“I’m Rich” iPhone App - Not So Funny!

Posted on August 6, 2008 by Sachin Balagopalan
Filed Under Apple, Google, Software, Technology, Wireless Networks, iPhone, iPod, iPod Touch | 1 Comment

I can’t believe this is the number one topic of discussion on Techmeme this evening. Apparently this guy Armin Heinrich created an iPhone app that was selling for $999.99 at the AppStore. The story was reported for the first time yesterday and there was quite a bit of buzz on the blogosphere yesterday. But quite honestly I didn’t expect it to carry over into todays tech headlines. It looks like the App has now been removed from the AppStore after twenty four hours.

And what does the app exactly do?

The red icon on your iPhone or iPod touch always reminds you (and others when you show it to them) that you were able to afford this.

It’s a work of art with no hidden function at all.

After pressing the (i) on the main page, a secret mantra will be shown. This may help you to to stay rich, healthy and successful.

Personally I think the whole thing was amusing and quite frankly I think the guy is creative for even coming up with the idea. However quite a few folks were not amused and some were actually insulted by the whole thing. I can understand why someone would be insulted because Apple supposedly screens all the apps submitted to the AppStore and there is a huge waiting line before a developer can get his/her app in. Apparently this one somehow made the cut (an inside job perhaps :) ).

I’m not sure what Armin Heinrich’s real intention was but he proved a couple of things IMO. First whatever the vetting process Apple has implemented to screen out the bad apples (no pun intended) from the good does not work. I mean if they are really serious about the quality and functionality of the apps that make it to the AppStore then this one should not have been on the list. Secondly and more importantly I think he has proved that developers are actually serious about embracing the iPhone platform. The general outcry and the subsequent withdrawal of this app underscores the point. With the release of 3G and an increasing user base has whetted the appetite for more third party apps and developers are finally investing in the platform to satisfy that appetite. There is money to be made so people are obviously peeved when someone pulls a stunt like this.

In any case I think it was kinda amusing and we should all just have a sense of humor and let it go. I wonder if anyone actually bought the app and figured out what the secret mantra was :) .

UPDATE: Eight people have apparently purchased the app. Not Bad!

Delta Airlines - Mile High WiFi!

Posted on August 5, 2008 by Sachin Balagopalan
Filed Under Technology, Wireless Networks | Leave a Comment

Delta airlines announced today that it will start offering in-flight WiFi service on all aircrafts in it’s domestic fleet by next year.

Delta is joining with Aircell®, a 17-year leader in airborne communications for business and commercial aviation, to install the company’s Mobile Broadband Network on the carrier’s domestic fleet. The system, Gogo™, will enable Delta customers traveling with Wi-Fi enabled devices, such as laptops, smartphones and PDAs, to access the Internet, corporate VPNs, corporate and personal e-mail accounts, as well as SMS texting and instant messaging services. Gogo will be available to customers for a flat fee of $9.95 on flights of three hours or less, and $12.95 on flights of more than three hours.

Couple of things popped up right away when I read this. First the cost structure - $9.95 on flights 3 hours or less and $12.95 on flights more than three hours - anything to keep them afloat I guess as the airline industry continues to grapple with their finances. At least this time they are charging for it right from the start unlike food and beverage service (and recently checked in luggage on some airlines) that was once free only to be “taken away” from us.

Secondly they are definitely targeting the business traveler who can expense it in spite of the cost cutting measures companies have in place these days. Business travelers can easily justify the cost by claiming productivity during the flight especially since VPN will be supported. However I don’t think the average non-business traveler going on vacation will add to their already tight vacation budget so they can check their email or surf the web.

Then there are those of us - the so called geeks or members of the iPhone club - who will end up paying any amount just so we can whip that WiFi enabled iPhone out and check our emails or surf the web - whether we need to or not is beside the point :) . I wonder what Loopt will tag your current location as when you’re flying!

In all seriousness however this is a good move by Delta. It opens up a lot of possibilities for future airline travel IMO.

Bandwidth Cartel?

Posted on July 31, 2008 by Sachin Balagopalan
Filed Under 700 MHz Spectrum, Broadband, Technology, White Spaces, WiTricity, Wireless Networks | Leave a Comment

I remember last spring when my wife was in Brussels on a work related trip she needed to download a PowerPoint presentation from a FTP server at her workplace. As usual she used her trusty FTP client to log into the server via her hotel room’s “free” broadband connection and download the file. While the file transfer itself wasn’t excruciatingly slow she was little surprised to see a fee (about 10 euro) tagged on to her final bill during checkout when internet at the hotel was supposed to be free. The checkout agent explained that while “basic” internet was free they normally charged for file transfers (obviously the reason is huge file transfers eat into the allocated bandwidth per the provider hence the fee).

Interesting op-ed piece in the New York times yesterday juxtaposing bandwidth consumption with energy consumption. While bandwidth and oil are two different animals and perhaps we’re comparing apples and oranges the author does a good job getting the point across.

Like energy, bandwidth is an essential economic input. You can’t run an engine without gas, or a cellphone without bandwidth. Both are also resources controlled by a tight group of producers, whether oil companies and Middle Eastern nations or communications companies like AT&T, Comcast and Vodafone. That’s why, as with energy, we need to develop alternative sources of bandwidth.

Wired connections to the home — cable and telephone lines — are the major way that Americans move information. In the United States and in most of the world, a monopoly or duopoly controls the pipes that supply homes with information. These companies, primarily phone and cable companies, have a natural interest in controlling supply to maintain price levels and extract maximum profit from their investments — similar to how OPEC sets production quotas to guarantee high prices.

Because bandwidth is not tangible we have a hard time perceiving it although some people do keep track of their cell phone minutes for example. In any case bandwidth is an important resource affecting our daily lives just like oil is. When demand for a resource is high there is always a question as to who the suppliers are and more importantly who controls the pricing and is it fair. Apparently not at the moment and so what do we do to avoid a “Broadband Cartel” ?

But just as with oil, there are alternatives. Amsterdam and some cities in Utah have deployed their own fiber to carry bandwidth as a public utility. A future possibility is to buy your own fiber, the way you might buy a solar panel for your home.

Encouraging competition is another path, though not an easy one: most of the much-hyped competitors from earlier this decade, like businesses that would provide broadband Internet over power lines, are dead or moribund. But alternatives are important. Relying on monopoly producers for the transmission of information is a dangerous path.

After physical wires, the other major way to move information is through the airwaves, a natural resource with enormous potential. But that potential is untapped because of a false scarcity created by bad government policy.

IMO fiber is perhaps the “immediate” way to go albeit “fiberizing” every home and building in the US given it’s size is no doubt a daunting and challenging task. The main advantage of fiber among others is the higher carrying capacity due to it’s composition and it’s cheaper. I have used Japan as an example on more than one occasion - here and here - where extensive government deregulation of the old copper wires resulted in the big communication companies taking on the initiative to fiberize every home. A good example where government interference resulted in a positive outcome i.e faster internet at low prices.

Airwaves on the other hand is the long term solution mainly because a few issues like interference and licensing policies need to be ironed out and that may take time. It is the ultimate solution however especially with the freeing up of the UHF spectrum next year by the television channels and Verizon winning the bid.

Bottom line is we need deregulation in this space to spur up competition and avoid a cartel like situation where the supply of an important resource is controlled by a few.

Scrabulous - Game Over

Posted on July 29, 2008 by Sachin Balagopalan
Filed Under Scrabble, Scrabulous, Social Networks, facebook | Leave a Comment

Looks like Hasbro/Mattel won this one. In typical big company fashion they let loose their slimy lawyers on the Agarwalla brothers who in the end had to acquiesce. Apparently it was the brother’s decision and not Facebook’s to shut it down. Well it’s understandable - they don’t quite have the resources to take on a huge company so in all probability the good old greenback was the reason they gave up. I was hoping they would stick around and fight the bullies and perhaps someone with deep pockets should have helped them stay in the game if indeed money was the issue.

Well the good news is if you don’t live in the U.S or Canada you can still play the game on Facebook. If you live in North America you can still go to www.scrabulous.com and play all you want. Hasbro/Mattel may have succeeded in getting the game off Facebook but they have and are still loosing a lot of goodwill IMO. What the brain trust at Hasbro/Mattell seemed to have forgotten or perhaps not even realized is prior to the Scrabulous phenomenon no one cared about Scrabble. By making the game available online Scrabulous managed to not only get the older members of Facebook interested in the game again but brought along a whole new generation of teenagers and twenty somethings as well. It’s hard to gauge what the long term impact is going to be.

The final analysis IMO - For the Agarwalla brothers some valuable lessons have been learned about corporate America. They are young and this experience will probably only make them better and stronger. I don’t think they are going to be hurting - if nothing else there will be plenty of opportunities for them in the future.

For Hasbro/Mattell - well they will still continue to be a “big” company. Enough said.

Cool Cuil!

Posted on July 28, 2008 by Sachin Balagopalan
Filed Under Cuil, Google, Information Management, Social Networks, Software, Technology | 2 Comments

Google’s announcement a couple of days ago boasting a trillion uniquely indexed URL’s may have been a deliberate strategy to deflect a little bit of momentum from the impending launch of Cuil (pronounced “Cool”) today. Cuil is a new search engine launched today by a husband and wife team of Stanford professor Tom Costello and former Google search architect Anna Patterson. Apparently they have a bunch of ex-Googlers working for them as well.

Conceptually at least Cuil is trying to address the issue of information overload by categorizing the search results into relevant groups based on context. That apparently is the major difference - the ranking of the results. Google ranks the the results based on page ranks - i.e based on the number of incoming page links. Cuil on the other hand analyzes the results and groups them contextually. Theoretically that makes a whole lot of sense because not knowing the users “mood” the next best thing to do is group them into logical categories so the user can focus on the group that is currently relevant to them.

I tried playing with it today and I think it has potential. It’s far from being a complete product and there is a slew of criticism on the blogosphere tonight. Earlier on in the day it looked like they had some load balancing issues on their servers due to the unexpected traffic volume. But when I tried it tonight I was able to get the results back and it was quick and accurate for the most part. However the “Explore by Category” was way off in most my search queries.

This is going to be interesting to watch and if they stomp out the bugs quickly they may be in a position to give Google a run for the money. Right now they are no where close.

Sunday Night Football - Live on the Internet!

Posted on July 27, 2008 by Sachin Balagopalan
Filed Under Internet, NFL, Technology | Leave a Comment

August is a great time of the year for a lot of Americans because the NFL football season is around the corner as teams report to training camp and the pre-season games begin the first week of August. This year if you’re a football fan there is one more thing to cheer about as the Los Angeles times is reporting that the NFL will stream live broadcasts of Sunday night football games beginning in September over the internet. OK so it’s only the Sunday night games but Al Michaels play-by-play and John Madden’s commentary streaming live on the internet is a start nonetheless.

For much of its history, the NFL has kept a tight grip on the rights to its games and the use of its images. But with more consumers, particularly younger viewers, turning to their computers for entertainment, the NFL wants to steer the nation’s most popular television sport into the digital age.

“We are taking a big leap here,” said Steve Bornstein, chief executive of the NFL Network.

“We are looking at this as a learning opportunity to see what applications work online. We are trying to be innovative and creative to make the viewing experience better for our fans.”

“Steer the nations most popular sport into the digital age” ? It’s about time if you ask me. “We’re looking at this as a learning opportunity …” C’Mon this is a no brainer - you’re giving the viewer an alternate viewing opportunity and in this day and age when most people spend quite a bit of time online it makes absolute sense. Countries like India have been streaming live cricket matches to cell phones for the last couple of years and the same with soccer in Europe. Why is it that we’re always a notch behind the rest of the world when it comes to “productizing” technology?

Until now, the NFL has proceeded cautiously into the digital world, in part to avoid antagonizing the networks that collectively pay the league $3.7 billion a year in fees for exclusive rights to carry its games.

“The NFL’s most important constituency has been the television networks, but the world is moving online,” said Bobby Tulsiani, an analyst at market research firm JupiterResearch. “They haven’t wanted people to watch games online because that could mess up their television deals. . . . This is going to get interesting as they move forward.”

It’s a double edged sword. On one hand the NFL needs these big network companies to - for lack of a better term - bank roll them but the flip side is they essentially “own” the NFL. The fundamental problem is just like the movie studios the major networks are slow in grasping and comprehending the internet and the potential opportunities it provides. And just like the music industry was a few years ago before Apple and iPod these companies are afraid of “giving up” their intellectual property. Until there is a change in the mindset of these major corporations we the American consumer will probably always be a step behind our counterparts from the rest of the world.

Go Pats! (last year never happened :) )

1,000,000,000,000 Unique URL’s but Whose Counting!

Posted on July 26, 2008 by Sachin Balagopalan
Filed Under Google, Search Engines, Social Networks, Technology, Twitter | 2 Comments

If you’re a person who pays attention to milestones then this one is a keeper! Google just announced on their official blog that they have indexed their one trillionth unique URL. I’d be curious to find out what that URL is - can you imagine the “curiosity” traffic!

In all seriousness however this only confirms how huge the web is and it’s still growing

To keep up with this volume of information, our systems have come a long way since the first set of web data Google processed to answer queries. Back then, we did everything in batches: one workstation could compute the PageRank graph on 26 million pages in a couple of hours, and that set of pages would be used as Google’s index for a fixed period of time. Today, Google downloads the web continuously, collecting updated page information and re-processing the entire web-link graph several times per day. This graph of one trillion URLs is similar to a map made up of one trillion intersections. So multiple times every day, we do the computational equivalent of fully exploring every intersection of every road in the United States. Except it’d be a map about 50,000 times as big as the U.S., with 50,000 times as many roads and intersections.

Interesting history lesson in how far search engine technology has evolved since the early days - indexing 26 million pages per day to indexing a trillion unique URL’s several times a day is no small feat especially when you figure in the processing power.

As you can see, our distributed infrastructure allows applications to efficiently traverse a link graph with many trillions of connections, or quickly sort petabytes of data, just to prepare to answer the most important question: your next Google search.

Well on the flip side of the coin one has to wonder if search engine technology has reached the top of the bell curve. A couple of days ago in this post I said…

Just search on any topic today and you’ll be deluged with links to literally hundreds if not thousands of sites. That in turn results in information overload and decision making as to how best to consume the information because more often than not you’ll come across conflicting views on the topic you’re searching for.

I guess the question then is as the web gets bigger how relevant are the search results vis a vis “your next Google search” going to be ? Should search results be vetted for some semblance of accuracy before being presented to the user ? Perhaps the social networking graphs and the associated data streams could be utilized somehow to present the users with relevant data?

It will interesting to see how search evolves (or dies) as Google marches towards the next milestone - indexing a quadrillion unique URL’s!

MobileMe(ss) in a Cloud

Posted on July 25, 2008 by Sachin Balagopalan
Filed Under Apple, Cloud Computing, MobileMe | Leave a Comment

The blogosphere is abuzz with mostly negative reviews on Apple’s newest iteration of it’s old .Mac service called MobileMe which was released concurrently with the iPhone 3G on July 11. MobileMe is a subscription based service (costs around $100 a year) offered by Apple that syncs up your eMail, calendar and contacts on multiple devices. So for example you update your iCal with a doctors appointment for next week on your iMac, Apples MobileMe servers will immediately push or propagate that info to other devices like your iPhone/iPod Touch, other Mac’s and even PC’s. Well almost immediately - more like fifteen minutes - according to this post by David Pogue of the New York Times.

Apple was saying the service offered “push” e-mail, calendar and contacts, meaning that changes were propagated instantly among devices. In fact, as I noted in my review, Macs and PCs don’t check for updates any more frequently than every 15 minutes. Otherwise, though, the system works very well — for me — and it’s extremely useful.

While it’s easy to be critical - and rightly so especially after they advertised it as a “push” but in reality the devices “pull” or request the info every 15 minutes - this only reiterates the fact that the concept of cloud computing is actually pretty complex and quite frankly the industry is still in the process of refining it. Everybody wants to be in the “cloud” as this article in CIO magazine from last March seems to suggest. Cloud computing is the buzzword du jour and is definitely the emerging technology at the moment and everyone wants to jump on the band wagon including Apple.

IMO Apple should stay away from the Data Center business and let others like Google and Amazon pursue it. Stick with what you do best and that is build cool products. Anyway fifteen minutes isn’t too bad if you ask me!

New Look and Home For This Blog

Posted on July 25, 2008 by Sachin Balagopalan
Filed Under Technology, WEB 2.0, Word Press, WordPress | 1 Comment

Decided to implement a few changes on this site some subtle and others not so subtle. The obvious is the new three column theme. The theme is called ModernPaper 1.0 and is designed by Performancing. For the most part I used the the original style sheet but had to tweak it a little to adjust a few things like the header. The main reason for choosing a three column theme (yes there is a method to the madness :) ) is because they tend to render much more efficiently on a mobile device like the iPhone - the main column on the left is rendered first and fits nicely on the screen hence the need to scroll and pinch is minimized. If you go to a two column page/site on your iPhone for example nine out of ten times you’re going to have to pinch and scroll right to read the content. Until I come up with my “iPhoenized” style sheets a la Google, FaceBook and a few others the three column strategy should suffice for now. Other than that I also think ModerPaper 1.0 is slightly more professional looking than my old theme.

The big change however is not the UI rather the way this site is now managed. The “old” blog used to be hosted for free by WordPress and it worked out well for the last year and a half - didn’t have to worry about any of the technical stuff. However I have now decided to switch or upgrade to a “self hosted” WordPress blog. What this means (besides having to pay my new hosting company DreamHost a yearly fee) is I’ll continue to use WordPress software to post and manage the UI but I am now also responsible for hosting the site and managing the content myself. This way I have more control over the site in general as well as the style sheets and php pages which gives me considerable latitude to make changes.

Even though I have my own domain name free blogs like WordPress and Typepad typically host you as a subdomain (hence it’s free :) ). There is nothing wrong with that except it takes search engine crawlers longer to find you because you’re a notch lower in the DNS hierarchy. This does not bode well if you’re trying to increase the visibility of your domain and grow your site.

Enjoy the site!

Waiting in Line For the iPhone

Posted on July 21, 2008 by Sachin Balagopalan
Filed Under Apple, Software, Technology, iPhone | 1 Comment

Last weekend while we were in NYC I was tempted to join the “madness” at the Apple Cube store on 5th Avenue. However when I saw how long the lines were and not to mention it was a hot and humid I decided to join my wife and one year old son next door at F.A.O Schwarz instead. Watching my son go crazy at a toy store beats standing in line for 5-6 hours any day :) ! Besides I live in the Boston area so I was pretty sure I would be able to get the new 3G iPhone without having to terribly endure the long lines - there are about 10 flagship stores within driving distance from where I live and a bunch of AT&T stores as well. Boy, was I wrong! First of all unlike the 5th Avenue store none of the stores in the Boston area had regular shipments coming in every night. Secondly if they did they were limited in number and were sold out within an hour of the store opening.

Last night I checked the Apple website after 9:00 pm and saw the store at the Providence Place mall in Rhode Island had a shipment coming in for Sunday. So on Sunday I arrived around 11:00 am right when the store was opening and there were already about 30 people queued outside the store behind a roped line. The Apple “dudes” in blue T-Shirts were handing out little cards based on the kind of phone you wanted (8G black/white or 16g black/white) so as to speed up the process once you go into the store not to mention the card also guaranteed you a phone. “Not too bad” I thought - an hour maybe 1 1/2 hours tops? Wrong again! By the time I was inside the store it was 2:00 pm. It was like a dripping faucet to say the least - 3 hours for for 30 people to get into the store! Behind me there were about 20 people before the the cards ran out - so in essence the total shipment for the day was ONLY fifty pieces! So the rumors about supply chain problems must be true then!

In all fairness though “dripping faucet” notwithstanding the experience was not too bad surprisingly. People in the line didn’t seem to mind at all. The Apple guys were frequently walking by and answering questions and also trying to get you to sign up for MobileMe - the new service to sync up all your devices a la cloud computing. They were also offering us water and candy which helped. Once I got into the store the service was great. Being an existing customer who already owned the first iPhone the process of switching was pretty painless and I was out of the store in half hour with my new iPhone.

Would I stand in line again for more than three hours the next time? Probably not!

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