Up to now I hadn't had any product from Apple which I could call as mine. I had flirted with the idea of buying many times but has always opted for cheaper alternatives, since it couldn't fit my purse. Although I had never used a product from Steve Job's company I had through out been a huge fan of him. Irrespective of how busy I am, I would always stop to watch his presentations, read articles about him and read books about him.
Presentation secrets of Steve Job's, written based on his presentation preparation techniques is my Bible whenever I want to prepare for an important presentation. Every time I make a presentation I always wish that I could make a presentation as well as him. He is the man who transformed the boring technical presentations into a very exciting exercise. He didn't stop at that, he managed to create a cult like following for his presentations and products.
A few months back I sat and watched his first ipod presentation again. I watched with awe the way in which he manages to instill in mind the positives of the product while completely hiding away the minuses of the product. For me he is not an inventor but he is the greatest business visionary of our generation, simply the best IT marketer who embodied himself to be the biggest marketing tool of Apple.
Till the last day I do presentations to people, he would always be my icon! Sir, Thank you for the lessons!
Ps: Ironically I am paying tribute to the genius using a blackberry. But then if someone gives me a iphone for free (since that's the price I paid for this blackberry), I would throw this and use it for sure ;)
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device
Friday, October 7, 2011
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Saraswathy Poojai
The other day I was on a call with a Nepali friend and the person said that Vijayathasami falls on the 6th of October and till then they are on Holiday! Its Dasara and its a TEN day holiday! At that moment it stuck to me, how much disconnected I am with our culture, till I was reminded by my friend, I honestly didn't know that navarathri has started.
This brought back memories of my childhood where Navarathri more precisely Saraswathi poojai out of all the celebrations was the most integral part of our family. We lived at College quarters and when we were small father was the master in charge of the Hindu Students' movement, hence our home used to become the focal point of activity with School boys and teachers coming and attending to the preparations for the grand show. Since I moved out of the kindergarten I was damn lucky and every year I would get some sort of chance to perform at the event and this most importantly gave me a free license to cut classes since having practices for the cultural show was considered a legitimate reason to keep away from class.
The memories of Saraswathy poojai are so found and I got to attend the festivities even before I had gone to year 1. From the days of being a toddler I had been around when all this happened, I can remember when I was really small, my sister used to be given the Role of Saraswathy and she would be performing this to perfection. In case if you are confused and wondering how come she acted at a Boy's schools cultural show, believe it or not she actually studied at College till year 4!
From those small days, all the way up to the last year of college, Saraswathy poojai was the most important annual event. Sadly here I am today seated here completely forgotten about it. Life has come a full cycle.
This brought back memories of my childhood where Navarathri more precisely Saraswathi poojai out of all the celebrations was the most integral part of our family. We lived at College quarters and when we were small father was the master in charge of the Hindu Students' movement, hence our home used to become the focal point of activity with School boys and teachers coming and attending to the preparations for the grand show. Since I moved out of the kindergarten I was damn lucky and every year I would get some sort of chance to perform at the event and this most importantly gave me a free license to cut classes since having practices for the cultural show was considered a legitimate reason to keep away from class.
The memories of Saraswathy poojai are so found and I got to attend the festivities even before I had gone to year 1. From the days of being a toddler I had been around when all this happened, I can remember when I was really small, my sister used to be given the Role of Saraswathy and she would be performing this to perfection. In case if you are confused and wondering how come she acted at a Boy's schools cultural show, believe it or not she actually studied at College till year 4!
From those small days, all the way up to the last year of college, Saraswathy poojai was the most important annual event. Sadly here I am today seated here completely forgotten about it. Life has come a full cycle.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
The need for IT Entrepreneurial development in Sri Lanka
Entrepreneurs are a rare breed and IT entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka are even more rarer. I had been pleasantly surprised to see how countries are having strategic plans to nurture these Entrepreneur skills. Silicon valley is considered as the mecca for an IT Entrepreneur and it has some of the most illustrious success stories which can only rival fairy tales. It has created a culture for start ups with plenty of venture capital and financing options being available for bright start ups.
I used to think THE dream is only possible in the Silicon valley, but from the day I walked in to the m-lab in Kenya I couldn't stop thinking that its a another silicon valley in the making and that you can dream from Nairobi too! The eagerness in the eyes of the community and the long term vision with which they run the incubator programs for the start ups is exemplary. The returns from these will not be over night but in 5 years or 10 years down the line. I am sure, if these communities are brought up in the right way, they will definitely transform the countries fortunes. Most importantly the hubs are run with private sector participation, hence creating the right culture and the mind set, instead of a lethargic government sector mindset.
Its not just Kenya, but I see its taking off at a lot of places. I read about how they are trying the same in Egypt, where Google is fishing for the entrepreneurs to support technology start ups.
This left with me with the question why not in Sri Lanka? why not in Jaffna? We sure have the potential but the issue is to make our people believe that we can could do!
read these,
1. http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/30/tech/innovation/google-tech-bus-egypt/
2. http://mlab.co.ke/pages/home.php
I used to think THE dream is only possible in the Silicon valley, but from the day I walked in to the m-lab in Kenya I couldn't stop thinking that its a another silicon valley in the making and that you can dream from Nairobi too! The eagerness in the eyes of the community and the long term vision with which they run the incubator programs for the start ups is exemplary. The returns from these will not be over night but in 5 years or 10 years down the line. I am sure, if these communities are brought up in the right way, they will definitely transform the countries fortunes. Most importantly the hubs are run with private sector participation, hence creating the right culture and the mind set, instead of a lethargic government sector mindset.
Its not just Kenya, but I see its taking off at a lot of places. I read about how they are trying the same in Egypt, where Google is fishing for the entrepreneurs to support technology start ups.
This left with me with the question why not in Sri Lanka? why not in Jaffna? We sure have the potential but the issue is to make our people believe that we can could do!
read these,
1. http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/30/tech/innovation/google-tech-bus-egypt/
2. http://mlab.co.ke/pages/home.php
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Should I get myself a Kindle FIRE?
Last week I had been thinking whether to pre-order a Kindle fire or not. I had a lot of points for it, unlike other tablets this is affordable for my purse, I am pretty confident about Amazon's ability to ship it to Sri Lanka, since I am a happy customer of Kindle this looks like a natural progression.
I was tempted to this and almost did a pre-order but then I stopped to check the features and compare with other tablets and found two things to be missing,
1. Camera
2. 3G
I am not a fan of camera's in tablets in laptops and tablets. I am actually glad that it doesn't have a camera. But not having 3G is indeed a big weakness for me. Specially when I travel I wouldn't mind getting a data enabled SIM and plugging it and using it. On the other hand wifi is good but then to the parts of the world which I travel to, wifi is not to be found.
So now I had almost concluded that I will survive another year with my existing kindle and laptop combination and wait for the next generation of Kindle or an affordable version of Samsung Tab.
I was tempted to this and almost did a pre-order but then I stopped to check the features and compare with other tablets and found two things to be missing,
1. Camera
2. 3G
I am not a fan of camera's in tablets in laptops and tablets. I am actually glad that it doesn't have a camera. But not having 3G is indeed a big weakness for me. Specially when I travel I wouldn't mind getting a data enabled SIM and plugging it and using it. On the other hand wifi is good but then to the parts of the world which I travel to, wifi is not to be found.
So now I had almost concluded that I will survive another year with my existing kindle and laptop combination and wait for the next generation of Kindle or an affordable version of Samsung Tab.
Monday, October 3, 2011
AI lecture series
Yesterday I posted the database lecture series and today while searching around I bumped in to AI course being offered for FOC online by Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig.
I know the name Peter Norvig well, since he is the author of the book which I bought with such enthusiasm and was thinking to master it all, but after a year of reading had only learnt a fraction of it. Its one thing I regret not being able to understand more. Now he is offering his course online for free and I now want to at least watch the series whenever time permits.
So, in case if you are interested register here, http://www.ai-class.com/
On a different note if you are a programmer read this article by Peter Norvig - Teach your self programming in ten years Going by the 10,000 hour rule thats three hours of programming everyday for 10 years!
watch this too!
So, in case if you are interested register here, http://www.ai-class.com/
On a different note if you are a programmer read this article by Peter Norvig - Teach your self programming in ten years Going by the 10,000 hour rule thats three hours of programming everyday for 10 years!
watch this too!
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Back to database lectures
I tried to wash my past sins of not attending to lectures properly by listening to some university lectures today. Out of jokes, being a DB practitioner I found it to be refreshing again to listen to the theoretical side of databases again.
If you are really really busy at least listen to the second lecture on relational algebra at http://www.db-class.org/course/video/preview_list. Take my word on this if you are a programmer its worth listening to this. If you are even more interested, you can register for the online course too! btw its from Stanford! Enjoy!
If you are really really busy at least listen to the second lecture on relational algebra at http://www.db-class.org/course/video/preview_list. Take my word on this if you are a programmer its worth listening to this. If you are even more interested, you can register for the online course too! btw its from Stanford! Enjoy!
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Facebook customers
I had watched with fascination the boldness with which facebook changes privacy settings and introduces new features. When it introduced features like location services, facial recognition, etc strangely the features came as enabled and the user, if needed had to find out from elsewhere that such a feature has been added and explicitly disable.
I tried to put myself in the place of the person who makes such decisions and think what will be the decision I would have taken, I would have never even considered the option of rolling out new features without the consent from the customer. Obviously I would have taken the traditional route of having the feature disabled and trying to run a campaign to 'educate' the user to opt in. I would have considered that to be the rational option and I am sure I wouldn't have the guts of facing the wrath of the customers and the consequences of it. For that matter I 'admire' facebook's and its 'arrogance'. In facebook's case, strangely most users ironically keep on making posts complaining about it and stay on, except for a few like N, who quit ( on a different note thank fully he deleted the "mud glorious mud" album! ;) )
After a few days of thinking something important dawned on me, I would have never done that to a CUSTOMER, but then who said that users are facebooks customers?! Dude, we are the products of facebook and as a business analyst I would have obviously made changes to the product without asking the product. My dear fellow products please understand the Economics of it and learn to live with it or just quit ;)
I tried to put myself in the place of the person who makes such decisions and think what will be the decision I would have taken, I would have never even considered the option of rolling out new features without the consent from the customer. Obviously I would have taken the traditional route of having the feature disabled and trying to run a campaign to 'educate' the user to opt in. I would have considered that to be the rational option and I am sure I wouldn't have the guts of facing the wrath of the customers and the consequences of it. For that matter I 'admire' facebook's and its 'arrogance'. In facebook's case, strangely most users ironically keep on making posts complaining about it and stay on, except for a few like N, who quit ( on a different note thank fully he deleted the "mud glorious mud" album! ;) )
After a few days of thinking something important dawned on me, I would have never done that to a CUSTOMER, but then who said that users are facebooks customers?! Dude, we are the products of facebook and as a business analyst I would have obviously made changes to the product without asking the product. My dear fellow products please understand the Economics of it and learn to live with it or just quit ;)
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