Random thoughts

Panel on Software Defined Networks

2011-11-11T14:07:00.000-08:00

TiE Silicon Valley organized a panel on the next wave in networking - Software Defined Networks (SDN) on Thursday, November 10th. This was well attended (with an audience of over 150) and was easily one of the best panels that I have been to (TiE or otherwise).

Networking has not evolved much in the last 20+ years. Since the first packet switched network in the late 1960s, companies have basically been improving the same architecture and basically improving line speeds and port densities. All that changed with the PhD dissertation of Martin Casado at Stanford in 2007. His thesis was based on the Ethane project, that allows one to build a secure enterprise network with a powerful, yet simple management model. This led to OpenFlow and SDN. Suddenly, there is innovation in networking and there is a lot of excitement around the plain old network!

The first speaker was Stanford's Guru Parulkar. He defined the problem - how networks are vertically integrated, complex, closed and proprietary. By separating the data plane and control plane and having a protocol between the OS and the forwarding devices, it is possible to build network control management applications. He waxed eloquent about the talk given by Verizon's Stu Elby at the Open Networking Summit on Service Provider Networks.

Dan Wendlandt of Nicira spoke next. Dan provided his perspective on SDN - how it is possible to describe high level policies that the system "compiles" down to individual devices. So, a VM can migrate all through the data center and have the security policies follow it.

The next speaker was Anshul Sadana, VP Customer Engineering at Arista Networks. Anshul spoke about OpenStack. He also talked about how virtualization sets networking back one step and how Arista's VMTracer bridges the gap between physical and virtual networks, thus simplifying network operations.

Stuart Bailey of Infoblox was the next speaker. He likened the value (in networking) moving from custom hardware to software to the end of the mainframe era. We are, indeed, at a huge inflection point in the evolution of networking. Infoblox solves the problem of managing pervasive networks.

The final speaker was the host of the evening - Allwyn Sequeira of VMWare. He talked about the trends driving the evolution of the DataCenter:

New Application architectures - stateless and scaling out
Lower Hardware costs
Virtualization of all Hardware components (by 2014, an average server will run 320 VMs)

There is a need to enable dynamic, workload aware networks that has

Forwarding plane
Control plane
Management plane - which abstracts the network and presents the abstraction to the upper layer for logical networks

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the session. Each speaker on the panel was an expert and has deep knowledge in their subject matter.

An Auditory Feast

2011-10-15T16:41:00.000-07:00

Denizens of the Bay Area were treated to an Auditory Feast last Saturday morning (October 8th) when Ananya Ashok (student of Anuradha Sridhar) gave a Carnatic Vocal concert at Sivamani mama's house in Sunnyvale. Due to a soccer commitment, I was a bit late in getting there. She was singing sarasIruhAsana priyE in nAtAi as I reached. Even as I was settling down, I was very impressed by the ensemble of Lakshmi Balasubramanya on the violin and Vignesh Venkatraman (student of Umayalpuram Sivaraman) on the mridangam. There must have been a varnam before this. Could someone who was at the concert post the details on the varnam as a comment to this blog.

Ananya followed this with a shlOkam in Ananda-bhaIravi and the Dixitar kriti kamalAmbA. She then sang a beautiful alApanA in valaji and the Harikesa Muthiah Bhagavatar kriti jAlandharA supeetha. Valaji is a simple rAgam with Sa Ga Pa Dha Ni swarAs. Ananya chose to perform an exquisite neraval around "bhavarOga nivArinE, bhaktajana paripAlinE".

As this concert was part of the navarAtrI series, Ananya sang a song on dEvi, shrI chakrarAja simhAsanEshwari. This is a raagamalika in shenjuruTTI, punnagavaraLi, naadanaamakriyaa and sindhu bhairavi.

After this short piece, Ananya sang an alApanA in hEmavatI. Being a mElakarthA rAgA, hEmavatI has a lot of scope for being selected as the major item in a concert. Ananya did justice to this and sang Dixitar's srI kAntImatIm. It included a swara kalpanA, which was followed by a thaniAvarthanam.

Ananya concluded by singing three short numbers - Shyama Shastri's kanaka shaila in punnagavaraLi, Dixitar's annapoornE vishAlAskI in sAmA and Lalgudi Jayaraman's Thillana in mAnd.

Short of having a rAgam-thAnam-pallavI, this was a complete concert. Perhaps she did not include an RTP since she was given just two hours.

I would have liked her to sing a magaLam at the end of her concert. Again, it is likely that she did not include it because this was not the final concert of the day.

I certainly look forward to listening to additional concerts by Ananya. She has immense potential to reach the heights of other eminent students of the Lalgudi bAni.

Innovation Summit

2011-10-11T16:53:00.001-07:00

I was at the Pan IIT Innovation Summit at Computer History Museum in Mountain View on Saturday, September 24th. The goal of the summit was to create awareness on the emergence of India's innovation capabilities. A video stream of the sessions in this summit is available from Raj Jaswa's Dyyno.

Sam Pitroda, Chairman of the National Innovation Council and Advisor to the Prime Minister of India opened the Summit with a thought provoking keynote address on "The Indian Innovation Environment". He started by focusing on the problems in the environment in India today:

400m live below the poverty line
Politics and bureaucracy stifle everything
Development is not happening fast enough
There is a huge disparity between urban and rural

He urged the innovators in the audience to focus their efforts at the bottom of the pyramid - that is have pro-poor policies. Typically, research in the U.S is geared for the top of the pyramid. The parameters that he provided (to determine where the innovation is targeted) were scalability and affordability. For instance, the U.S model based on consumption is not scalable. "We don't need disposable products, we need durable products," he said.

The Government is fostering a National Innovation Council focusing efforts in Health, eGovernance, Agriculture and Education. The key programs initiated by the Government are:

RTI - Right To Information
RTE - Right To Education
NOREGA - Guaranteed work for 100 days for the rural poor

There is a concerted effort (with a $20b budget) to bring technology to the masses:

250,000 panchayats connected by Optical Fibre ($6b)
Information management and GIS, led by Dr. K. Kasturirangan ($500m)
Cyber Security
Payment Processing

The first panel was an Industry Panel. The panelists (and their corresponding focus areas) were:

Pradeep Sindhu, Juniper Networks, Cloud Computing
Ajit Gill, MicroCHIPS, Biotech
DJ Patil, Greylock, Social media

Pradeep Sindhu started by defining Cloud Computing to be the delivery of Information Services over the network across any device type. Cloud Computing + Mobile Internet = Massive Opportunity. There is an increased demand for security since the network is a juicy target for bad actors. Metcalfe's Law states that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of connected end points. We need a quantum leap in performance to meet the needs of today's Mega Datacenter. He mentioned Junpier's QFabric as the first innovation in network topology in over a decade.

Ajit Gill was the most "controversial" speaker of the day. He took Sam Pitroda head on and challenged the actions of the Government committees that Pitroda talked about. "Don't legislate innovation. Just get out of the way," he said. Currently, research in India is re-engineering, re-tooling in the Indian context. He cited a personal anecdote on a conversation he had with an IIT Director on the subject of research.

IIT Director: "Has this been done before?"

Ajit Gill: "No"

IIT Director: "Must be a stupid idea"

The second panel was a University panel, discussing the collaboration between the Industry and Universities. The panelists were:

Curt Carlson, CEO of Stanford Research Institute
Mani Chandy, Caltech
Pradeep Khosla, CMU

Desh Deshpande moderated the panel and started by mentioning the work done by V. Govindarajan on reverse innovation - that is, developing products in India for the world. There are three stages of innovation happening in India:

Stage 1 - "Hand-Me-Down". This the kind that the IIT Director was talking about to Ajit Gill.
Stage 2 - "Localization" - for the Indian market
Stage 3 - Products get created first in the region of use. Then they become ready for the rest of the world. India is positioned very well to make progress in this Stage 3 of innovation

Curt Carlson spoke about building the innovation infrastructure. "This is the best time for the history of innovation in the world," he said.

Pradeep Khosla spoke about his personal experience in setting up an Institute for Software Engineering in Mumbai - with Raj Reddy. It started with a lot of fanfare, with funding from the Maharashtra Government. They shut it down after two years because they could not attract the right faculty.

The final panel focused on challenges in Cross Border innovation. This was moderated by Raj Mashruwala - known for beng the COO at Tibco and later running the UID project for Nandan Nilekani. Alok Agarwal, who was at IBM Research in Yorktown Heights for 16 years before co-founding eValueServe, a Market Research company, was one panelist and Ashish Gupta, of Helion Venture partners was the other panelist. Alok said, "Innovation comes out of diversity and chaos". Ashish made a truly insightful observation, "Look at the first derivative and the second derivative in addition to the absolute value before you jump in." There is not much by way of VC deal-flow happening in India right now. Two blocks on Sand Hill Road has more money than all of India!

A Sad Day ...

2011-10-05T19:16:00.000-07:00

A hero, an entertainer, a visionary inventor, an inveterate entrepreneur, a champion, a mahatma of technology breathed his last today. Steve Jobs single handedly defined global digital culture. He had an impact not just how engineers consume technology, but how our grandmothers interact with technology. He achieved the Holy Grail of bridging the gap between entertainers and consumers - just when it seemed that the entertainment industry was preparing for war over Digital Rights Management.

Thank You, Steve Jobs for everything that you have done. I join the billions around the world saluting you.

One more thing .... we will sorely miss you ...

Solar panels - so far so good

2011-09-04T18:46:00.000-07:00

We had Solar panels with the M215 enphase microinverters (total of 8 @ 230 watts each) installed on our roof last week:

Let me examine the behavior over the next month before I provide a reference to the installers. Look for an update to this blog post by the end of September to get that information.

At this point, I wanted to say that it seems to be working well, so far. Here is a chart of our daily kWH usage:

We were away on vacation (to the East Coast) in early August. You can see the dip in our energy usage during the time we were away. The Solar panels were activated on Monday, August 29th. The immediate impact of the panels is apparent on the chart to the right. Next week, the installers have said that they will provide an Enphase Envoy which will give us information on the energy generated on a daily basis. When I update this blog post at the end of September, I will include this information as well.

Please post any questions you may have in the comments section (except for "How much does this cost?" - I will include that information when I provide an update in the end of September)

HP's TouchPad - a bomb

2011-08-17T12:10:00.000-07:00

Business Insider is officially calling HP's TouchPad a bomb. I am surprised that it took them 6+ weeks to call it! The TouchPad opened to weak reviews. HP tried desperately to compete on price. None of it worked. RIP TouchPad.

HP has tried its hand in consumer electronics multiple times and failed. Who remembers HP foray into handhelds with Jornada and iPAQ? HP even tried their hand in HP TV and HP Camera.

Most markets have three dominant players:

Hertz, Avis, National
American, United, Delta
Nike, Adidas, Reebok
CBS, NBC, ABC
etc.

There are other players in each market, but usually three of them dominate and control 80-90% of the market.

Only Google seems to have cracked the nut when it comes to competing with Apple. They have taken a different approach - by licensing Android (although, it will be interesting to see how this plays out following Google's acquisition of Motorola). WebOS, RIM and Microsoft attempted to become the third player in the mobile race. With WebOS dying and RIM losing ground, Microsoft (and its Nokia alliance) has a great opportunity to become the third player here.

Winning this is significant because there is a lot at stake. It is expected that the number of connected mobile devices will exceed 15 billion by 2015! Come on, Ballmer, time to break out of your stupor and bring your passion to the mobile market.

Steps to Getting an OCI Card

2011-08-13T05:55:00.000-07:00

We recently got our OCI Cards and the whole process was smooth and painless. I sent the application on July 7th. They processed my application and asked me to send original passports on July 28th. I received the stamped passport and OCI card on August 10th. So, the end-to-end processing time was just over one month.

I must say that when I first started looking at the requirements and procedures, it seemed quite daunting. Especially when I saw notes like, "Please note that no person is rejecting the same, it is the machine which is rejecting. Do not argue on this issue ...". After sifting through several links and comments, I arrived at the following steps:

Gather the following documents (as you are preparing this, make two copies of everything - preferably in color):

Copy of US Naturalization Certificate
Copy of the Indian Citizenship Surrender Certificate (if you don't already have this, Travisa provides a procedure for processing this in parallel)
Scanned and printed pages of your US passport
Scanned and printed pages of your Indian passport
Scanned and printed copy of your Indian birth certificate
Scanned and printed copy of your Drivers License
Copies of PG&E (Utility) bill
"Passport" photo (see #5 below for more on this)
Cashier's check payable to "Travisa Outsourcing"

Although this link is titled, "How to Apply for OCI Card", DO NOT start the process here
Start here, instead. Kudos to Travisa Outsourcing for streamlining the process
Only use Internet Explorer when submitting the online forms
The photo you need to send for the OCI card is non-standard. They require that the background should not be white. I used the following procedure:

Take a close up picture of your face with a digital camera against a (blue or green) colored wall at home and upload the picture at ePassportphoto.com. Note: You can print the photo yourself.
The step-by-step instructions are provided here

Set up a personal FedEx account here. This is important because that is the only way Travisa will return the passport (you cannot give them a credit card number to be charged)
Submit all your documents by FedEx.
When you submit your forms online, you are given a tracking number by Travisa. Use this number everywhere (even on the FedEx Airbill)

Good luck. If your experience is different or if you can think of any further optimization, please post them as comments.

Harry Potter 7.2 - a fabulous finale

2011-07-18T09:16:00.000-07:00

After the first installment of Harry Potter 7, I had blogged that it was long and boring. We went to the second, and final, installment over the weekend. As incipient as 7.1 was, the second was a fitting climax to the series that began over a decade ago.

The intensity of action that swirls around Harry includes a roller-coaster ride down to Gringotts vaults; a dragon-back ride up from the vault; a besieged and aflame Hogwarts; and so much more. At one point, during the intense battle at Hogwarts, Harry asks, "Is it real? Or is it happening inside my head". It was certainly happening inside all our heads. The dazzling spectacle, the fantastic imagery, the superlative computerized animation all combined to deliver a fabulous finale to this series.

When Neville Longbottom slayed Nagini, Voldemorts final Horcrux, the whole theater (Century 20, Great Mall) broke into a spontaneous, thunderous applause. They could well have been applauding J.K. Rowling for creating the magical characters; David Yates for capturing the story so well on film; Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Michael Gambon, Ralph Fiennes, Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, Robbie Coltrane and co. for bringing the characters to life.

TieCon 2011. Day 2 - May 14th

2011-07-15T12:59:00.000-07:00

Here is the second installment of my blog on TiECon 2011 on Day 2, May 14th.

Drew Houston:

The second day began with a conversation between Jai Rawat, Convener of TiECon 2011, and Drew Houston, CEO of Dropbox - which has grown to over 20 million users saving 1 million files every five minutes! Drew provided some interesting anecdotes and tidbits from his experiences in growing Dropbox:

Create a product that everyone loves to use. This will provide you a natural tail wind. "Build the right thing", he said.
Have good engineering under the hood to create something really useful for people. "Build things right."
He encouraged startups to create a short video to provide a quick elevator pitch - that is address the pain point that is being solved.
Don't get bogged down by big players. Every investor will ask the question, "Why can't Google put 10 engineers on the job and get this done in 3 months?" In his case Google already had a similar offering.
Is the end point something that really excites you? He cited his own example of creating online SAT prep classes. Even he became the King of Online SAT prep, he did not see himself getting excited about that.
Do fewer things really, really well. There is always the temptation to do everything for everybody. You will have customers pulling you in different directions. You should have the ability to say NO.
Startups usually die from self inflicted wounds.

Social Panel:

I attended the Social Panel that discussed the intersection of trends in mobile, social and local. Mike Cassidy, Business Editor of San Jose Mercury News moderated the panel. The new, emerging revolution is SoLoMo - where Social Media, Local Search and Mobile Search collide - or, as one of the panelists described, the "whereabouts and the whoabouts". The panelists were Siva Kumar of TheFind and Rob Mishev of Living Social and Vikram Sharma of ShopLocal.

Darwinism is at its peak in the consumer internet space. Since the barrier to entry is quite low, the risk is higher as is the reward. The objective is to make the store experience more engaging and to make offers interesting and exciting. It is certainly becoming more and more challenging for physical retail. Blockbuster, Borders and Circuit City are all casualties of this shifting consumer trend.

Salman Khan:

The "Breakthrough Thinkers" session on the second day was delivered by Salman Khan of the Khan Academy fame. Over 2 million students are using khanacademy.org on a regular basis. Sal's motto was to stay focussed on what what got them to this point - the student. At the end of his talk, he was joined on stage by Raj Mathai - NBC Bay Area's News Anchor. This provided some good entertainment value - as Sal and Raj bantered about Sal's various experiences. I liked TiE's format this year of having key note speaker's joined on stage by other "celebrities". This is in contrast to last year's disastrous conversation between Gary Gauba and Reid Hoffman. It does not help the conversation if the interrogator is sycophantic about the speaker.

Marissa Mayer:

The closing keynote of the conference was provided by Google's Marissa Mayer. While what she said in her talk was "common sense", her delivery was impactful and made the audience sit up and pay attention. She spoke about 3 S's: Starting, Scaling and Structuring a business.

Starting: She asked to focus on problems that matter - having a deep, social impact. Hiring the right people is critical too. Hire folks who are smart and can get things done.

Structuring: Focus on being user-centric. User's are every one's job. Google users OKRs - Objectives, Keys, Results to measure milestones and accomplishments. They also maintain dashboards on installs, users and usage. There are two approaches to releasing product: "Castle Building" (as done by Apple) vs "Bird Walking" (Launch and Iterate).

Scaling: Data is both the back bone and the gas pedal. You need to constantly re-invent yourself. Failure is okay as long as you learn from your mistakes. She gave two examples of Madonna - who re-invented herself after a series of disastrous albums and Apple - people had given up on them after the Newton disaster.

TieCon 2011. Day 1 - May 13th.

2011-07-13T21:25:00.001-07:00

It has been over two months since TieCon 2011 and I had been meaning to write this post for a long time. Unfortunately, numerous other activities took priority. I will publish this in two posts, Day 1 and Day 2.

Steve Case:

The Opening Keynote featured Steve Case, Co-founder of AOL and Chair of Startup America Partnership. Rich Karlgaard, Publisher of Forbes magazine hosted this keynote. Rich walked Steve through the initial days of AOL - until they were sold to Time Warner in 2000 when they had 200m users and a market cap of $150b. Big ideas, Steve said, take a decade or more to mature. In the first 25 years of the internet, the idea is to get every one online, mobile and make it ubiquitous. In the next 25 years, the Internet will transform and disrupt every aspect of life.

Rich then moved to what Steve was doing these days - which is lead startupamericapartnership.org. Here Steve's goal is to celebrate and accelerate entrepreneurship. He said that there are two models that investors adopt. One is the Kleiner Perkins approach of working with an "A" team that can successfully take a "B" product to market. The other is the Sequoia approach of looking for the next explosive new idea. In both cases execution is key - because, after all, as Thomas Edison said, "Vision without execution is Hallucination". When asked about his predictions for the next big hit, Steve stated that we are witnessing the early days of Local, Social Commerce. Healthcare, he said, will be transformed.

Rich asked Steve about the ability of Startups to survive the uncertain economic times that prevail these days. Steve said that similar conditions in the 1970s led to a very healthy entrepreneurial environment. FedEx, SouthWest Airlines, Microsoft, Apple and Oracle are all companies founded in this turbulent decade.

Mobility Panel:

I attended the Enterprise Mobility panel that discussed how Enterprises will adopt Mobility. Matt Marshall, Venture Beat, was the moderator. The panel had two Enterprise folks: a VP from Cisco (Tom Gillis) and a VP from Sybase (Raj Nathan); a VC (Sumant Mandal, Clearstone Ventures) and an Entrepreneur (David Sacks, Yammer CEO). There was general consensus that mobile is a very hard place for investors to make money.

There was fierce debate was on whether to get into the Enterprise at the grass roots vs work your way from the top. The arguments in favor of working from the CIO down is to have a more controlled, predictable, deterministic way of deploying your solution. On the other hand, getting in at the grass roots will result in the pipeline getting filled by people using the free, viral product and cause IT to be "dragged in kicking and screaming". In the end, getting in at the grass root won the debate. It is invaluable to rely on their experience in using the product. It is important to create tools and technologies to put policies in place for these "un-managed" end points.

David Ferruci:

In the "Breakthrough Thinkers" session, David Ferruci, an IBM Fellow, gave one of the best keynotes I have heard in years. Dr. Ferruci is the lead researcher and Principal Investigator for IBM's Watson/Jeopardy! project. The keynote was replete with engineering insights into the Watson's Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA).

Vinod Khosla:

I was disappointed by Vinod Khosla's keynote. Perhaps I went in with very high expectations. He stated some very well known facts (on predictions that experts make) and arrived at some well understood conclusions (that these predictions are made by extrapolating past facts). He then went on to pitch ventures in which he has funded - on why they will succeed. Admittedly, some of them were accomplishing pretty lofty goals:

Calera - sequestering Carbon dioxide
Soraa - with 800% more efficient, pay for itself lighting
Caitin - with new thermodynamic cycles for cooling

April Fool's pranks

2011-04-01T16:06:00.000-07:00

I remember the days at Sun when employees would go through elaborate procedures to pull off April Fool's pranks on executives. These included:

Turning Scott McNealy's office into a putting green
Moving Bill Joy's Ferrari to the middle of a pond
Moving a VW Beetle into Eric Schmidt's office

These were engineering feats!

Today, companies are continuing the trend of running April Fool's pranks. I have included three such that appeared today:

Google, quite elaborately, created a video and collateral around "Gmail motion" - where they show how to use visual cues to interact with gmail. The video will surely draw a smile - even if it seems silly. I must say that the people in the video pulled off maintaining a serious tone.

LinkedIn's prank was quite simple - where they suggested Sherlock Holmes and Groucho Marx as possible connections. BTW: You can view an enlarged image by simply clicking on the image on the right.

ShopSavvy took a dig at (the photosharing app) Color - who recently announced that they raised a round of $41m! Quite honestly, I sensed a tinge of jealousy in this prank.

I am sure there were other pranks unleashed today. If you know of any, post it as a comment.

Sports blog ...

2011-03-26T08:29:00.000-07:00

Looking through my previous blog posts, I realized that I have not written a single sports blog in the past. Not sure why. I may not actively watch sports, but I follow them for sure.

Two tournaments that I am following closely now are the NCAA "March Madness" and World Cup Cricket that is being played in the Indian sub-continent.

This year's NCAA tournament has had some Cinderella stories. Kentucky's upset win over Ohio State last night sure threw my bracket for a toss as did Arizona's win over Duke. Just goes to show that nothing can be "predicted" here.

This year's World Cup Cricket has offered its own twists and turns. Unlike the 2007 tournament, at least the top 8 teams moved to the Quarter Finals this year. Yesterday, we had the surprise win for New Zealand over South Africa - setting up a Sri Lanka vs New Zealand semi-final. I predict that Sri Lanka will easily make it to the finals. The other semi-final of India vs Pakistan is an epic one. It is hard not to bring political implications into this game - it is a "game" after all. However, this is the first match between these two countries after the 26/11 terror strikes in Mumbai. With the Indian Prime Minister inviting the Pakistan President to watch the match being played in India, this match will have the following of over 250 million people around the world. There are others who study the game and players a lot more closely to make a more qualified prediction. Mine is based on gut, instinct and patriotism :) I predict India winning all the way ...

HP's Vision

2011-03-15T07:04:00.000-07:00

Leo Apotheker took center stage yesterday for the first time since taking over as CEO of the World's largest technology company (by revenue) last November. Chris O'Brien (the business editor of the Mercury News) was not too impressed.

It seems to me that Leo Apotheker is able to put together a cohesive strategy around HP's vast portfolio. The fact that he dismissed the possible acquisition of SAP saying, "We don't need to own a big transactional application platform," says a lot about his focus.

There is a Software Advice blog post that mentions possible acquisitions by HP - with SAP leading the list. It would be interesting to see the results of their survey on when/who people think will be HP's next acquisition.

HP is poised to lead the technology universe into the world of cloud computing. Sun attempted to do that many years ago and failed. Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and, now, HP are attempting to grab a piece of this pie. Sun's failure was in the execution of its vision. Often times, Sun tended to place the cart before the horse. That is, the execs would go up on stage and articulate a grandiose vision and then attempt to build the technologies towards that vision. HP, on the other hand, has been building up its portfolio of the various pieces in the puzzle. Yesterday, they finally came out and told us how they all fit together.

The next 6-12 months will tell us who comes out ahead in this battle that is being played out in the open. As a follow up to my earlier blog post (on HP vs Oracle), I think we are half time now and HP is leading by a touchdown.

Prayers and Praise for Japan ...

2011-03-13T09:43:00.001-07:00

Japan is currently facing its biggest crisis since WW-II per Prime Minister Naoto Kan as it tackles the aftermath of a massive magnitude 9 quake (in Northeast Japan), a ferocious tsunami and the ensuing nuclear crisis at the Fukushima power plant. Adding salt to its wounds, the Shinmoedake volcano has erupted in Southern Japan spewing ash and rock in the region.

With all the technology that is available, the world was literally watching Japan as the horror unfolded. The fury of nature belittled engineering achievements in the region as we watched 13-foot waves sweeping houses, boats and trains. Although the final toll of the quake is unknown, there is no doubt that had a quake of this magnitude hit any other part of the world, the destruction would have been far worse. In the words of a friend (who lives in Japan), "Hats off to Japan. They have shown the world an amazing calmness and positive attitude during hard times.".

We have seen the resiliency of Japan in the past and I am confident that Japan will pull out from this crisis and emerge a stronger nation.

Our thoughts and prayers are with you, Japan ...

Best practices when you lose your digital device to liquids ...

2011-01-03T08:24:00.000-08:00

An article in today's Mercury News by Patrick May prompted me to pen this blog about being deprived of your digital device - cell phone, laptop, camera, etc.

This has happened to most of us - when our phone has fallen into a "bowl" or coffee spilled on our laptop or the camera got drenched in rain.

I wanted to ask people out there what they have done in such situations. There is, of course, the dreaded, "Liquid spills are not covered by the warranty." Is there anything that works? What have people done in the past - post them as comments to this blog and I will collect these and post a follow up blog towards the end of this month.

Harry Potter - Deathly Hallows, Part I

2010-11-25T06:53:00.000-08:00

We are a family of "Potterites" - I am sure like many others out there. We have contributed to Ms. Rowling's billions by purchasing the books, watching the movies and owning the DVDs/Blu-ray. We have, therefore, followed the orphan Harry from his cupboard, beneath the stairs of his uncle Vernon's house on Privet drive, to the heights of Hogwarts. I must say that we have enjoyed seeing the young wizard on his missions in preparation for the inevitable battle against the Dark Lord, Voldemort. The movies have turned out to be just as engrossing - doing justice to the larger than life productions and respectful to the book. That is, until this latest one. The biggest challenge in it is not whether Harry and his friends find the remaining horcruxes, but for the audience to sit through the movie.

I am sure the producers are wringing their hands over the choking of this cash cow - since Ms. Rowling chose to end the series with the seventh book. So, the marketing geniuses at Warner decided to stretch the last book into two parts. Now, they had to fill Part I with enough material. As a result, instead of scooting through, the movie wanders aimlessly in the middle in the pretext of Harry and Hermoine not-knowing-what-to-do-except-to-curse-Dumbledore-for-not-leaving-enough-clues.

The one bright spot in this movie is Emma Watson. Hermoine has a much bigger role here than any of the previous movies. She steps up and delivers - even in those boring tent scenes where the three teens are lost in the woods (along with their audience, I must add).

I am sure this review will not dissuade other "Potterites" from seeing the movie. Harry, Ron and Hermoine have given them much pleasure over the last 13 years and deserve their faithful company for one more visit - even if this one is long and boring.

I am also certain that us "Potterites" will see Part II when it comes out in July 2011 - so Warner does come out ahead, after all. However, no amount of magic potion can revive the ennui that sets in this yarn.

PS: Ironically, at Micello, we mapped out Hogwarts in preparation for the release of this movie. Turned out that Hogwarts is not featured in the movie :) Nevertheless, the map is available ...

President Obama's visit to India

2010-11-04T12:48:00.001-07:00

You can't turn anywhere these days without seeing another article about President Obama's upcoming visit to India - ranging from

For the uninformed, here is Obama's official itinerary.

Seems to me to be a reversal of roles in that Obama is the one who is seeking help from India. Note that he is traveling with a 250-member team that includes a who's-who of American business. These are heads of corporations whose revenues are higher than the GDP of several countries - including Jeff Immelt (GE), Jim McNerney (Boeing), Indira Nooyi (Pepsi), Terry McGraw (McGraw Hill), and others. Their mission is seek sales orders for everything from aircraft engines, to nuclear reactors, to power plants. The underlying message is, "Do not take our jobs, take our goods." Clearly, they are hoping that the tremendous opportunity for goods and services that India offers will make a dent in US unemployment.

My question is what are they offering in return ...

An Open Letter to Steve Jobs

2010-10-20T13:58:00.000-07:00

The world heard your tirade against RIM and Android on Monday. I understand that you are nervous over the fact that Android Sales have overtaken iPhone. As any good sales person would, you injected some FUD to deflect the positive press that Android has been receiving.

But it is just that - Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Usually, this is a sign of weakness - conceding to the enemy and "retaliating" with FUD. Fundamentally, your rant can be distilled to two issues:

Fragmentation of Android resulting in developers spending more time testing than adding features
Multiple Android Markets making it confusing for end users and developers

As a developer who has applications on both iOS and Android, I can tell you that I do not have the issue of having to "port" my Android code to multiple Android platforms. My code runs as-is across all Android devices.

Now, regarding the issue of multiple Android Markets, I think this is an advantage for Android. As a developer, this gives me multiple channels to have my app get downloaded. It is a matter of time before these markets provide an svn repository for my "bundle" (which includes screen shots, descriptions and the .apk file) that I simply upload to the various markets. The end-user can find the app within their context (either GetJar or Amazon or Google). Moreover, this keeps Google on its toes to constantly innovate. Competition always brings the best out in people.

You have always eschewed "open" and taken the I-know-what-is-best-for-you approach. The success of Linux for desktops/severs did not necessarily raise your antennae because the "fight" was for a much smaller percentage (Windows owns 90+% of the market. Linux/MacOS and others were competing for the scraps). However, the world of Smart Phones is a new era and an opportunity for "world dominance". Things were going well until Android started gaining momentum and started eclipsing the iPhone. Thus, the need for the rant.

I continue to be in awe of your genius. Your ability to provide clear thinking to a befuddled marketplace is phenomenal. Your legacy to our world of technology is unparalleled. So, you can understand my bewilderment with your scare tactics.

I believe there is room for two players in the market (three if RIM gets their act together quickly). Windows 7 is probably late to the party. However, if RIM does not watch out, the third player could well be Windows Phone 7. So, my request to you is to leave Android alone and focus on things that you have control over improving:

Reduce (or even remove) the approval time for apps on iTunes
Add recommendations to the iTunes store (similar to Amazon) including percentage of people who download the app, percentage of people who bought other apps, etc.

With Best Wishes,

NO on Proposition 23

2010-10-15T05:37:00.000-07:00

Proposition 23 suspends the implementation of Air Pollution Control Law (AB 32) that requires major sources of emissions to report and reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming, until unemployment drops to 5.5% or less for a full year.

Excuse me! I am surprised that they even allowed this to get on the ballot!

Who in their right minds can support a proposition that threatens public health and kills clean energy and air pollution standards. The only people benefiting from Prop 23 are the Texas Oil companies - because a YES on 23 would increase our dependence on their costly oil.

Here is a link to an Open Letter from over 100 leading economists, including Nobel Laureate Kenneth Arrow, warning against any delay in the implementation of California's Clean Energy policies.

On November 2nd, please vote NO on Prop 23.

HP vs Oracle Round 3

2010-10-02T19:22:00.000-07:00

Round 1: August 6th 2010 - HP Fires Mark Hurd for fiscal improprieties. Larry Ellison calls this "the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago."

Round 2: September 6th 2010 - Oracle hires ousted HP Chief Mark Hurd. HP responds with a law suit that "in the course of his duties with Oracle, Hurd will inevitably disclose HP's trade secrets and confidential information."

Round 3. October 1st 2010 - The Silicon Valley Soap Opera took another bizarre turn with the appointment of Leo Apotheker as the new HP CEO. Larry Ellison says publicly that he is "speechless" that HP "picked a guy who was recently fired because he did such a bad job running SAP."

Will somebody please stand up and tell Larry Ellison that *he* hired a guy who was recently fired from HP because he did not stand up to HP's ethical standards (which are also the standards normally practiced by the rest of us). Who is "speechless" now?

HP really hit it where it hurds the most (sorry, could not resist that!) with the appointment of Ray Lane as the non-executive chairman. Ray Lane has a storied history with Larry Ellison. It will be interesting to see who makes the next move.

I was disappointed with Chris O'Brien's piece in the Mercury News earlier today. He starts off very well building the case for why the other stories (Apple vs Adobe and Google vs Apple) pale in comparison to this one. It was his conclusion on "How can this get better?" that was disappointing. Chris O'Brien opted to take the trite path to possible conclusions.

I think the battlefield is now the marketplace. HP and Oracle are going after the same customers in the Enterprise Data Center. Oracle had the upper hand with Enterprise Software. HP closed that gap with the hiring of Leo Apotheker. With HP's recent acquisitions of 3Par, ArcSight and Fortify they are filling critical holes. I believe that they have the right person at the helm to lead them. I applaud HPs Board in having the courage to hire a rank outsider to help them effectively combat Oracle - an advantage that an insider would not have given them.

We are nearing the end of the first quarter and, by my score, HP is leading by a field goal - with each team having scored a touchdown. We have three more quarters left in the game. The Bay Area is already abuzz with all the activity that has happened so far. Hold on to your seat belts folks. The game has just begun!

Oracle Open World

2010-09-19T23:41:00.000-07:00

I was at the GlassFish Community Event at Oracle Open World earlier this evening. The theme for Oracle Open World Conference this year is "Hardware and Software. Engineered to Work Together". The entire block of Howard Street was blocked off by a huge tent for the event. A Half Pipe with the "Future of Java" is the first sight that greets you as you make the left turn into Howard Street from 4th Street.

Other than this blue, the area was swathed in a sea of Oracle Red. I have been attending JavaOne conferences at Moscone for the last 15 years. I have not seen the area transformed in this fashion.

As you enter the Moscone Convention Center, the first thing you see is the America's Cup trophy - with two guards stationed to ensure that it stays there! The crowds were quite huge. I was not surprised when Judith Sim (Oracle CMO) announced that there were 41,000 people in attendance. The Opening keynote of the conference was delivered by HP Exec VP Ann Livermore. I am not sure if I was the only uncomfortable person in the room when she was introduced. Here are two companies that are bitterly feuding out in the open. Her introduction might as well have been , "HP paid mucho bucks to sponsor this conference. There was no backing off their keynote slot. So here is Ann Livermore." Ms. Livermore made the mistake of asking the audience how many people used Oracle solutions on HP hardware. About a dozen people raised their hands. Usually, when the audience is asked a question, the lights go brighter and the camera is turned towards the audience. Luckily (for HP) the logistics folks at Moscone realized the disastrous response and quickly dimmed the lights. Ms. Livermore recovered glibly and unconvincingly said, "Good. That is a sizable number". The rest of her talk focused on the HP panoply of solutions.

The lowlight of the evening was Larry Ellison's keynote. Perhaps my expectations were too high. I had gone there to hear an industry visionary provide a state-of-the-industry, an Oracle-State-of-the-Union, where-is-technology-headed, state-of-feud-with-HP. Instead, we got a dull, boring, sales pitch on Oracle's new Exalogic Cloud server. I was curious to check if it was just me who was uninspired. Just about everyone I checked with afterwards gave a resounding, unequivocal thumbs down. In my opinion, here are the mistakes Mr. Ellison did:

Beating up Salesforce.com and Marc Benioff openly. Also, Mr. Ellison made some simplistic assumptions on Salesforce.com and started bashing this mythical entity.
Insulting the IQ of his audience by repeating just about everything he said not once, not twice, but at least three times. We got it the first time you said it, Mr. Ellison.
At one point in his drone, Mr. Ellison said, "They asked me not to add this information." "They" suggested that for a good reason, Larry. By putting it up and reading it out loud (as if by rote), you did not help yourself.

At around 8:00 pm (the keynote was already 15 minutes past the scheduled end time), I could not take it anymore and walked out. I looked back and most of the seats were empty ...

Oh! and as I was explaining what Micello does to a few folks at the conference, the unanimous response was, "I could totally have used that at this conference". Especially this year, where JavaOne, Oracle Open World and Oracle Develop are all combined into a single event!

Wow!

2010-08-08T07:06:00.000-07:00

[Full Disclosure: I own HPQ stock. The following blog post, however, is not written from a shareholder perspective. These opinions, as the others in my blog, are solely my own]

I mean WOW! In my blogging past, I have heaped praise on two CEO's:

Ramalinga Raju and
Mark Hurd

Ramalinga Raju is currently in Hyderabad's Chanchalguda jail and Mark Hurd has been unceremoniously dismissed as the CEO of HP. I wonder what drives these (and other) talented individuals to such grave deeds of misconduct (I provide an POV later in this posting)

Sexual misconduct/ethical lapses and Corporate world are certainly not strangers. Recently, IBM's Robert Moffat resigned on an insider-trading charge after "becoming intimate" with tipster Danielle Chiesi. I agree with Chris O'Brien that the circumstances of Hurd's dismissal are mysterious - especially with the comment that Hurd would keep $20,000 in his shoe :) However, I disagree with Chris in wondering if Hurd had to go. Curiously, it was the same Hurd that spoke not too long ago of the ethical challenges that he faces in running a large, global company :) If there is one thing I admired about the leadership at Sun it was the high moral ground maintained by its executives (Sun won the award for the World's Most Ethical Company). They may have been recognized as the worst leaders in American History (for the record, I do not share that opinion), but they did their jobs ethically :)

Given the increased scrutiny in a post Enron world, you wonder what were Hurd, Moffat, et al thinking? We are not talking about minor reckless driving incidents before they became the CEO of large corporations. We are also not talking about improprieties by sports figures. After all, the only one affected in this case is their family (not that it condones the despicable and dastardly behavior!).

There is a certain responsibility that comes with running the world's largest computer company - to the 300,000+ employees and shareholders. Words used by Tiger Woods in his apology come to mind, "I convinced myself that normal rules didn't apply. I never thought about who I was hurting. Instead, I thought only about myself. I thought I could get away with whatever I wanted to". History is replete with examples of moral hypocrisy from absolute power.

Lord Acton's dictum of "absolute power corrupting absolutely" has been proven time and time again ...

Micello Indoor Maps v1.1 now available ...

2010-02-18T10:09:00.000-08:00

v1.1 of Micello Indoor Maps became available in the iTunes AppStore earlier this morning.

In this version, we have integrated the compass (available on the iPhone 3GS) that will allow the indoor map to rotate and align the orientation of the map with the real world. On the picture to the left, the user was outside the "Sino" store at Santana Row (in San Jose) walking towards "Left Bank Brassiere". As I have mentioned before, we are able to add these innovations to the indoor maps because Micello's maps are accurate and ge0-coded.

In addition, this version has much smoother scrolling and panning of the maps and some performance improvements. So non-iPhone 3GS users will also benefit from upgrading to v1.1

Micello Indoor Maps unique features ...

2010-02-15T12:54:00.000-08:00

In an earlier post, I introduced the Micello Indoor Maps application that is available at Apple's iTunes AppStore. I had mentioned a few of the unique features of the app that are not available in other applications that offer indoor maps. Here, I will talk about a few more unique features of Micello's maps.

Yesterday was Valentine's Day. Outside of the Holiday Season (Thanksgiving and Christmas), this day is one of the biggest shopping days in the year. Micello celebrated Valentine's Day by applying a special color theme to its maps. The screen shot to the left shows the King of Prussia Mall in Pennsylvania. It shows the stores that are highlighted from a search result for "Shoes" (Nordstorm, American Eagle Outfitters, Forever 21, Wet Seal). It also shows "The North Face" as a selected store. Finally, it shows Ralph Lauren and Tiffany & Co. as favorite stores. Notice the stair icon is highlighted in Blue. This indicates that this is a 2-story mall and there are search results in other floors too.

Another unique feature in Micello's Maps is the ability to provide a "best fit" of the store name within the store outline. When the map is zoomed out, the entity names are not displayed. As you start zooming in, the store names start appearing within the store outline in a manner that can be best fitted.

There are additional capabilities that we will unveil within the next few days. You will have to stay tuned for that ...

Micello Indoor Maps now available ...

2010-01-28T22:31:00.000-08:00

The Micello Indoor Maps application is now available for download from the iTunes AppStore. We wanted to wait until v1.0 to provide a rich experience to our users. Once you download the app, you will agree that it was worth the wait.

We have started receiving some good reviews:

Recently when Google announced Nexus One, they showed navigation to IKEA. We wanted to show that you could go into IKEA with the Micello App. The idea was not to misrepresent that the Micello App is available on Android, but to inform that Micello is extending the navigation metaphor to "Go Inside". Here is the video:

Here are a few unique features in the App:

The only app that provides your location on a map that is not an outdoor map. We are able to do this because our maps are more than just "pretty pictures". They are accurate and are geo-coded. In the above picture, the blue-dot indicates the user's position inside the community.
The maps are personalized and interactive - so you can set your own favorites (the yellow entites above are this user's favorites)
The maps provide iPod Touch users a rich experience by doing intelligent caching and not requiring a data connection all the time
Multi-level communities are handled intuitively - with a "stair icon" to navigate between levels using a thumbnail sketch of the level

There are even more unique features. I will save that for the next post.

If you own and iPhone/iPod touch, download the app and give it a spin - even if there are no maps for communities in your neighborhood. You can experience the interface and then give us feedback on the maps that you would like to see become available.

Implementing SOA with Java EE Book

2010-01-15T17:01:00.001-08:00

The book (that I co-authored with BV Kumar and Tony Ng almost two years ago) has finally published.

It actually released (on Borders, Barnes and Noble and Amazon) on December 31st 2009. I waited until it got some additional visibility before I posted about the book here. On Friday, Jan 15th, the book got mentioned in java.sun.com

I would like to thank Greg Doench for his tireless effort and determinedness to push the book through. Many times in the last year I would ask him, "Greg, are we really going through with this. I am not seeing things moving forward." He would calmly reply, "I am working on it." There is a companion site to the book that provides a sneak peek into the book. We will be using this site to provide updates, samples and take your comments.

Avatar - Why I liked this movie

2010-01-03T06:32:00.000-08:00

This movie is about humans attempting to take over an alien world - an earth-like moon, Pandora, in search of Unobtanium. The story line is familiar - one that we have known since the beginning of civilization - whether it is the British conquering India or Europeans settling in North, Central and South America. They came, they took whatever they wanted and displaced and marginalised the indigenous people. If anything, James Cameron (the director) is saying that human tendencies don't change.

The indigenous people, the Na'vi, are one with nature in Pandora - a lush, tropical paradise. This planet, with its floating mountains, is especially beautiful at night when the flora and fauna catch the light of a nearby gas planet and the rainforest glows. Seeing this is 3D is a visual treat.

I liked this movie for its creative use of Computer Graphics and cutting-edge digital technology. We have seen all kinds of techniques used to make humans look like aliens - including rubber masks and make up. This is inherently limiting because the proportions of the body and the size and spacing of the eyes and cannot be changed. We have also seen the other extreme - where dinosaurs (Juarassic Park) and characters (Toy Story) are completely computer generated.

The Na'vi characters in Avatar are Computer Generated - thus allowing for fundamentally different proportions. However, they resemble the actors who play them - including capturing their facial expressions accurately. This was accomplished by using an "image-based facial performance capture" system - thus making the characters more believable.

So ... don't go to see this movie for stimulating dialogues or interesting characters. In fact, the main characters in Avatar are as stereotypical as they get - Colonel Quaritch could have walked out of a Marvel comic from the 1960s. See it to appreciate the use of digital techniques to transform us into a make-believe world.

Just as Star Wars ushered in a new era in film making back in 1977, look for Avatar to spawn a new generation of digital movies.

There is more to it than meets the eye

2009-12-28T00:25:00.000-08:00

It has been a long while since my last blog post. Things have been very hectic at my startup.

In between work-related activities, I have been (re)thinking what I wrote last time in regards to Obama bowing obsequiously to the Emperor of Japan. The conclusion I reached is that my earlier comments were written in haste. There is always more to any matter than meets the eye.

Peggy Noonan mentioned in an Opinion column on WSJ that, "A picture or photograph becomes iconic only when it seems to express something that people already think." So, when Gerald Ford was incessantly ribbed (even today!) for tumbling as he came down Air Force One, it was not because he was clumsy but because his policies were bumbling. The picture iconified a growing perception.

If USA were perceived in the eyes of the world as a strong and thriving nation, the bow may have seemed gracious and "following protocol". The fact that it was not viewed as such indicates that there is a growing disillusionment on Obama's qualities as a leader.

Since that event last month, the Obama administration has successfully passed a landmark, historic Health Care reform; formulated a well articulated plan for success in Afghanistan. It is still Obama's first year in office. He has three more years to improve the economic mess that he inherited. However, they need to keep in mind that it is in the first year that inedible impressions are made. The bowing picture is not yet iconic. If they are not careful, other iconic pictures may emerge for all the wrong reasons.

Where do people find the time?

2009-11-17T22:42:00.001-08:00

I am just amazed at how people find the time to react and respond to frivolous things.

First there was the issue of Obama's bowing to the Emperor of Japan. It is regarded as being obsequious and showing "weakness". Bloggers and analysts seem to be having a field day over this. What struck me is the huge number of vitriolic comments people are posting on these blogs/articles. Get a life people! Obama was following protocol. In India, you greet by folding your hands in front of your chest (aka "Namaste"). In Japan, you greet by bowing. If other world leaders did not do this in the past when greeting the Japanese Emperor, it only means that they did not do their homework on Japanese customs and culture. Don't make this a political issue. Surprisingly, the excellent speech that Obama gave after this greeting has not received any air time in these blogs.

Next, there is the issue of Newsweek's cover on Sarah Palin. Once again, it blows my mind that 400+ people found the time to respond to this and submit comments. At the outset, I wonder if Sarah Palin and her Going Rogue book deserves this kind of attention (she is no longer running for VP, you know). Sarah Palin has not offered any political insight concerning policy (other than parroting the party line). Come on people, get offended that she is being taken seriously - not for what she is wearing.

Is Obama a deserving winner of the Nobel Peace Prize?

2009-10-09T13:05:00.000-07:00

I was surprised to learn that Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009. Soon after I heard, I went to the official site to see the committee's reasoning. There I found this picture of the Chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, Thorbjørn Jagland, holding a picture of the 2009 winner - with a painting of Alfred Nobel in the background. They cite Obama's, "efforts to strengthen international diplomacy" and his "vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons" and "for inspiring hope and creating a new climate in international politics" as reasons for awarding him.

I am an Obama fan and supporter. I voted for him in the last Election. However, I think that this award is premature. It is okay to give an award to school kids for effort and for being an inspiration. The bar for a Nobel Peace prize should be much higher. There needs to be significant contributions towards World Peace - similar to the actions of a Nelson Mandela (1993) or a Mother Theresa (1979).

In the past, the Peace Prize committee has shown a propensity to recognize anyone working on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (starting with the award in 1978 to Sadat and Begin; to the award in 1994 to Arafat, Peres and Rabin). Obama has shown that he is a man who thinks of achieving world peace. He has reached out to the Muslim world. To quote former Peace Prize winner Kofi Annan (2001), "In an increasingly challenging and volatile world, President Obama has given a sense of hope and optimism to millions around the world" and "has shown that the only way forward is through genuine cooperation with other nations." However, Obama has not done anything yet.

Obama will most certainly give a stirring speech at the ceremony in December. That should not and does not make him a deserving winner. I am sure Alfred Nobel is turning in his grave.

Celebration of Life

2009-09-25T21:29:00.000-07:00

There was a Rajeev Motwani Memorial Celebration at Stanford on Friday, September 25th.

The event was held at Stanford Memorial Church. It began with the recital of a poem, "We remember him"

In the rising of the sun and in its going down,

we remember him.

In the blowing of the wind and in the chill of winter,

we remember him.

In the opening of the buds and in the rebirth of spring,

we remember him.

In the blueness of the sky and in the warmth of summer,

we remember him.

In the rustling of the leaves and in the beauty of autumn,

we remember him.

In the beginning of the year and when it ends,

we remember him.

When we are weary and in need of strength,

we remember him.

When we are lost and sick at heart,

we remember him.

When we have joys we yearn to share,

we remember him.

So long as we live, he too shall live,

for he is now a part of us,

As we remember him.

Prof. John Hennessy then eulogized Rajeev - recollecting from the time Rajeev interviewed at Stanford to the time he came up for tenure to his numerous contributions. Each time, Rajeev far exceeded their expectations.

Robert Goldman, professor of Sanskrit at UCB, provided his blessings. He quoted from the Bhagavad Gita and called Rajeev a stithaprajna - the perfect man; a man of unshakeable intellect. He concluded with the Upanishad mantra, Asatoma sadgamaya.

Rajeev's daughter, Naitri Jadeja, recited the Nirvana Shatakam - written by Adi Shankara.

Ram Shriram introduced Rajeev's family. This was followed by several eulogies. Sergey Brin spoke first and talked about how every meeting with Rajeev resulted in piquing his curiosity and challenging his mind. He provided a concept of a "Motwani Number" - degrees of separation from Motwani. In the spirit of remembering Rajeev, Sergey promised that every day he will help someone, teach someone and enjoy life just a little bit more. Jennifer Widom announced the $2.5m Rajeev Motwani Professorship endowed by Google. Sep Kamwar, a mentee of Rajeev spoke about the influence that Rajeev had in his career. Gautam Bhargava, a classmate of Rajeev's from IIT Kanpur recollected the college days. He announced that Rajeev has been awarded the first Pan IIT Lifetime Achievement award. Lakshmi Pratury, a family friend spoke last. The speakers ranged from distinguished to professional to personal. It was, indeed, a good selection of speakers that gave us insights into various aspects of Rajeev's rich life.

Ron Conway provided the closing remarks. He urged us all to bear the responsibility to nurture the seeds that Rajeev left behind. He also wanted everyone to stay engaged by visiting http://rememberingrajeev.com.

Creating the Next Killer Mobile Application

2009-09-04T15:15:00.000-07:00

App Stores have hit mass market. The estimate is that by 2014, the revenues will reach $25b! Mobile data services revenue have already exceeded $10b in Q1 of 2009. The opportunity for the Next Killer Mobile Application is real and we can all smell it.

At Micello, we have been working on creating such an application for the last 8+ months. Micello did a private launch at JavaOne two months back to validate the concept. We got good visibility and some excellent feedback. We are gearing up to launch our Public Beta pretty soon (watch this space for announcements on that). In the meantime, I worked with Marina Fisher at Sun Microsystems to put together a Webinar on "Creating the Next Killer Mobile Application" that includes lessons learned, best practices and collective wisdom. The Webinar will also delve into how Micello uses Sun's technologies in the deployment stack. So, sign up here and hope to see you at the Webinar on Wednesday next week.

Cool Widget to convert Text to Speech ...

2009-08-23T16:07:00.001-07:00

Type in text to be converted to speech and provide any US/Canada phone number - including Land Line/Mobile/VOIP and the message is read to you. You need to be my friend on Facebook to know the password

Reading a Data Disk burned on a Mac from a PC

2009-08-02T06:52:00.001-07:00

As I had mentioned earlier, we had a family reunion to celebrate the Golden Anniversary of our parents. We had four cameras clicking away and recording the indelible moments of our journey through Southern India: Trivandrum -> Munnar -> Madurai -> Bangalore. In end, we had a collection of over 950 pictures. Since these were all 8 to 10 MP cameras, this translated to a total size of 2.7 Gb.

I decided to collect all the pictures on my MacBook Pro and burn a DVD. Imagine my dismay when folks reached their respective destinations and said, "The DVD you gave us is corrupted. My PC is not able to read it." I quickly discovered that even though Apple claims complete compatibility with a PC, the disks are not compatible. I came across a software called MacDrive that is "the ultimate solution for sharing files between Mac OS and Windows". However, this costs $49.99. I could not ask folks to spend that money just so that they can read the DVD with the pictures. Some more searching yielded this free software that did the trick. Called HFS Explorer, it allows you to browse Mac volumes and extract files onto your PC.

It worked like a charm. After the program started, I said "Load System from Device":

Then I said, "Extract" and specified the Directory on the PC. About 2 hours later, all the photos were on the PC.

Golden Moments Book

2009-07-18T03:22:00.000-07:00

On the occasion of the Golden Wedding Anniversary of our parents, we published a book and presented it to them. Called, "Golden Moments", it captures the recollections from the extended family. There are a limited number of copies of the print edition and these have already been spoken for. When we showed the book to folks, many of them appreciated the effort and wanted a copy for themselves. They even wanted to create a similar book. An online version of the book (with more pictures than the print version) is now available. You can now download and read the book yourself. [Note: The earlier download link had limited bandwidth. As a result, I have additionally made the book available at this location.] Be warned that it is a 90-page book and the file size is 50+Mb. A picture of the cover of the book is shown here. In order to get the contributions for the book, I created a public wiki site on pbworks.com and created a page for each contributor. This allowed for asynchronous, collaborative contributions. Given that the writers were from different parts of the world, this is the only way that this project could be pulled off.

Rajeev Motwani

2009-06-05T21:24:00.000-07:00

It was with total shock that I read about the demise of Rajeev Motwani. I have known Rajeev since the time he graduated from IIT Kanpur. Every one knows Rajeev for his academic excellence, his brilliance and his mentoring of many start ups in the valley - including Google and Paypal. Not many knew that he was a warm, caring and compassionate person.

It was only two weeks back that I exchanged email with him to set up a meeting with him about my startup. He had responded saying that he was busy with "classes and stuff at Stanford until the end of May." I was going to set up some time to meet him in June after JavaOne.

Unfortunately, this meeting will never happen. It is a shame to lose a luminary like him at such a young age. The world has lost a true thinker, an excellent source of inspiration and a great human being.

May your soul Rest In Peace, Rajeev.

Appreciating volunteers

2009-05-23T17:08:00.000-07:00

In general, wherever you live, you are presented with numerous options for getting involved in your community. None of us are in an island. We depend on each other for survival and getting through our daily lives. The gap between communities and societies is ever increasing. This gap can be effectively bridged through volunteering. Each of us has skills in certain areas that others can benefit from. Volunteering is all about sharing these skills with the community. This allows us to connect with the community and give something back. There is also the benefit of learning group dynamics and team facilitation. While it is easier to "get things done" as a manager at work, it is not as easy to work with a diverse range of people with varied backgrounds that one encounters in a community and still complete tasks.

I have been involved in the Technology Committee of Weibel Elementary School for the last 11 years. The mission of the Technology Committee is to enable the Teachers to implement/use technology in their day-to-day activities. I still remember starting off with wiring all the class rooms with CAT-5 cables. Now, the school is blanketed with Wireless; most teachers have laptops and are not "afraid" to use Technology to improve the dissemination of information and assist them with curriculum development. As I had mentioned in an earlier posting on "25 Random Facts about me", I generally volunteer in the activities that my kids are involved in. Initially, I drew inspiration from people like Trish & John Caruso; John Mitchell and West Kurihara. They would tirelessly volunteer despite having hectic schedules. Often people would ask me, "How do you find the time?" My response would be, "It is not a question of finding time. It is about making time."

Every year, the teachers at Weibel celebrate a "Volunteer Appreciation Day" where all the volunteers get together at Best House in the verdant Palmdale Estates. This year's celebration was on Thursday, May 21st. At this event the PTO awards certificates to the Board members and a few others to recognize their contributions. In addition, it is an opportunity for parents to talk to the teachers in a casual environment. The ambience of the place, the food and the people all make it a memorable, enjoyable evening. The evening's entertainment is provided by a High School choir/band. Usually, the participating students would have graduated from Weibel - thus giving the parents and teachers additional impetus to cheer/encourage them.

At the end of the evening the PTO gives one "TOP" award for "Thoroughly Outstanding

Performance". I was the recipient of this year's TOP award. I am humbled by the award and feel privileged that my kids belong to an Elementary School District with such a high caliber of parents, teachers and administrators. I am probably not the most deserving of this award. I am aware of many "unsung" parents who spend countless hours on a daily basis keeping the kids safe and healthy. Nevertheless, I would like to avail the "opportunity" to urge other parents to volunteer more. The school and the kids are the better for it. Besides, it is your way of "giving back".

TiEcon, Day 2

2009-05-16T23:27:00.000-07:00

The opening keynote on Day 2 was delivered by Tony Hseih, CEO of Zappos. Tony sold his first (straight out of Harvard) company, LinkExchange, to Microsoft for $265m. He started off as an investor in Zappos and soon became its CEO. Today Zappos has $1B in gross merchandise sales, a 24x7 call center, 365-day return policy and free shipping both ways. Their pervasive values of "Bring top notch customer service and deliver the very best customer experience" came across in every fiber of Tony's talk.

He talked about the importance of having a strong culture and core values for your company. The Zappos core values are:

Deliver WOW through service
Embrace and drive change
Create fun and a little weirdness
Be adventurous, creative and open-minded
Pursue growth and learning
Open and honest relationship with communication
Build a positive team and family spirit
Do more with less
Be passionate and determined
Be humble

It is important to build a brand that matters. The seven steps to do this are:

DECIDE to build a long-term, sustainable brand.
Figure out values and culture. Alignment is important. Live the brand.
Commit to transparency.

Extranet for vendors
"Ask anything" newsletter
Tours and reporter visits
zapposinsights.com - you need to subscribe to this to get inside access to Zappos management
twitter.zappos.com

Vision. Whatever you are thinking, think bigger. Choose the vision, not the money.
Build relationships, not "networking". Be INTERESTED, rather than be INTERESTING.
Build your Team. "If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together," by Al Gore is applicable here.
Think long term. There is no "get rich quick" formula. "Overnight successes" take years to build.

He transitioned to talk about the topic that he has been recently studying - the science of Happiness. In general, people are bad at predicting what will bring them (sustained) happiness. He asked everyone to see how the science of happiness can help your business, your brand and yourself.

At the conclusion of his talk, he was given a standing ovation - indicating how the audience resonated with his simple, yet compelling and inspiring thoughts.

The afternoon keynote was given by Reid Hoffman, CEO of LinkedIn. This followed the format of a fireside chat with Mike Malone.

Reid mentioned that LinkedIn has 40m users world wide and are growing at 1m every 17 days. "Entrepreneurs jump off a cliff and assemble an airplane on the way down. You make decisions by doing it and not prepping for it." I could totally relate to that from my own experience!

Reid was asked about the areas of focus for LinkedIn over the next few years. He said that they would love to power, "who should I meet when I go to TiEcon". I see this as a perfect opportunity for LinkedIn to partner with Micello - which has the ability to deliver on this vision within our DNA.

Reid concluded saying that the "future is sooner and stranger than you think"

I had the opportunity to meet numerous people over the last few days. I met with potential users, partners, investors, journalists/bloggers/analysts. I hope to see some of those connections materialize into meaningful, long term relationships.

TiEcon, Day 1

2009-05-15T21:29:00.000-07:00

The Micello Team was at TiEcon today. Our attorneys are one of the sponsors of TiEcon and were generous enough to allow us to use their booth. This gave us presence on the floor and the ability to demo the application to the attendees. With over 3600 attendees, there was a lot of energy. We demoed to 100+ folks and recieved positive feedback from all.

The opening keynote was given by Intuit CEO, Brad Smith. This talk certainly allowed the conference to start on a high note. He urged the audience to play offence, and not defence because "the clouds will part and the sun will shine ultimately".

He talked about four structural shifts taking place in the industry:

User demographic shifts. Increasingly Gen Yers are using technologies and entering the work force. The baby boomers (46-64 year olds) are still a force to contend with. Momtrepreneurs, Careerpreneurs and Immigrants complete the demography shift.
Value creation shift. User contribution and social interactions are huge and must not be ignored.
Technology shift. Mobile is growing at a CAGR of 30%. This is far outpacing other technologies.
Structural shift. There are geographic shifts taking place.

He said that Innovation is a Team Sport:

Customers - engage with them. Find out what they love about your product and what they hate. There are things that you can do to change and recognize that there are things that cannot change. Get the roughest, roughest prototype out to customers ASAP. Failing fast will allow you to succeed faster.
Employees - when they gave employees unstructured time, productivity and employee satisfaction improved.
Networks - tap partners to dramatically increase market potential and customer value.

Later, I attended a panel on "Wireless. What is working and Why". The panel was moderated by Levi Shapiro of Hiro Media. Bernard Gershon, Gershon Media; Atif Hussein, Nokia; Yves Maitre, Orange and Dilip Venkatachari, NEA were on the panel. The following is a quote that Dilip made in his opening remarks, "There are numerous innovative technologies that are coming out in the mobile space. Check out Micello. They are bringing the conference to your phone and allowing you to locate and network with friends and associates easily." Atif Hussein mentioned, "Mobile applications should connect people with where they are right now. The data presented to users should be location aware and time sensitive. No sense in letting people know of an event that has concluded." Atif just articulated Micello's value proposition. This is exactly what we do!

The afternoon's keynote was given by TIBCO CEO, Vivek Ranadive. Vivek said that the 20th century did not dawn until 1908 - the year Henry Ford introduced the Model-T. In a similar vein, the 21st century dawned in 2009. He mentioned the following highlights in 2009:

America has a black President
More homes with cell phones than land lines
Micello launches its application - ok, he did not say this ;)

Vivek talked about the evolution from Enterprise 1.0 to Enterprise 2.0. Moving from mainframe to client server. From software running on bare metal to software running on databases. We are now in the Enterprise 3.0 era - where the architecture is cloud facilitated and all the processes are virtualized. The architecture is event driven and transactions are in-memory.

He peppered his talk with anecdotes from his personal life. When he beat out Reuters in a high profile bidding war for the trading floor application at Shearson Lehman, he got invited to a Reuters event (in the U.K.) where he was the guest of honor. At a cocktail party, he was talking to one of the directors at Reuters about "TIB" being The Information Bus when he responded, "Oh! they told me that it stood for That Indian Bast**d".

I am certainly looking forward to Day 2 on Saturday.

Widget to download the Micello mobile application

2009-05-15T00:32:00.001-07:00

We are going to be previewing the Micello app at TiECon on Friday, May 15th. He is a widget that will send you (by SMS to the phone number provided) a device specific link to download the application.

The Cat is out of the bag ...

2009-05-05T17:41:00.000-07:00

I have said earlier that my startup, Micello, is working in stealth mode. Last Friday, we were invited to James Gosling's bash at the Sun Menlo Park campus. Here, Sun recorded short videos of their partners talking about their startup and how they use Sun technologies. You can view my video here:

You can also view this video on the Sun blog here. I will provide additional updates as we are getting ready with our Beta.

Sun can still do it ...

2009-04-07T05:38:00.000-07:00

There have been a lot of folks blogging about the Sun, IBM fiasco that has unfolded over the last few days. Here are links to just a few:

With all the comments and rumors floating around, this has turned out to be one big soap opera! The business world is replete with such drama - going back to John Sculley and Steve Jobs to the Carly Fiorina and Walter Hewlett splat to the more recent Steve Ballmer and Jerry Yang exchange. Just as Apple did not die after Steve Jobs left and HP did not collapse under the weight of the Board room drama and Yahoo continued to survive after Microsoft withdrew its offer, I believe Sun will come out from under this despite opinions to the contrary. In all cases , it required a change in leadership. Mark Hurd has proven to be a good fit for HP and Carol Bartz seems to be making the right moves at Yahoo.

There have been vituperative remarks against Jonathan Schwartz in public forums of late asking for his resignation. In his defence, Schwartz inherited Sun with a lot of problems. The previous leaders (Ed Zander, Janpieter Sceerder, et al.) had run the company to the ground after the dotcom boom. Despite that, Schwartz brought back the sense of innovation to Sun. I still believe that his single minded focus on open sourcing software and monetizing on training and support is the right strategy if it is executed properly. Unfortunately, Schwartz's leadership did not translate to increased sales for Sun. Contrast this with Mark Hurd's approach. Hurd chose to focus on numbers and execution. Perhaps that should be the role of a CEO. Apparently, McNealy did not pass that memo to Schwartz.

So, Schwartz needs to go - at the very least to be the sacrificial lamb. Sun should put its focus on its core strengths and execute that to perfection. I don't believe McNealy is the man for this job. The reasons he handed the reins to Schwartz are still valid - he has "emotional strings attached". I believe that Sun can still do it because of its engineering prowess. They need to find the right CEO soon. Perhaps they should approach Arun Sarin or Vivek Paul ...

Enough already!

2009-02-28T08:48:00.000-08:00

With February drawing to a close, the newspapers are blaring summaries of how repressed things are. Here is a sample:

All this makes you wonder if there is light at the end of the tunnel. How can we possibly extract ourselves from this abject morass?

One option is to behave like the proverbial stork and stick your head into the sand.

I, for one, am not prepared to either stick my head in the sand or get depressed by the crumbling economy. I believe that it is technology that will pull us out of this mess. I am inspired by forward looking thinkers like Juan Enriquez. In his talk (at ~ 7:00 minute mark), he says, "Venture backed companies are 0.02% of the US GDP in investment, but account for 17.5% of the output". Later he says, "As we worry about the flames of the present, let us keep an eye on the future." I am also inspired by Bill Gates who is doing remarkable things to change the world one problem at a time. I believe that President Obama's audacity of hope will become infectious.

For these and several other reasons, I refuse to get swayed by the nay sayers. I am putting my money where my mouth is - in my efforts to bootstrap a startup in the mobile content delivery space. I have been getting a lot of tips and useful pointers from others. I plan to collect them into another blog that I will post shortly.

Academy Awards Widget

2009-02-24T22:35:00.001-08:00

In the spirit of the recently concluded Academy Awards, here is a simple widget that provides the results in the given category for any year

25 Random Facts about me

2009-02-07T06:25:00.000-08:00

There is this viral campaign on Facebook where folks write 25 Random Facts about themselves and then tag 25 of their friends to do the same. Mainstream media like the NY Times have written about this. Four different people have tagged me on Facebook. Rather than continue the trend on Facebook, I have captured the 25 Random Facts about me in this post. They are not in any particular order.

1. I am a can-do person. I find ways to make things work. I firmly believe in "If a path does not exist, create one."

2. I hate nay-sayers. It surprises me that the first thing that many people say when posed with a task/challenge is "no".

3. Of course, I believe in being reasonable about the tasks that one undertakes. There is no sense in "biting off more than you can chew". Life is often a delicate balance between the time available and the time it takes to do things that you are passionate about.

4. I am currently passionate about the start-up that I am a co-founder of. I got involved in this after my long stint at Sun Microsystems. We are off to a great start where we have pitched to a few folks and they are excited about the concept of getting high value, personalized information delivered to them when they want it, where they want it. I cannot say much more now - since we are in stealth mode. I hope to be able to communicate more details through these channels very shortly.

5. I am truly excited about what the future holds. I have the ability to get things done and a passion for getting technology to the masses.

6. I am not a video game/computer games player and cannot understand that psyche. I think that it is simply a huge time sink.

7. My happiest memories are the dates of my marriage to Jayanthi, the birth of our older son, Akshay and the birth of the twins, Rohan and Madhuri.

8. I am a trivia buff. I was often invited to conduct Quiz tournaments in my college days. My favorite show on TV is "Jeopardy". I have run the annual "GATE Olympics" for gifted children in the Fremont Unified School District for the last five years.

9. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to work with co-authors BV Kumar and Tony Ng on the book, "Implementing SOA with Java EE" published by Prentice Hall. This got me invited to give a talk at the International SOA Symposium in Amsterdam in October 2008.

10. I am the Technology Chair at the Elementary School where my kids go. Whenever time permits, I help the teachers in the school with Technology issues.

11. I am on the Advisory Board in the Computer Science Department of CSU East Bay.

12. I am proud of my association with Zembly - my role in incubating the project, building the team, seeing it come to life, shepherding the creation of two deep, meaningful social applications - myPicks Beijing and myPicks U.S. Elections, spearheading the book on Zembly and building the partner eco-system for Zembly.

13. I love traveling - seeing new places and meeting new people. I have been fortunate to travel to 100+ cities in 20+ countries. You can see a complete profile of cities I have visited in the Facebook app, Cities I've Visited here (you need to add the app to your Facebook profile)

14. I am an avid photographer. In addition to a getting a good D-SLR camera (I own a Nikon D-60), I highly recommend getting a good digital photo frame (I am very pleased with the SmartParts OptiPix 10.4"). Take lots of pictures (I regret having taken just 10 pictures during an enchanting week that we spent one winter in Lake Chelan, WA) and upload selected pictures to the photo frame. Each picture has a story of its own.

15. We recently started collecting shot glasses from each city that we visited. Already, the collection is at 50+ glasses.

16. The memory that I will cherish forever is when we visited with Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, President of India, at the Rashtrapati Bhawan. Read more about this in an earlier blog posting.

17. My father is the oldest of 9, my mother is the oldest of 3, I am the oldest of 4.

18. I am looking forward to my parents' 50th wedding anniversary celebration this summer. Our family (siblings, spouses, children) will all be together for the first time ever!

19. My saddest memories to date are the deaths of three people dear to me - my maternal grand parents and my father-in-law.

20. I am an official USCF Tournament Director. I have helped organize large scholastic Chess Tournaments (with over 1500 kids participating). I am proficient in the software that is used to conduct large Chess tournaments.

21. I am a U.S. Soccer Federation licensed soccer referee. My referee grade permits me to officiate competitive youth games until a certain age level. I can pass more tests and go up the ladder - all the way to officiating MLS soccer games! I am also the coach of my son's soccer team in FC Fremont.

22. I am a little-league baseball umpire and often umpire games at Warm Spring Little League.

23. I was hit by a drunk driver in a road accident in Yuma, Arizona over 20 years back. Unfortunately two of my good friends, Alka Jain and Rashmi Khera, both brilliant software engineers, were killed in that accident. Since I have temporary amnesia from 1 hour before the accident until five days after (during which period I was in the ICU), I have no recollections of the accident.

24. The most frightening moment that I can remember is when our 3-year old went missing in a very crowded Chicago train station on Christmas Eve eight years ago. We spent the next five minutes frantically searching for him. Just imagine the relief when we spotted him being carried by a Station Superintendent asking, "Is anyone missing a child?"

25. The last time I remember weeping openly was when they they had to cut a dime-sized incision into our older son's shoulder to remove staph bacterial infected flesh - apparently caused by some insect bite. That was 10+ years ago!

New beginnings

2009-01-23T13:19:00.000-08:00

It is said that the secret to a rich life is to have more beginnings than endings. As I transition my Sun blog to this blog, I cannot think of a more apt way to begin.

I had a wonderful experience at Sun. Some have asked me how I was able to stay in one place for so long. The fact is that since I moved from one project to another, it never felt that way. In fact, I felt the opposite - that I was in a start up for this extended period.

In the last 24 hrs, many folks have extended their wishes to me. I thank them all for their thoughts. As I have said before I am tremendously excited for what the future holds.

Season's Greetings

2008-12-31T10:00:00.000-08:00

A pictorial retrospective of our year can be seen here:

myPicks U.S. Election 2008

2008-10-13T07:11:00.000-07:00

There is a fun game that you can play while voicing your opinion on the burning issues in the Presidential Campaigns of Obama and McCain. Visit http://zembly.com/mypicksus/ to get directed to the appropriate page on Facebook or MySpace.

Fantasy Challenge for the 2008 Summer Games

2008-08-07T14:52:00.000-07:00

We have created an exciting Facebook game that allows you to predict the winners of each event in the upcoming 2008 Summer Games in Beijing. You score points for making correct predictions. These points get accumulated to your country (which you select the first time you play the game).

So, login to your Facebook account and click here to play the game.

We also created this widget that will quickly get you information on how many players are playing for a particular country. You can click on Play to get more information about the game and go to the game itself.