Aditya Kothadiya's Blog

This is a fascinating talk by Jack Dorsey, Co-founder of Twitter and Square talks about his four core takeaways from his experiences building and launching Twitter  and Square. A must watch video of 16 minutes. Completely worth it if you are someone who gets lots of ideas and want to build companies around them. These are the essential steps that you would follow to achieve that -

1. Draw your ideas: Get your idea out of your head by drawing it and share it with people around it.
2. Recognize the luck is happening around you: Assess when the time (and the market) is right to execute your idea.
3. Iterate your product: Take in the feedback, be a rigorous editor, and refine your idea.
4. Know when to stop: Realize if your idea is working or not. If not, then stop and put it away, and move on.

Here is a video -

I totally agree with these points -

Your customers can tell you the things that are broken and how they want to be made happen. Listen to them. Make them happy. But they won’t create the future roadmap for your product or service. That’s your job.

- via Why You Should NEVER Listen to Your Customers by Mark Cuban

I’ve been arguing about this whole philosophy of “you innovating or inventing something” Vs “asking customers for what they want and building that” with my other friend who is a huge customer development and lean startup fan. Apparently I’ve different views about whole customer development and lean startup approach than his views. I think people are just taking extreme stance for these approaches and blindly following it since it’s kind of a buzz word in the web startup world. I don’t buy these approaches fully. I believe there are certain flaws with those approaches. I agree that it’s important to be lean, but I don’t want to stop innovating and thinking next interesting ideas and just build what’s needed today. I listen to all these lean startup and customer development theories, but I execute what makes sense to me, and ignore the rest.

I’ll write a detailed post on my experience while working with a lean startup approach, and also my experience with ignoring that advice, but for now read this post by Mark Cuban – which highlights my philosophy really well – Why You Should NEVER Listen to Your Customers.

These days, Laptops and Tablet PCs are quite popular in schools to take notes during your classes. But not
everyone can afford it, or most of the times you don’t carry it. But there is a new friend of students who is entering into this market. The today’s innovative product is a digital

pen that captures your handwriting, connects to your PC via
USB, and digitizes your notes. The FLY
Fusion Pentop Computer, as they call it, is an innovative study tool that’s
also loaded with educational and entertaining software.

The FLY Fusion Pentop Computer puts sophisticated computing power right in the palm of your hand.
When
you write with the FLY Fusion Pentop Computer on FLY™ Paper, everything
is automatically captured and digitized. You can then upload it to your
PC and convert to text. It is designed to enhance homework productivity by providing easy
access to subject information for faster problem solving and real-time
homework support. Touch your pentop computer to FLY Paper, and
you can quiz yourself on history, get help with a quadratic equation,
or even play your favorite MP3.

For more information, go to FlyWorld.

Note: If you have noticed such innovations, then
please write it to me at aditya AT adeologue DOT com and I will mention
about it in this series with appropriate credit to the referral.

For more articles from this series, please visit – Innovations.

What is CAPTCHA?

A CAPTCHA is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to determine whether the user is human. "CAPTCHA" is an acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart". A CAPTCHA involves one computer (a server) which asks a user to complete a test. While the computer is able to generate and grade the test, it is not able to solve the test on its own. Because computers are unable to solve the CAPTCHA, any user entering a correct solution is presumed to be human. A common type of CAPTCHA requires that the user type the letters of a distorted image, sometimes with the addition of an obscured sequence of letters or digits that appears on the screen.

What are the applications?

CAPTCHAs are used to prevent automated software (spamming softwares) from performing actions, which degrade the quality of service of a given system. e.g. they can be deployed to protect systems vulnerable to e-mail spams. CAPTCHAs have also found active use in stopping automated posting to blogs or forums, whether as a result of commercial promotion or harassment. [Source: Wikipedia]

What are the problems?

I sometimes found visual CAPTCHAs to be very disturbing. They are not pleasant and it kills the aesthetic aspect of your website’s UI design. Sometimes they are distorted to such an extent that they are very hard to read. Sometimes it’s just frustrating.

Another problem in accessing CAPTCHA is people who have poor vision or blind, who can not solve the task assigned by CAPTCHA.

What are the innovations?

Based on above problems, I have observed following innovations. Some are already implemented, and some are in the idea phase.

Now days, I have seen many websites providing an audio version of the CAPTCHA in addition to the visual method. Sweet!

Recently, I stumbled upon a website (forgot the name) which has even easier way of identifying if the client is a human being or not by asking a text based CAPTCHA. For both deaf and blind users, this technique will be very helpful as they require additional help in both audio and visual CAPTCHAs. The technique was to ask mathematical questions like "what is 1 + 1" or "what is 3 * 2" or "common sense" questions like "what color is the sky".

I found it very clean, pleasant and neat implementation. It didn’t disturb the aesthetic part of the UI design.

But there might be problems with this technique as well. Either they cannot be automatically generated or they can be easily cracked given the state of artificial intelligence. Due to the lack of security provided by text based CAPTCHAs, most sites still choose to use an audio and visual CAPTCHA as a way of balancing accessibility and security.

But if text based CAPTCHAs have security problems, then there might be ways to get around that issue. But I found them very intelligent and pleasant. Another way to make CAPTCHAs aesthetically clean and secure is using this idea suggested by Seth Godin. I haven’t seen the implementation of this idea yet.

What we need is a centralized CAPTCHA server that everyone can use for free. And how would it be monetized, you ask?

Easy. Logos. It might be for soup or a server or an airline. Type the brand you see above.

Sweet! This approach will not kill the aesthetic aspect of the UI, and at the same time it will be secure and can be monetized.

Let me know if you have seen some more innovative ways of using CAPTCHA.

Note: If you have noticed such innovations, then
please write it to me at aditya AT adeologue DOT com and I will mention
about it in this series with appropriate credit to the referral.

For more articles from this series, please visit – Innovations.

The demand for more computing performance causes CPU designers to come up with innovative architectures of microprocessors. The performance of an application can be increased if we run those applications in parallel. Using multiple independent CPUs is one common method used to increase a system’s overall parallelism. But instead of using mulitple CPUs on different chips, CPU designers came up with a technology where two or more independent cores are manufactured into a single piece of silicon integrated circuit.

A dual-core device contains two independent microprocessors and a quad-core device contains four microprocessors on a single chip. Cores in a multi-core device may share a single coherent cache (temporary storage area) at the highest on-device  level or may have separate caches. The processors also share the same interconnect to the rest of the system. In order to deliver high computing general-purpose processors, manufacturers such as Intel and AMD have turned to multi-core designs.

The general trend in processor development has been from multi-core to many-core: from dual, quad, eight-core chips to ones with tens or even hundreds of cores. AMD released its dual-core server/workstation processors, the Opteron, and its dual-core desktop processors, the Athlon. Intel launched its quad core processor, and Core Duo microprocessors with dual-core technology.

Tilera Corp. has begun shipping a 64-core processor – TILE64 to customers.
It is targeting embedded applications like networking and
digital video, and is not meant to compete with multicore processors
being marketing by Intel and AMD.

The TILE64 has 64 identical processor cores or tiles — that are interconnected. Each tile is a complete full-featured processor, including integrated
L1 & L2 cache and a non-blocking switch that connects the tile into
the mesh. This means that each tile can independently run a full
operating system, or multiple tiles taken together can run a
multi-processing operating system like SMP Linux.

With a standard ANSI C programming environment, developers can leverage
their existing software investment as well as utilize the vast body of
Open Source code available. Tiles can be grouped into clusters to apply
the appropriate amount of horsepower to each application. Since
multiple operating system instances can be run on the TILE64™
simultaneously, it can replace multiple CPU subsystems for both the
data plane and control plane.


The technology was developed by MIT professor Anant Agarwal, founder of
Tilera; he continues today as the company’s chief technology officer.

A new parking meter aims to reduce the number of tickets drivers
receive by calling and alerting them that the meter is running low on
time. A few cities have installed the "smart" model.

PhotoViolationMeter, or PVM,
calls drivers to warn them that the meter is running out of time and
provides a pay-by-phone option to refill the meter. When drivers first
park, they can pay with debit or credit cards, or spare change.

The meters also photograph license plates, providing evidence for
prosecution when cars do violate parking laws. The meters’ sensors
reset each time a car parks in the corresponding space, decreasing the
likelihood cities will lose money on scofflaws who are not caught by
traffic police.
The meters also greet drivers with a message and inform them of specific parking regulations.

Source: EE Times

Note: If you have noticed such innovations, then
please write it to me at aditya AT adeologue DOT com and I will mention
about it in this series with appropriate credit to the referral.

For more articles from this series, please visit – Innovations.

Everyone wants their mobile devices to be small, but many people also curse the tiny, cryptic keyboards that manufacturers squeeze into smart phones and PDAs. Lumio Inc.’s Virtual Interface technology offers a possible solution. Using this technology, we can have virtual keyboard built in mobile devices or  can be obtained in a stand alone module.

Virtual keyboards are no more a film fantasy now!

Lumio’s technology uses a red laser to illuminate a virtual keyboard outline on virtually any surface. The laser is a visual guide to where to put your fingers. A separate Infrared illumination and sensor module invisibly tracks when and where your fingers touch the surface, translating that into keystrokes or other commands.

This technology has applications in airplane seats, cars, restaurants, home appliances and industrial automation. 

Note: If you have noticed such innovations, then
please write it to me at aditya AT adeologue DOT com and I will mention
about it in this series with appropriate credit to the referral.

For more articles from this series, please visit – Innovations.

Its the right day to write about innovations related to rain or weather forecast as its raining in the Bay Area since morning. And as usual, I didn’t know the weather forecast and I didn’t carry my umbrella. But the Ambient Umbrella can save you from doing such mistakes again in future. It lets you know when rain or snow is in the forecast by illuminating its handle. So you know in advance when to carry your umbrella or not. Light patterns intuitively indicate rain, drizzle, snow or thunderstorms. It basically receives weather data automatically from AccuWeather.com. This product is innovated and commercialized by Ambient Devices.

Note: If you have noticed such innovations, then
please write it to me at aditya AT adeologue DOT com and I will mention
about it in this series with appropriate credit to the referral.

For more articles from this series, please visit – Innovations.

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is an automatic identification method, relying on storing and remotely retrieving data using devices called RFID tags or transponders. Students from Netherlands developed a new system for tracking books and potentially other media as well. An RFID tag inside the book and sensors on the shelves detect when the item has been moved and where it has been moved too. Watch the detailed demo video below.

Note: If you have noticed such innovations, then
please write it to me at aditya AT adeologue DOT com and I will mention
about it in this series with appropriate credit to the referral.

For more articles from this series, please visit – Innovations.

I am starting a new series – Innovations, where I will mention some interesting innovations from any domain. Most likely they will be very minor to notice, but are worth mentioning. These innovations solve the same problem, but they are marvel pieces of creativity in the solutions.

To start with, lets look at the most hyped, and probably worth of its hype product of this year – iPhone.

Apple has innovated a keypad with web compatible keys. The spacebar is replaced by web related key words when you want to enter a URL. As URLs do not need blank spaces, Apple brilliantly replaces the unnecessary space key with ones that add value.

Note: If you have noticed such innovations, then please write it to me at aditya AT adeologue DOT com and I will mention about it in this series with appropriate credit to the referral.