They would have paid me the difference in cost and not forced me to buy something else

- To add insult to injury, I would have paid less than half the cost. Yes, the same shoe is available for 70-80$ in the US through amazon.com

Change of gears - running replaces cycling

I’ve made a lot of really bad decisions in 2009, but the one that hurts the most is the decision to sell my Trek 3700 bicycle and replace it with the Merida 40V. At the time, I had intended to buy a hybrid, but due to the lack of choice in the market, I ended up buying another MTB. For sure, the Merida is a superior cycle, with far better components. But, four months later, I have come to the sad realization that the Trek was a far better bike for me. Where the Trek fitted me like a glove, the Merida has continuously given me grief. The things that I dislike are

Seat: the stock seat is just too firm and far too narrow. I was never able to get into a comfortable position on the bike. I replaced it with a seat from the Cannondale quick 5 which is far more suited

- Geometry: This is far harder to fix. The Merida has a slightly stretched riding posture compared to the Trek. As a result, I either have to lower the seat or move it forward to get a comfortable position for my arms. But, this results in the extra load getting transferred to my legs. A solution that has been suggested is to get a shorter stem to reduce the reach.

As a result of this, long rides have become painful both during and after the ride. So much so, that it has been a long time since I have gone on a long ride and most of my rides have been restricted to short 20-30 km ones. Add to this, my Chennai visits in Sep-Oct and the fact that since Mukund was born, I’ve had to shift my exercise routine to a little later in the morning(by which time the traffic is too heavy to cycle), the net result is that my cycle mileage has gone down from 400 km to less than 100 km a month.

But, I am far too hooked on the exercise bug and the space vacated by cycling has been replaced with cycling. I’ve gradually increased my running distance from almost nil to around 50 km a month in Oct/Nov and should cross a 100 km in December. And I plan to keep it there till the cycling bug returns…

Fiesta is here

I finally took delivery of my new Ford Fiesta 1.6SXI last Saturday. It has been a long journey that started way back in 2004 when having come back from Australia, Vidya and I were decided on a car. In those days, we were staying in Mangalore and our options were a little limited due to the limited number of dealerships. Having owned the original Santro, I was set on buying a C segment car and had almost finalized on the Baleno which had just been relaunched. Somehow, I allowed myself to be talked out of it by one of my “friends” who convinced me that the cost of ownership and service would be too high. We finally ended up buying a Santro Xing. I have no complaints with the Santro, but whenever we go on a highway trip, I think wistfully about how much better it would have been in a Baleno.

Anyway, cut forward a few years. In that time, a lot has changed. With Mukund's arrival, we feel the need for a larger car, especially for outstation trips. I wasn’t too particular about it being a sedan or large hatch. So, I set about looking for various options in the 6-8l bracket. The cars I shortlisted were

1.Hyundai i20

2.Fiat Grande Punto

3.Honda City

4.Maruti SX4

The first one to be eliminated was the City. It was way outside my budget. I didn’t even want to take a test drive, because I know that none of the other cars would match up in terms of performance or refinement and I would always be thinking of what I was missing by not buying the City. Maybe at some other time, but right now the big H was out of reach.

I test drove the i20 twice. I loved its looks and the general interior quality. But the power and performance of the 1.2 l engine was disappointing. With 3 of us on board, it struggled with the acceleration. This was addressed to some extent with the diesel, but I wanted a petrol engine, as the premium for a diesel engine is not funny. They do have a 1.4l petrol version, but it only comes with the automatic transmission. So, the i20 was out as well.

Next up was the Grande Punto. I had a lot of expectations from this car. When I saw it in person, it was a disappointment. The interior space was limited and I felt that the quality of the interiors was not up to the mark. I test drove it right after launch, so the time in it was limited, but even in a brief drive, it made a very good impression. But, the quality and lack of space was a definite deal-killer. While at the Fiat-Tata showroom, I briefly looked at the Linea, but having read enough reports on how the 1.4 petrol was underpowered, I decided to hold on for the 1.6 launch.

The final car that I test drove was the SX4. I was extremely happy with the car, it looked good, handled well, had adequate power, good ground clearance etc. Then I learnt that a facelift was imminent and decided to wait it out.

I’d left out a few cars from my list for a number of reasons

Indica Vista: space inside was massive, but boot was too small, plus there was no version with airbags. I wasn't very happy with the interior quality as well

Swift Zxi: never liked the looks of the car

Aveo: one of my favourite cars lookswise, but again airbags were not available.

Fiesta: felt that it was a little too small, not much of an upgrade space wise from Santro.

So, there I was in September, without a car and in waiting mode. Waiting for the new SX4 to be launched. Then I met a friend of my wife, who’d come over with his family. I knew that he had bought a petrol Fiesta a couple of months back and was curious to find out the thinking behind his decision. I went down to have a dekko at his car. The cabin did look small, but seemed big enough for my needs. I then took the car for a small drive and was bowled over by its power (though I couldn’t really test it out as it was in the running in period) as well as its poise on the road (or what remains of it in HSR Layout). Then came the clincher, he said that as employees of a Ford supplier, he and my wife were eligible for special supplier pricing, which was almost 70K less than the regular price.

That piqued my interest and I decided to explore more. I started out naturally at my favourite timewaster automobile site team-bhp and found a world of really passionate enthusiasts who were totally in love with the Fiesta. Satisfied, I called Lathangi Motors for a test drive. I took a 15 km drive through the ORR and some of the service roads and came back totally impressed. This was followed by another round of test drive, this time with Vidya and Nisha. Ultimately, everyone was onboard that it was a good buy.

But there was still the decision on whether to go with this or wait for the SX4 to be launched and then decide. I thought about it a little bit and felt that it was just a case of putting off the decision. They were not comparable pricewise (SX4 is 8.6L OTR, I was getting Fiesta SXI for 7.5L OTR), plus SX4 would likely be even more expensive when it is relaunched. So, the Fiesta it was, a decision made not just with the heart but with the head as well.

What I liked about the car

- Looks (some may say that Fiesta looks dated, but it has a classic feel to it, especially side on, it looks very proportionate unlike other cars in its segment

- Engine power

- Ride, felt really composed over the bumpy HSR roads

- Handling

- Interiors on the SXI, those leather seats are awesome

- Loaded with airbags, ABS, chrome everything

Things that could be better

- ICE, having got used to USB/Bluetooth on my current setup, it is like going 2 years into the past. Still the sound quality is good

- Glove box space felt a little small, but I’ll know only after sustained use

- No dead pedal

Totally dissatisfied with

- Indicators, why they are on the left in a made-for-India car is beyond me

- Chrome side view mirrors (ugh)

I booked the car on Oct 12, expecting to get delivery in 2 weeks time. It was a tough choice on the colour, the white (taxi), silver (already had a silver Santro), platinum (the most common colour), morello (purplish tinge)today, red (too bright) and black (tough to maintain) were eliminated and I went for the sea grey having never seen a car in the colour. The delivery took a little longer than expected and when it finally arrived, I wasn't all that thrilled with the colour, somehow it seemed a little lighter than I expected. But I wasn't prepared to wait for another month and gave the go-ahead to register it.

We picked it up on Saturday evening, did a small pooja at the Anjaneyar kovil near our house and brought it back. Unfortunately, it was raining throughout and the car got a little messy, so I couldn't take the photos that I had planned on Sunday. That will have to wait for the cleanup this week.

Missing App Store on iphone

I recently encountered a problem on my ipod touch where the App Store was completely missing from the device. In addition, when I plugged in the touch to my computer, the Application tab was rendered read-only. This meant that I was not able to add any new applications or rearrange the icons through iTunes. A google search did not offer much advice except to restore the device to factory settings. But that would mean that all data would be lost and have to be retransferred, which could take a long time on my 32 Gig touch.

I set out to explore a little more and I found a suggestion on the Apple support forums that it could be related to Restrictions. So, I set out to explore that under Settings->General->Restrictions and voila, I found that the setting for Installing Applications was Off. A quick change to On and the App Store icon came right back on.

Back to Bangalore...at last

I made my first trip to Chennai for the Satyam transition project on 1-Sep. Between then and today, I have travelled back and forth 6 times spending almost 60% of the time there. In hindsight, a lot of our preparation was overkill as the cutover went through extremely well. But as I am discovering, that is how my new boss operates, he wants to sure all the i's are dotted and t's are crossed well in advance and goes over it twice to make sure!!!

I was expecting to work out of our Mount Road office, but it was not to be. To ensure proximity to the Satyam office, we had taken an office on Old Mahabalipuram Road (aka Rajiv Gandhi Salai : why do we insist on naming everything after that blasted family) near Thoraipakkam. Despite the development that has taken place over the last 5 years, there is a big difference between that and the rest of the city especially when it comes to decent hotels and restaurants. Since we were in office till 10pm almost every day, it wasn't so bad. But once the cutover was complete, we were done at 6pm and that's when I felt isolated on OMR road.

At home, Mukund has been growing a lot and progressing enormously in his development. He now smiles all the time, especially when he is around his Nisha-akka. He has outgrown the batchtub we had bought for him, so we had to go and buy a replacement one today. Nisha is doing well in school, she and the 1-5 standard kids are putting up a grand show next week. She has not revealed much as it is meant to be a "surprise" for the parents.

My new Ford Fiesta is coming tomorrow. I went for a grey colour one, as none of the other colours appealed much to me. I wasn't very impressed with the grey, but since I had booked it, and a change would have taken another month, I had to go ahead. I've still not decided what to do with the Santro. I could sell it or employ a driver and use it for Vidya to go to the office. I'll decide in a month or so.

The other thing that I am really looking forward to is cycling and jogging, which have suffered greatly over the past 2 months. A lack of exercise and unhealthy diet have sent my weight soaring over the big eighty, have to work hard to bring it down to 77-78 before the month end!!!

Thoughts on Diwali

Ah, Diwali, the time when the PC class gangs up to complain about child labour, pollution etc. I am getting tired to hearing the same bull repeated year after year. Consider the arguments against the festival

Child labour in Sivakasi: I am no expert and don't know the current situation. This has been highlighted a lot over the years and I have seen reports of action being taken against the culprits. Child labour, if it still exists, is a symptom, not the cause. The children work because their parents are too poor to continue to send them to school. The solution is to lift the families out of poverty AND educate them about the importance of keeping their kids in school. Accomplish that and watch the problem go away, if not the people will just send their children to work elsewhere.

Noise/atmospheric pollution: This argument has more merit as the increase in the SPM count and other gases cause problems to those having respiratory issues. The other constituent that suffers the most are the animals that are mortally scared of the loud noise. Some steps have been taken in this direction by banning really loud crackers. I've also seen a gradual shift towards the visual aspect of fireworks over the years.

There are quite a few positive aspects of Diwali

Awareness of tradition: Diwali is one of the fun ways to get children to understand about Indian culture and tradition

Boost to the economy: The spending that happens during Diwali may seem vulgar to the PC masses. But, it is this kind of spending that stimulates the economy and creates jobs for the poorer classes.

Let's put this bullcrap aside and celebrate Diwali in the traditional way. Happy Diwali everyone.

Goodbye Kimi?

After months of speculation, the news is finally out. Fernando Alonso is moving to Ferrari for on a 3 year contract. I am excited as I see Alonso cast in the same mould as Schumacher. Maybe, he is not as complete or as fast as Schumi, but he will get the maximum out of the car every single weekend. Kimi, on the other hand, has never been as consistent, there are days where it seems like he is on a different planet and days where he never shows up on the track.

There is a lot of speculation that he is going to Mclaren. I hope that is true, for losing him would be a big loss to F1.

I don't know what makes me support a particular driver. There are examples like Prost, Schumacher, Kimi, Heidfeld who I liked from day 1 and have looked to support them through their career. I think it is a combination of their performance with reports in the media that make me form an opinion about an individual. There have been only two cases where I changed my opinion, the first was Senna, who I hated initially but became a big fan of later on. The other is Alonso, who has really won over me over the past two years.

Evolution of PC

I was reading yet another article on the relative merits of Mac vs PC. There were many comments that made the point that Macs lost a lot longer than PCs. That got me thinking of whether that was really the case. How long had my PC’s lasted? I realized that I didn’t really know and set out on a trip down memory lane to catalogue the various computers that me and my family have owned.

Siva PC: This was bought by my father in the 80s as an office computer. It cost almost 60,000 rupees (in 80’s money). I think it had a 8086 processor, 640KB of RAM, a 20 MB hard disk and a green screen monitor. Needless to say, it only ran DOS and software like Lotus 1-2-3, Wordstar etc. I don’t think we got too much of usage out of it while my father’s factory was operational, except for some financial accounting. After we closed the factory, we brought the computer home and I remember playing around with it for a few years before it died a natural death.

- Assembled PC #1: The next computer I bought was an assembled PC in 1996. I boasted a 100 Mhz Pentium processor, a massive 4 MB of RAM, a 1 GB hard disk, CD-ROM and a colour monitor. It cost me almost 40,000 rupees back then. I used it till around 2000 when I upgraded to Assembled PC #2. I don’t remember what I did with it, most likely we just gave it away.

- Computer in US : When I went onsite for the second time in late 1996, I bought a computer at Fry’s electronics. It was a slightly more powerful version of the one I had at home with a 133 Mhz processor. I sold it to my roommate when I returned for good. That was also the trip where I bought a 16 MB RAM stick for my PC in India for an unworldly price of 350 dollars.

As Built PC #1: In 2000, it was finally time to upgrade my PC and Vidya and I decided to build a PC together. I had bought a CPU and hard disk from the US and we went to SP Road to buy the remaining parts. We ended up with a Celeron 667, 128 MB of SDRAM (which I later upgraded to 384 MB), a 4.3 GB hard drive and a CDROM (later upgraded to a CD-writer). We retained the 15 inch monitor from the PC which we later upgraded to a second hand 17 inch in 2003. We used this PC till the end of 2004, but when we came back to Bangalore, we stopped using it. I used some of the parts (memory, hard drive) on PC#3, and to my surprise, managed to sell the remaining parts in 2006 for around 1000 rupees.

- Australia PC: When we went to Australia in 2002, we initially picked up a cheap second hand computer, a Pentium 2 model. A few months later, when it seemed like Vidya’s work from home plan would fructify, we invested in a proper model, a Pentium 3 – 700 Mhz monster with 512 MB of RAM, 20 GB hard disk, 17 inch monitor etc for 700 australian dollars. When we returned back to India in 2003, we sold it to my friend Venky.

- PC Build #2: After returning back to India in 2003, we moved to Mangalore. In Bangalore, my mother was left without a PC. In 2004, I built the third computer. Unlike the previous computer where I salvaged a lot of parts, this was a complete unit, with a Athlon XP 2000+, 512 MB of RAM, 40 GB hard disk, DVD drive and a 17 inch Samsung monitor. This computer survives till this day, though in a very different form. The guts of the machine (MB+CPU, RAM, HDD) are now in my father-in-law’s machine at Chennai.I’ve upgraded those to a 2.66 GHz Core2Duo E6700 with 2 GB of RAM and 570 GB of hard disk space. The monitor has been exchanged for a 19 inch Viewsonic LCD. The case, keyboard, mouse, speakers and UPS remain functional a full 5 years later. The OS has also evolved, I initially used a copy of Windows 2000, switched to a legal OEM copy of Windows XP in 2006 and when I upgraded the CPU in late 2007, bought a full version of Windows Vista Home Premium.

- Laptop #1: I’ve never been a fan of laptops, despite using a laptop as my primary work machine since 2002. In my view, they were slow and expensive. I finally bit the bullet in 2007 and bought a HP dv6516 tx as a birthday present for Vidya. It cost almost 60000 rupees and had a 1.5 GHz Core2Duo processor, 2 GB of RAM, 160 GB hard drive, 15.4 inch screen and a DVD drive. It came with Windows Vista Home Premium. Except for some reliability with wireless networking, it has performed flawlessly over the past 2 years. I upgraded the machine to the RC version of Windows 7 and intend to upgrade to the full version in October. At the same time, I'll probably upgrade the hard drive to a 500 GB one.

- The Future: Both of my computers are fast enough for anything that I throw at them, whether it is browsing or playing games or encoding movies (OK, the laptop is not, but I would not ever transcode a movie on a laptop when a desktop is available as an option). Another big change is the rise of portable computing through devices like the iphone and Nokia internet tablet. As they evolve, they make the case for a full sized desktop or laptop that much less compelling. So, I don’t see myself upgrading my current setup anytime soon, unless something breaks.

Looking back, I see that pretty much every computer has lasted me atleast 3-4 years, so much for PC’s being unreliable. I’ve also had a lot of good luck with components, very few of them have failed on me. Just listing them down has shown how much progress the PC industry has made in terms of speed and specifications. I remember encoding mp3 in 1997, it used to run at 1/3 speed (i.e. over 15 minutes for a 5 minute song). My current computer can transcode video at 5x speed (120 fps for H.264 compression).

YSR Chopper crash

There is such a big fuss being made about the reason behind the chopper crash that killed the Andhra CM, YS Rajashekar Reddy with calls to book all those who have not done their job properly. Is it really news that our government servants are incompetent and least interested in their jobs? Every single day, there are umpteen deaths of common people caused by some babu who decided to take it easy on the job. Like the RTO inspector who takes bribes and allows people without basic driving skills to become killing machines on the road. Or the PWD engineer who screws up our pipelines that mix sewage with our water supply. Why is there no outrage at that? Why are there no demands to chop their heads off?

It isn’t nice to speak ill of the dead, but the reality is that YSR has reaped the fruits of what he has sown. It is he and others of his ilk that have tolerated (and even encouraged) incompetence and substandard delivery of services to the public. Why should we be surprised that he has paid the ultimate price for that?

Another post on ethics in Indian IT

We’re currently transitioning some work from a subcontractor back into our company. Through the transition, it is disturbing to see some of the lack of ethics that are being displayed by people at various levels in the subcontracting company. Some specific examples are

- People accepting our offers in writing and use that as a negotiating tool with a third company. Once they get a job, they turn down the offer throwing our entire planning out of gear

- - People in the higher management of the subcontracting company trying to convince people who have accepted our offers to reject them by offering onsite opportunities and other perks. While this is not a violation of the contract, it clearly goes against the spirit of the contract

The first case is not very surprising because the Indian IT professional’s lack of ethics and pursuit of Mammon is well known. But, it is very frustrating to see Indian IT companies trip each other in this manner. It also causes a project that has been planned over many months to suddenly shift into a constant fire-fighting mode.

A fallout of the situation is that I have to shuttle between Bangalore and Chennai to take control of the transition. I will be getting very familiar with Indian railways over the next few weeks.

Rebooting blogging

It has been a while since I updated the blog. I would blame it on Twitter and Facebook, which encourage a quick blast of words at the cost of a longer post that needs to be thought through. I've resolved to be a little more regular from now on.

To start off, a few snippets from the last couple of weeks. Of course, it was a huge moment in our lives with the arrival of a baby boy on August 13th. It happened on Gokulashtami day, so we have decided to name him Mukund, one of the names of Lord Krishna. I believe it also means One who bestows/gives Moksha/Nirvana.

Nisha was hugely excited by the event. Though she had been wanting a baby sister, it all changed once she saw her brother. Her happiness has been tinged by disappointment, she had made grand plans to call all her friends and show off her baby brother, but we have tried to avoid too much of contact in light of the swine flu scare. She'll get over it, kids have a way of dealing with these disappointments and focussing on positives.

We were a little disappointed with Divakar hospital. Firstly, we got a room facing the main road that had traffic through the day and night. Our bad luck, the hospital was full, so we could not even get a change of room. They also had no catering facilities. Typically, hospitals provide nutritious, dietician approved meals for the patient, but here, we were forced to bring everything from home. There was also the issue of differing charges, we got a bill for 40K, but my friend Krishna got a bill for 85K for similar treatment. The main thing was the medical staff and attention was good.

We came home on 17th Aug and since then it has been an endless cycle of nappy changing and disturbed sleep. But it is all worthwhile when you see Mukund reacting to his environment.

What real estate slump?

I have been calling various real estate developers and private sellers over the past few days to get an idea of the real estate market. Here are some of the quotations that I got

Mantri Espana : A super-duper-ultra-luxurious-out-of-this-world-exclusive apartment complex off the ORR with 5 swimming pools, 9 hole mini golf and flats ranging from 2600 to 100000 sq ft. The prices start at 1.2 crores. I said thank you very much and left.

Mantri Flora: At the junction of ORR and Sarjapur Road, 3 bhk apartments for second sale at around 75 lakhs for 1700 sq ft. This works out to over 4000 per sq ft

Sobha : They had an ad for a 3 bhk @ 50 lakhs. This is for their project on Kanakpura Road. For their projects in this part of town, they have a super luxury project starting at over 1.2 cr. Their luxury projects are “only” 77 lakhs for a 3 BHK

Ozone Evergreens@Haralur Road: Touted as the first “affordable” housing complex in Bangalore, this has a 900 sq ft 2 BHK for 28 lakhs all inclusive. This works out to around 3000 per sq ft. Unbelievably, as the sales woman told me, these don’t feature a balcony as they are “affordable housing”.

SJR Eastwood@Haralur Road: A person was selling a 40x80 plot @2800 per sq feet.

Ferns Habitat@ORR: A 2800 sqft plot quoting at 3300 per sq feet

Lakedew Residency@Haralur Road: A 1500 sqft plot quoting at 2600 per sq ft

I didn't pursue any of these opportunities. If these are the prices post the real estate slump, I am stunned.

Is Indian IT too insecure

Every time we hear Obama's political rhetoric, there is an outcry against the so-called "protectionism" by Nasscom. Frankly, this is making them seem like crybaby's. 

Obama is a politician. Whether in India or US, a politician's primary focus is his constituents and his comments are geared towards them. Right now, the US is hurting with massive job losses, and as their elected leader, it is his duty to address that.

Indian companies too have their own set of favourable circumstances vis a vis American firms, they pay almost no tax on their profits due to the STPI scheme. They have a huge wage advantage, as most of their employees are in India. If these are not sufficicient for them to compete and thrive, then they deserve to fail. after all this is the Capitalism that they so praise in action.

As for Nasscom, what happens to their grand pronouncements on the strength of Indian IT (1 million + employees, 60 Billion revenues)? Surely, an industry of this size should be able to innovate to handle any bouncers of this nature? Or deep within their hearts, do they know that Indian IT is nothing but a bunch of low skilled code coolies whose only advantage is the cost and the minute you take that away, the entire thing will unravel?

Taking Internet video to the TV

Internet video has really hit the mainstream in the last couple of years. Whether it is the regular “legal” avenues like Youtube (www.youtube.com) or P2P networks like bittorrent, there is a vast plethora of content to be found. The challenge has always been on how to bring it into the living room, as most people are not that comfortable watching long form video on their computers. They would much rather sit on their sofas or lie on their beds to watch the latest blockbuster.

Over the years, a lot of effort has gone in to solve this “last-metre” problem. A few notable attempts at solving this are

Apple TV : is a small book sized device that connects to your TV. It can also connect to your network and download movies from your Itunes library on your computer. It provides the ability to purchase movies and TV shows from the Itunes store. As with all Apple products, the process works flawlessly. The catch as always is in the lack of flexibility. It can only play the type of content that Apple allows, which limits its utility. The vast majority of Internet video is encoded in the AVI/XVID format which the Apple TV cannot play. In addition, since the Apple TV lacks a DVD drive, you will need a separate DVD player. The Apple TV is also expensive at over 200 dollars, and is not available in India.

Game Consoles (PS3/XBOX 360) : In addition to being awesome game consoles, both the PS3 and XBOX 360 can also serve as media players. They can play quite a range of video files including most of the common formats found on the Internet. In addition, they have their own video stores where you can pay and download movies and TV shows. If you’re a gamer and already have these consoles, this is the way to go, especially as you get the ability to play games and watch DVD’s on the same device (in the case of PS3, you also get a Blueray drive). However, they are limited in their ability to browse sites like youtube.

Media center extenders: A number of companies (Linksys, D-Link) have launched media center extender products. These connect to your home network (wired or wireless) and can play the video files stored on your computer. Typically this requires some software to be installed on your computer, though Vista has the media sharing feature built in. These have received mixed reviews, the most common complaint is the slow response time.

WD TV: This is a product that was launched in late 2008 and has got very positive reviews. It works like a media center extender without the network capability. You copy the video files to a USB device (pen drive or hard disk) and plug it into the device. The device will scan and play back the file. This approach removes the weakest link of the media center extenders which is the network. The other reason why this has been very successful is the support for virtually every kind of video file (except the copy-protected ones). The downside is that you need to buy an additional USB device and have to spend the effort to copy the files that you want to watch to the device. So, it is not that great for impulse viewing. The lack of any kind of network access is also a negative, as you cannot watch video from any of the online sites like youtube.

Despite all these choices, the best option still remains the Personal Computer. It provides the widest compatibility and support, playing back virtually every form of media. The challenge is to bring the personal computer to the TV and remove the parts that don’t fit in the living room space. Microsoft has done a lot of work on their Media Center software, to the point where the computer can be controlled using just the remote, but until now the hardware has lagged. The average desktop PC is too clunky and noisy to fit in the living room. However, many companies are introducing Home Theater PC’s (HTPC), which are very sleek and do not look out of place in the living room.

The human interface challenge still remains. Though the Media Centre functions can be controlled with a remote, there will still be occasions where you will need to go back to a keyboard and mouse. Having a regular keyboard + mouse in the living room is a no-no for most people. Logitech has the excellent diNovo, but it is an extremely expensive solution. A more elegant solution may be a software based, running on a smartphone that connects to the PC using Bluetooth. 

The company that can package all of this together into an integrated solution can make a lot of money. I’ve seen some movement towards this by companies like Acer (Acer Revo) and Asus (EEE Box)

This has been an area of much interest for me, mainly because my TV viewing mostly consists of downloaded TV shows (though these are available on some channels, they are aired much later and not in a widescreen ratio). I’ve hesitated in adopting any of the solutions because the area is very immature and the products are not available in India. I do employ a variant of the PC solution, sometimes connecting my laptop to the TV via HDMI. I also use a program called BlueMaemo on my N800 to control the laptop remotely. It’s not the most elegant solution but works for now.

Why I will vote for the BJP

Here are 3 reasons why I will vote for the BJP in this coming election

1. Security: It is amazing how the media has pushed the 26/11 attacks to the background. But, let that not distract you, the past 5 years have seen a huge number of terrorist attacks on the population of India. Mumbai was the grand finale, but we had Delhi, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Bangalore, the list goes on. By taking a soft stand on the security issue, the UPA government has failed in its duty to protect the common man. It is a matter of chance whether you will be a victim of the next attack. Everyone knows the root of the issue, but the BJP seems to be the only party willing to tackle it head on. Is that not reason enough?

2. Economic reforms: There is no debate required on whether reforms are good or not, the evidence of the past 20 years is clear enough. The UPA government lucked out by being in power during a period of unprecedented boom, but did very little to contribute to it. On the contrary, it did all it could to derail the momentum that had been built up during the NDA’s term, the Golden quadrilateral, PSU disinvestment, FRBM, each was chucked by the wayside in their quest to ruin the country.

3. Quality of leadership: In most parties in India, you need the right DNA to get to the top. What that essentially means is that unless you are the son of an important party leader, there is no chance you will be anything more than an ordinary party worker. The only parties where this is not the case are the Left parties and the BJP. Which other party can throw up leaders of the integrity and caliber of Vajpayee, Advani, Modi, Jaitley etc?

I have no doubt that the BJP is not everyone’s cup of tea, and a few things about them may turn off some people from the party. Even to them, I will say that the reality is that no party in India is anywhere close to perfect and we need to make compromises. I feel that for all its faults, the BJP is a lesser evil than a Congress led UPA government or a rag-tag bunch of parties calling themselves the Third Front. Look at what each of them offers and then make your decision on who is the best suited to lead India forward for the next 5 years.

World Yatra by KG-2A

Nisha's class put up a great show. Here are some clips

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Why I hated the Slumdog Oscar tamasha

I am happy for Rahman and Boyle and the other cast of Slumdog Millionaire for the glory they got at the Oscars. They understood the way the Oscar game is played and did a perfect job there. But the general euphoria about it over the past couple of days has left me angry. Very angry. Why? Here are a few reasons

- Firstly, the film. I haven’t seen the movie but have spoken to people who have and also read reviews. A common feeling is that it portrays Indian society in an extremely derogatory way. Why would I go and support a film jo mere pe thoonkta hai?

- Secondly, the media would like us to believe that this is the arrival of Indian cinema on the world stage and there is no stopping us now. That is Grade A bullshit. The fact is that the movie was a Hollywood production and that’s what got it the awards. I am willing to bet that if it was made by an Indian crew, it would not even have been nominated.

- Thirdly, why do we as a people have such low self-esteem that we need to be praised by the West to have really arrived? I’d really like to see a day where we see the Oscars for what it is, an American award that is given by an American industry association, not some great honour that has been bestowed on us.

 I'm definitely very happy for Rahman, he is one of the masters of our generation and deserves to be recognized. It's just sad that he had to get the award for a work which is nowhere near his best. 

A missed opportunity

The government has swung into election mode by announcing a substantial decrease in the price of petroleum products. It is good for the consumer, but is it good for India overall? Granted, we have had a crash in oil prices and a period of relative stability over the past 2-3 months. But, who knows what the situation may be in 6 months. If the price of oil skyrockets, will we again go into a cycle of under-recovery and a mounting subsidy bill?

 The prudent thing for the government would have been to take advantage of the low prices to bring about a degree of deregulation. They could have revised prices on a monthly basis or even rationalized the taxes and duties on petroleum products. But that would have been too much to expect from the worst government in Indian history.

Satyam

India's Enron...No truth at Satyam... the headlines are flying thick and fast. I'd predicted its downfall when the scandal initially broke, but I never suspected that a fraud of this magnitude was possible.

Beyond the uncertain future of the company and its employees, it raises quite a few questions

- How will it affect the image of Indian IT? All along, we'd held them up as ethical role models in a generally corrupt and immoral corporate system. How many more Satyam's are waiting to be discovered?

- How will it affect the Indian stockmarket? Will FII's pull out or will India's growth potential override this? There was some kind of recovery happening over the last couple of months, will this spell an end to that?

- Coming to Satyam's employees, I think with almost no cash on their books, they are going to have to do a mass layoff of all the non-billable resources. With the Indian IT job market already looking bleak, what will happen when thousands of people are added to the list of job-seekers?

- Will Satyam's customers jump ship? If they do, will it be to other Indian IT companies or will the MNC's benefit?

On a side note, I'd picked up Satyam shares in December at 115. Yesterday, I exited at 180, making it one of the best investment decisions I ever made. But somehow, I am not feeling that thrilled about it.

Karwar Trip

Here are some photos from our trip to Karwar over the New year

Karwar Trip