Aditya Kothadiya's Blog

I was always curious to know some stats and today I stumbled on this great blog post “What do I mean, by ‘next four billion’?“. Following are some numbers that I found very interesting -

There are 480 million newspapers printed daily; 800 million automobiles registered on the planet; 1.1 billion personal computers including all desktops, laptops, notebooks and netbooks; 1.2 billion fixed landine phones; 1.4 billion internet users; 1.5 billion TV sets; 1.7 billion unique holders of a credit card of any type; and 2.1 billion unique holders of a banking account of any kind. But 4 billion mobile phone subscriptions.

…

So, that is what was the first four billion. The rapid growth of what has become the most widely adopted technology on the planet. Now, what about the topic of the “next 4 billion”, that does sound a bit strange. The world total human population is only 6.7 billion people. Shouldn’t I be saying, “the next 2.7 billion”.

…

So here is the big news. The next 4 Billion will not be like you and me. They will not be wealthy enough to own a PC and have a broadband connection and read blogs or do any Twittering on a PC. Over 95% of the next 4 billion will be in the Developing World, and while there will be of course an emerging middle class who may aspire to own a netbook, those tend to be wealthy enough to already have a subscription today. Those next four billion will be either those who do not have any connection today, at all, or else are second and third subscriptions to those who already have one today.

Read the entire post if you want to learn more about the mobile phone market potential. The numbers are really interesting!

I’m a subscriber of a web service, which provides online manuals or articles for the tools that I use on a daily basis at my workplace. So I need to visit this service once in a while. Today when I tried logging into it after many days, it redirected me to create a new password because my password was not meeting their “Strong Password Policy” requirement.

My first reaction was – why the heck they need “Strong Password Policy”? They are just an online help documentation service, not a Credit Card or Bank website. And I absolutely don’t have any personal information stored there.

But anyways, whatever the reason they thought, I convinced myself to change the password. But guess what, their freaking complex “Secure Password Policy” didn’t allow me to create any password which I thought were quite secure enough.

Then I had to read their strong password policy. Here is what it mentioned -

Your password must meet the following criteria:

• Must be at least 8 characters long
• Must include at least 1 number
• Must include at least 1 symbol character (non-letter or number, such as *, %, or #)
• Must include at least 1 lowercase letter
• Must include at least 1 uppercase letter
• Must not include your username, first name, and last name
• These requirements must be met within the first 8 characters

After reading this, I almost had to control myself from hitting my keyboard on the monitor. Do read the each bullet carefully, especially the last one. Why on the earth that service needs this kind of password policy? Believe it or not, even my Credit Card or Bank websites don’t enforce me to create this kind of “strong” password.

In my opinion, these are the types of services, who absolutely don’t get the web usability. Just because someone cracked the code to create strongest password, doesn’t mean that’s the way to go. On top of this stupid requirement, this service neither has a sophistacated interface to navigate through hundereds of documents nor they have smart search engine.

Come on guys, now it’s almost the end of Web 2.0 era. At least now please throw away those Web 1.0 practices and follow the cuttting-edge technologies and practices. Please grow up.

For those who are new to this blog, I used to write my personal blog at Adeologue.com, which I’ll be deleting very soon. Recently I moved the same blog to this AdityaKothadiya.com domain. I’ve been wanting to do it since so long, but finally got the time to do it now. Here is my reasoning why I moved my blog -

1. Real identity

I started blogging 4 years ago under the brand called Adeology (Aditya’s Ideology). I really loved that name. But when I decided to host it on the same domain name, not surprisingly, the domain name wasn’t available. The closest I could find was Adeologue.com. I blogged under that brand for almost 2 years. But over the period, I got bored of it. I didn’t find it personal anymore. Also, the domain name wasn’t representing my identity. In this social media world, if I’m building my brand, I thought I better build it under one common identity i.e. my real name.

2. Personal domain

When you are writing a personal blog, which is not strictly topic specific, then it’s better you blog under your personal domain. It gives you some flexibility to write posts which are thoughtful, are oriented towards your readership, but are little off from your blog topic. In my opinion, if you are writing a group blog, or a topic specific blog, then you should go for some generic or topic specific domain name. This also gives you some flexibility to add more authors to your blog as co-contributors.

3. New broader focus

At Adeologue.com, I mainly wrote about entrepreneurship, startups, productivity tips for students and recent graduates, and lessons learned from different books. Since last few months, I’ve been spending more and more time in programming and building web applications, I found less and less time for the blogging. After spending more time on building applications, I also wanted to write about programming, hacks, tutorials, tips that I was learning along the way. But I couldn’t write it under Adeologue.com brand, because it was not started with that theme in the mind. Now, I’ll continue to write about entrepreneurship, productivity, tips for students, book reviews, but I’ll also write about small programs, hacks, applications and more. With this new year, new domain, new design, new focus, I’m excited to share more thoughts and more learning with you.

4. Blogging platform

I first started blogging with Blogger.com service. It sucked big time. I never liked that. And I think it still sucks. It was too close and too clumsy. But it was free, so I stuck with it for some time. After it reached my frustration peak, I moved to TypePad.com – a paid subscription service. That was my another mistake. TypePad also sucked big time. I’ve been using TypePad for last 2 years, but I hardly found any improvement in that service over 2 years. The service is slow. It’s usability has some serious issues. The experience was not pleasant. And the worst part – it was paid. It’s still the same TypePad that I started using 2 years ago. I never felt that it was worth for $90/year.

On the other hand, I found WordPress was doing relentless improvement in their blogging platform. And it’s a free solution if you already have the web hosting subscription plan. When I explored its 2.7 release, I was sold completely. It’s smooth. It’s highly usable. It’s fast. It’s simple and beautiful. It has lot of great features. And it is free. This was the turning point for me to move from TypePad to WordPress. I’m loving WordPress. I just regret why I took so long to migrate to WordPress.

5. More control

Another reason I’m loving WordPress is, it gives me complete control over features, layout, design, tools, all without additional cost. I always wanted to have clean, simplified, but CSS rich design for my blog. I could never achieve that on Blogger and WordPress for minimal expenses. Using WordPress, I got complete control over how I wanted to design this blog’s theme. I’m very happy with the result. Simple and clean. More focus on post entries. Fonts are also bigger and clearly readable. The width of post section is also wide enough that I can post some code snippets. Thanks to Lucian Marin’s original simplistic theme.

I hope you are also liking this new blog, and will also like the content of this blog. Let me know any feedback that you may have.

Andrew Chen at Futuristic Play asks a question – Are you a product fanatic?

I think yes, I am.

To answer this question, he mentioend generic characterisitics of product fanatics as below. I have marked those things which I recognize doing most of the times.

1. You think MySpace is soooo ugly => It’s horrible.

2. You only use the best products:
Macbook Pro => Well, not Pro, but regular Macbook
Mac OS X => Yes, I love it.
Firefox => Firefox Fan!
Gmail => I thought that’s the only option we have in Webbased email services
Google Maps => It’s supercool!
Facebook => Those guys are geniuses.

3. You never use the popular products:
Dell => Had this laptop, errr..deskop before! Thank God I switched to Mac!
Windows => Avoid it as much as possible.
IE => IE Means PopUps!
Yahoo Mail => Okay, I lied earlier. I know Yahoo Mail. But it’s too slow!
Mapquest => Hey, I live in Web2.0 World.
MySpace => I still have my senses.

4. You try out new sites and judge them based on their features and functionality => Sometimes yes.

5. You assess a site’s quality based on if it’s written in Ruby versus Java => Not really.

6. You like things simple, functional, and uncluttered – cuz what else would you want? => Exactly!

7. You think your startup’s "secret sauce" is in the technology, or platform, or programming language (LISP!) => Dont’ think so for the most of the times.

8. You don’t require users to give you their emails, because it’s not what you’d want as a user => Nopes! I want it.

9. You say things like, "Just build something people want" => Yeah, and what they want – the fun stuff! Believe me!

10. You secretly worship Steve Jobs => Truely. Now it is no more a secrete.

So I think I’m a product fanatic.

And with this conclusion, I also take Andrew’s advice for not becoming too fanatical about product

• I totally understood now that, Product fanaticism != User fanaticism.
•  I do overlook innovations in other places because of my product fanaticism. I will try to improve that.
•  I will also take atmost care that my product fanaticism don’t lead to beautiful and empty websites.

Thanks Andrew, for this great learning!

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.

Being productive in this information age is really hard. As we have access to abundant information and communication channels, it is hard to concentrate on one task with full productivity. Initially these information and communication channels acted as assistants to our daily work life, but now they are our biggest interruptions during our work life.

Even in our 8 hours office routine, we don’t work for full 8 hours. Think about your startup work environment where it is critical to work for 14 hours a day to achieve more in less time and with less resources. Let it be your startup, your homework assignment, or your work in office – interruptions are bound to kill our productivity.  Interruptions are our worst enemies.

On the same note, I recently read few interesting insights from successful entrepreneurs. Here is what they have to say – 

Here’s the trouble. We all know that knowledge workers work best by getting into "flow", also known as being "in the zone", where they are fully concentrated on their work and fully tuned out of their environment. They lose track of time and produce great stuff through absolute concentration. This is when they get all of their productive work done. Writers, programmers, scientists, and even basketball players will tell you about being in the zone.

The trouble is, getting into "the zone" is not easy. When you try to measure it, it looks like it takes an average of 15 minutes to start working at maximum productivity. Sometimes, if you’re tired or have already done a lot of creative work that day, you just can’t get into the zone and you spend the rest of your work day fiddling around, reading the web, playing Tetris.

The other trouble is that it’s so easy to get knocked out of the zone. Noise, phone calls, going out for lunch, having to drive 5 minutes to Starbucks for coffee, and interruptions by coworkers — ESPECIALLY interruptions by coworkers — all knock you out of the zone. If you take a 1 minute interruption by a coworker asking you a question, and this knocks out your concentration enough that it takes you half an hour to get productive again, your overall productivity is in serious trouble. If you’re in a noisy bullpen environment like the type that caffinated dotcoms love to create, with marketing guys screaming on the phone next to programmers, your productivity will plunge as knowledge workers get interrupted time after time and never get into the zone.

With programmers, it’s especially hard. Productivity depends on being able to juggle a lot of little details in short term memory all at once. Any kind of interruption can cause these details to come crashing down. When you resume work, you can’t remember any of the details (like local variable names you were using, or where you were up to in implementing that search algorithm) and you have to keep looking these things up, which slows you down a lot until you get back up to speed.

– Joel Spolsky at Where do These People Get Their (Unoriginal) Ideas? 

Also, read this –

When you have a long stretch when you aren’t bothered, you can get in the zone. The zone is when you are most productive. It’s when you don’t have to mindshift between various tasks. It’s when you aren’t interrupted to answer a question or look up something or send an email or answer an IM. The alone zone is where real progress is made. Getting in the zone takes time. And that’s why interruption is your enemy.

Set up a rule at work: Make half the day alone time. From 10am-2pm, no one can talk to one another (except during lunch). Or make the first or the last half of the day the alone time period. Just make sure this period is contiguous in order to avoid productivity-killing interruptions. A successful alone time period means letting go of communication addiction. During alone time, give up instant messenging, phone calls, and meetings. Avoid any email thread that’s going to require an immediate response. Just shut up and get to work.

– 37Signals at Alone Time

Well, its high time now that I should get back to the “zone” and get things done.

You all have a super productive week ahead!

The myth is that Venture Capitalists do not invest in ideas,
they invest in people. But the reality is that they do not invest in people,
they invest in good industries.

On the same line, I read very interesting information in the
book Engineering Your Start-up on guiding technology entrepreneurs to think
about business as one of the essential requirement for startup success.

We engineers are technology minded people and we always have
tons of ideas. In the process of cooking one idea after another, we tend to
neglect that understanding and exploiting market is an essential element of any
startup.

What is your market position?

Existing Product & Existing Market

This is already overcrowded market with numbers of manufacturers
or service providers. Entering into such kind of market can be an acceptable
income source, but it is tough to grow in this area. It may not be lucrative option
for engineering oriented startups.

Existing Product & New Market

In this area, you need to use your superior marketing and selling
techniques to create new market for existing products. Again, this might not be
a cup of tea of techie entrepreneurs.

New Product & New Market

This is very classic path always taken by technology driven
entrepreneurs. Innovation is the key in this path. There have been some good
successes in this area, but there have also been some very big failures. Having
said that, for techie startups, it is always good to play safe in this area.

New Product & Existing Market

Now by this time you must have understood that it is
recommended to position yourself in this area. Let’s understand why?

It is the safest area as it already have an established
market. You can produce advanced products and quality services by leveraging your
technology strength and innovative approaches. You can offer these new products
or services at low cost to customers, providing them maximum benefits. Customers
are attached to certain markets and typical products. But they adapt new
products in the same industry when there is a huge value addition for them.

At the end, all we need to note down is, picking the wrong
industry or betting on technology risk in an unproven market segment is
something VCs avoid and hence we should ponder upon our approach before we enter into it.

office corporate interruption work productivity microsoft research artificial intelligence email