I am sure you are aware ultra slow motion cameras – the ones that are used in cricket matches to show those super slow motion videos (of run-outs, cricket shots etc). Those are sophisticated video cameras that shoot at over 1000 Frames per second (FPS) and can capture details that are hardly visible to human eye – There are some even more sophisticated video camera’s that shoot at about 1 million FPS and can capture shots of high-speed bullets piercing the wall in vivid detail.

And now a group of scientists in MIT have created something un-imaginable – A video camera that can shoot trillion frames per second, yes..that’s right – Trillion Frames per second camera. This camera is so fast that it can produce a slow-motion video of a burst of light traveling the length of a one-liter bottle, bouncing off the cap and reflecting back to the bottle’s bottom.

And, there is a Indian connection to this invention- The super high-speed camera was developed by Indian Associate Professor Mr. Ramesh Raskar’s Camera Culture group at the MIT’s Media Lab.

Now, I am not a expert in this field to understand how they have achieved it – Here is what they have put out in a blog post & a video, that explains how this has been achieved by them

The system relies on a recent technology called a streak camera, deployed in a totally unexpected way. The aperture of the streak camera is a narrow slit. Particles of light — photons — enter the camera through the slit and are converted into electrons, which pass through an electric field that deflects them in a direction perpendicular to the slit. Because the electric field is changing very rapidly, it deflects the electrons corresponding to late-arriving photons more than it does those corresponding to early arriving ones.

The image produced by the camera is thus two-dimensional, but only one of the dimensions — the one corresponding to the direction of the slit — is spatial. The other dimension, corresponding to the degree of deflection, is time. The image thus represents the time of arrival of photons passing through a one-dimensional slice of space.

I did not understand it, but the video released by them embedded below will shed more light on it:

Talking about Mr. Ramesh Raskar specifically – He was news recently for another very useful invention – The Eye Netra - A cheap device that enables checking of eyes using a smartphone!

[Via Punetech]

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Just after seeing the start of a major battle in the Social Networking sphere, we should be bracing ourselves for yet another battle to be fought soon i.e. the battle for domination in Operating System space. And this shall be fought between two heavyweights i.e. Microsoft and Google.

Early Signs?

With first Chromebooks arriving in the market on 15^th June 2011, Google Chrome OS has already made its start. Although preliminary in functionality, it doesn’t have a bad start in terms of sales till now.

Microsoft has also declared its plans of launching Windows 8 OS in later half of 2012. Windows 8 will be coming with two versions, one for desktop machines and another for tablets.

Why Google is entering OS segment?

This is one question that many are asking, with such a strong presence already in Web-services and Mobile, why does Google want to venture into traditional OS market rather than strengthening its existing services?

Answer lies in Microsoft’s huge investments in Bing (rival search engine) and increasing partnerships with Google’s other competitors like Facebook and Yahoo. The very idea that Microsoft can come with a Windows version that is well integrated with services like Bing & Facebook, hence eroding sizeable user-base from Google’s web-services, is threatening enough for Google.

Microsoft’s Strategy

Microsoft is enhancing Windows OS with Windows 8, but it doesn’t want to just stick with a defensive strategy. It also plans to take the war at the enemy’s ground by launching a touch-screen version of Windows 8 which would compete with iPad & Android tablets.

Microsoft has also started to appreciate the importance of cloud-computing in business document sharing, and hence already launched products like Office 365 & Docs.com that are directly competing with Google Docs.

Google’s Strategy

With Chromebooks, Google will be initially trying to increase the market share among Netbook user-base. It’s a user base which predominantly spends its entire time on the internet through email/social-networking/games etc.

But Google also understands that to really dominate OS space, it needs to do more than that. Therefore it is constantly investing in tools like Google Docs, technologies like Html 5/JavaScript and fast rendering browser like Chrome, thus trying to bring more and more processing towards browser end.

Google will also be relying on upsurge of cloud-computing so as to downgrade the relevance of native apps running on windows machines.

Winner?

Microsoft has undeniable advantage of being an existing big player in OS domain, but their virtual inexistence in Mobile/Tablet domain is hurting them. How fast and effectively they build their cloud solutions as well as how well they customize the Windows OS with internet is going to be crucial.

With Google, it remains to be seen how strongly they bring the application ecosystem closer to browser and cloud computing side. Also, how effectively they are able to convince consumers about their rival solutions to Microsoft Office.

Will Microsoft rise to competition and show the world that they are still the king in OS domain? Or Google will replicate its success in Internet with OS as well? We will have our answers in coming years.

War is just about to begin!

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The global economy has recovered to a large extent since the economic meltdown in 2008. The pace of recovery has been different across regions with developed economies like US and Europe still struggling to find momentum whereas Asia-Pacific regions have recovered at a much faster pace. However, as pointed out in the negative investor sentiment in Emerging Markets, inflation is a major worry especially in the Asia-Pacific region.

However, if the proceedings at the Paris Air Show are anything to go by there is a positive trend in terms of overall economic climate across the globe. The aircraft manufacturers have been notching up big dollar contracts from interested buyers across all segments (defense and commercial).

Here are some highlights from the Paris Air Show showcasing the increasing demand for new aircrafts

• The two largest aircraft manufacturers – Airbus and Boeing together signed over $25 Bn in orders in the very first day of the show. Airbus alone accounted for $15 Bn worth of orders
• Business Jet maker Bombardier secured orders worth more than $1 Bn in the second day and signed up its first Asian client
• Malaysia’s AirAsia has evidently placed an order worth roughly $17 Bn for revamped Airbus jets
• Aerospace technology provider Raytheon secured a ~$23 Mn order from Tata Power Strategic Electronic Systems

A lot many deals have been carried out and the overall deal flow this year has been a significant improvement over the last few years. The sizable increase in demand is all the more heartening since this comes amidst increasing fuel costs, inflationary pressures and so forth.

Going a little deeper into the deals and two more interesting trends shape up,

• Majority of the deals secured by major aircraft manufacturers have been for commercial and luxury aircrafts
• The demand for new aircrafts has come from almost all regions right from USA, Europe, Asia etc. However, Asia is dominating the proceedings right now with the likes of AirAsia, Korean Air and Indigo placing huge orders

What does the increase in commercial aircraft demand has to do with economic growth?

At the onset, linking commercial aircraft demand might appear far stretched but there is a very tight co-relation between the commercial aircraft demand and GDP growth. Still sounds shaky?

Here is a snapshot signifying the relation between air traffic growth and GDP from the Airbus market forecast report. Similar co-relation justification is identified by other major manufacturers as well

The graph clearly represents a high co-relation between the GDP growth and air traffic growth. Larger air traffic growth results in demand for more commercial aircrafts which again could mean a positive GDP growth expectation.

Increasing demand for commercial aircrafts from all regions does signify a potential upswing in the air traffic in the next few years. What this could mean is that GDP growth in these regions could also be slated to increase going forward.

As always, statistics only validate trends to a certain extent and a lot of micro and macro factors could make the co-relation skewed to a large extent. But the aircraft industry has been tracking the co-relation between air traffic and GDP growth for a long time and if historical trends are to be believed, a positive GDP growth across regions can happen even though the exact numbers might differ from one region to another.

Do you think the increased aircraft order activity at the Paris Air Show signals an improving economic climate? Does the close co-relation between air traffic growth and GDP growth make sense?

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Milk is regarded as the most important source of nutrient, vitamin and mineral provider for people across the world. It is regarded as a sea of calcium which helps people develop stronger bones and muscles. Even today moms ask their children the first question in the morning – “Beta, tumne doodh pee liya?”

India is the largest producer of milk with 112 million tonnes being produced year after year. The production capacity is increasing by 3.5 million tonnes but the demand is increasing at a faster rate of 6 million tonnes. And here’s where the biggest problem lays – the demand and supply mismatch. How will India manage to feed its population of more than a billion with a white revolution?

As the economy prospers, increasing number of people are willing to loosen their pocket strings to spend money on different kinds of milk like pasteurized, skimmed, UHT milk, etc. As the per capita income goes up, there is a greater health consciousness among the individuals and urge to consume nutritional foods. Obviously in this scenario the consumption of milk and its products is bound to rise at a maniacal pace.

In order to keep pace with the milk demands of the rising population, the production has to increase at the rate of 5.5% to 180 million tonnes by 2021-2022. If that doesn’t happen, India will have to import it from the international markets over where negotiation of prices could be a problem.

The domestic problems are many in sight. The productivity of a cow or buffalo to produce the milk is still very limited, despite India having one of the largest cattle populations on the planet. I wonder what are the research and development guys doing on this front. Looks like all the spending on innovation and such words is going to waste.

The animals are treated as some piece of junk. Their shelters are poor and pathetically maintained. There’s no proper veterinary structure in most of the countries towns and localities and this is the reason that major chunk of the cattle suffer from various diseases. The feed and the fodder are of poor quality, low yielding and not available at the right time and the right place.

The entire processing and transport facilities for the final production of milk are inadequately maintained and poorly handled.

If the world’s largest producer of milk has a per capita availability of just 263 grams per day which is lower than the world average of 279.4 grams, then we should be ready to import milk from the international market place.

Can we have a white revolution please?

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I visited Japan few days back, thanks to fully paid trip by Tata Docomo in their 3G life contest. It was a revelation to say the least on different ways mobile and 3G is currently being used in a country like Japan.

From buying candies at Vending machines to traveling in subway, Mobile is used everywhere, most of which is possible due to fast unparalleled 3G connections.

Just to give you an example of what I am talking about – Have a look at this short video on how I bought a burger at McDonalds outlet in Tokyo. From getting coupons on mobile phone to making payments everything happened seamlessly.

Buying Burger at McDonalds

Buying Burger at McDonalds

Here is what I did – Placed my order, attendant punched in the amount and I placed my mobile phone on the reader which was connected with McDonalds billing system. The payment was made!!!

Everything in less than 15 seconds.

Here is another example – We wanted to travel from Shinjuku to Akhiabara (A place to buy Electronic gadgets in Tokyo) via subway. We just took our mobile phones, flashed it on the reader at entry point and exit points of the subway stations. The train fare was calculated (depending on entry and exit points )  automatically and deducted from our Mobile Money (or Mobile Wallet or Mobile credit card..whatever you call it). It was absolutely seamless!

Using Subway Using Mobile Wallet

Note: I am carrying my Mobile phone along with me

Now, I am sure you will be having a question in your mind as to whether we will see such a system in India ever. Yes, it is very much possible, especially now that we have 3G in our midst. Having said that, it is not very easy.

NTT Docomo is one of the foremost telecom services provider in Japan, and have made large investments in bringing up infrastructure on which these services reside. Infact, in Japan we may possibly see plastic credit cards give way to Mobile cards (NTT Docomo has its own Mobile Credit card, which works just like your normal visa card).

One thing for sure, Indian Telecom Operators need to look beyond Voice calls, SMSes and trivial value added services and built infrastructure (offline as well as on mobile) for services like contactless Mobile payments and Mobile Credit Cards. Tata, thanks to their partnership with NTT Docomo are probably much better placed than other providers to bring these services in India.

What do you think? How soon will see these kind of services in India?

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Basketball Really? Even i was surprised but when the name Reliance is involved it does not take long to believe, does it. RIL group has signed an agreement with sports agency IMG for the formation of Indian Professional Basketball League (IBL). Apparently, Basketball Federation of India has given the go ahead to this agreement which involves commercial rights to basketball in India right from broadcasting, sponsorship, merchandising etc.

Betting Big On The Success That Is IPL

Let’s face it. Even with all the controversies surrounding it, IPL indeed was a game changer of sports. The whole concept of professional leagues in sports germinated in India with IPL and has now become a phenomenon. Apparently, IMG was the sports agency which helped established IPL and is now trying to replicate the same model in alternative sports. Well, I have my skepticism of the choice of sport here because Cricket and Basketball in India is like comparing Apples to Oranges. However, with the financial backing of the RIL group, i think IMG can actually do wonders in making Basketball a well known game in India too.

Are You Ready To Dunk?

It is also interesting to see the new found interest in sports from the corporate sector. RIL group already owns Mumbai Indians and so do other corporate like GMR Group, Kingfisher etc. Moreover, UB Group has also made huge investments to put India on the Formula One map with its team Force India which may not have made a big impact is surely improving with time.Mahindra group already has a tie-up with the NBA for promoting basketball among the youth.

Could the venture really turn basketball from a hobby game to a game with mass following like Cricket. In my opinion, if basketball can get half as popular as cricket it would be nothing short of a miracle. There are reasons as to why the Indian Professional Basketball League might work for the better

• A 30 year contract means that both the involved parties are putting long term commitments into making this venture a success. The focus initially is to help improve the infrastructure and develop the sport in India. So, both IMG and RIL group are expected to work from the grass routes to think of getting a return on the investment from the venture
• New avenues for sporting talent in India: Over 1 Billion population and the only sport people are crazy about is Cricket. A lot of this is attributed to the lack of investments in developing other sports in India and obviously the fame and money that only cricket players enjoy right now. With new avenues opening up and enough financial backing, we might see a new breed of youngster picking up basketball as an option

All in all, a very good news and a welcome initiative to promote alternate games in India.Only time will tell if IBL would be able to replicate the success of IPL but the chances of basketball becoming a well known sport in India are ripe. Call it the world cup fever but i am wondering if Football will find any takers because as a nation we could definitely see some improvement in this particular sport too.

What do you think of the Indian Professional Basketball league? Do you think RIL has played the right cards by choosing Basketball as the next big sporting spectacle for India?

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Gartner announced yesterday its key Business Predictions for 2010 that will probably change the business we do today – The 2010 Business predictions span 56 markets, topics and industry areas and more than 250 predictions in total.

Here is a run-down on some of the key business predictions made by Gartner:

• By 2012, 20 percent of businesses will own no IT assets

  Several Inter-related trends are driving the movement toward decreased IT hardware assets, such as virtualization, cloud-enabled services, and employees running personal desktops and notebook systems on corporate networks.
  The need for computing hardware, either in a data center or on an employee’s desk, will not go away. However, if the ownership of hardware shifts to third parties, then there will be major shifts throughout every facet of the IT hardware industry.
  For example, enterprise IT budgets will either be shrunk or reallocated to more-strategic projects; enterprise IT staff will either be reduced or deskilled to meet new requirements, and/or hardware distribution will have to change radically to meet the requirements of the new IT hardware buying points.

My Comment: This probably will be the biggest thing in coming years. I am sure you have already read about Microsoft-HP have jointly announced that they would be investing $250 million on Cloud computing. We will see majority of online companies venturing into Cloud one way or the another .

• By 2012, India-centric IT services companies will represent 20 percent of the leading cloud aggregators in the market

  Gartner is seeing India-centric IT services companies leveraging established market positions and levels of trust to explore nonlinear revenue growth models (which are not directly correlated to labor-based growth) and working on interesting research and development (R&D) efforts, especially in the area of cloud computing. The collective work from India-centric vendors represents an important segment of the market’s cloud aggregators, which will offer cloud-enabled outsourcing options (also known as cloud services).

• By 2012, Facebook will become the hub for social network integration and Web socialization.

  Through Facebook Connect and other similar mechanisms, Facebook will support and take a leading role in developing the distributed, interoperable social Web. As Facebook continues to grow and outnumber other social networks, this interoperability will become critical to the success and survival of other social networks, communication channels and media sites.
  Other social networks (including Twitter) will continue to develop, seeking further adoption and specializations with communication or content areas, but Facebook will represent a common denominator for all of them.

• In 2012, 60 percent of a new PC’s total life greenhouse gas emissions will have occurred before the user first turns the machine on!

  Over the course of its entire lifetime, a typical PC consumes 10 times its own weight in fossil fuels, but around 80 percent of a PC’s total energy usage still happens during production and transportation.

Some of the other key predictions are:

• By 2014, over 3 billion of the world’s adult population will be able to transact electronically via mobile or Internet technology

• By 2014, there will be a 90 percent mobile penetration rate and 6.5 billion mobile connections

• By 2015, context will be as influential to mobile consumer services and relationships as search engines are to the Web

• By 2013, mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide.

We will see lot of changes in the way we conduct business over the next 2-3 years and the 2 key things that will be forefront will Cloud Computing and Mobile Computing (via smart phones, tablets, handheld devices). You will be hearing lot of them in coming 2 years. Brace yourself for next gen of computing !

Img source

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There have been recent reports of tech giants like Yahoo and Cisco showing their interest in the UID project and trying to woo the Indian government and especially Mr. Nilekani, and trying to convince that they be given the contracts based on their relevant expertise and experience.

“The UID project involves a huge database. We, at Yahoo, have expertise in handling such huge amount of data. We met the Prime Minister today and discussed, among other things, how Yahoo can help the Government in the project,” Ms Bartz said here at an editorial round table with the media. However, Yahoo also said that it was not looking at the UID project for any commercial interest but to pay back to the nation where it has had a presence for so many years.

Google too, though not falling head over heels for the UID project, has evinced interest and put forth their claims for why they believe they will make a good suitor.

Talking about the expertise Google can bring to the table, Rao said, “At Google, we are good at software development, hosting data and language technologies. We run our product on more than eight regional languages in India. “If the project has a mobile dimension then also we can help. At Google, we have developed voice-based search capabilities,” Rao added.

Earlier, Microsoft had shown interest in the same project and Indian companies like TCS, Wipro and Infosys are in the run from the moment the project was announced.

So why are the tech giants falling all over themselves to get the UID project? Is it due to social service (Yahoo), a fit with expertise (Google?) or do they have some ulterior motives (think Microsoft!).

First, for the uninitiated, UID is the Unique Identification project of Indian Government, that would assign a 16 digit UID to every individual in the target group and also issue smart cards that may have biometric data like fingerprints and iris scan associated with it.

Ganeshan Vijay Srinivas, had written a post on trak.in earlier , about the potentials and pitfalls of UID and Arun has also written a post explaining why  the thinking that biometric smart cards will become ubiquitous in India in the near future is both simplistic and naive. I, myself, believe that UID has an important role to play in voting reforms and this can be easily done by combining the PDS/ration cards and election voter card under the same rubric.

So now that we have got some context on how important the UID project is, let us return to the central question as to why are the tech giants interested in a slice of the UID pie? Going back over the Yahoo and Google statements both stress their ability to handle large databases and host large data. Is interest in UID project a means to get a backdoor entry into some of the most sensitive and private data?

Given the fact that today ‘data is king’ and that Google and Yahoo both make tons of money from their access to private and proprietary data consisting of individuals and their online habits, can not UID be a pretext to get still more private data to improve their algorithms, their ad servings?

Granted that the government will try not to expose the private data to whoever is given the DB creation, updating and maintenance for the UID and that perhaps Google/Yahoo will only be involved in the development and not in actual usage of the DB; still they may be given access to parts of the data for testing/debugging/maintenance.  Even getting hands on part of the data will give them an unfair advantage and may potentially compromise national security.

I am concerned, because even Google, of ‘do no evil’ fame, has been accused of ulterior motives nowadays and respected web-pundits are worried that their tussle with NewsCorp/Apple may precipitate a war for the web and that Google too is not playing for the web, but is partisan.  The days when people thought Google had their best interests in mind, have sadly come to a pass. Given the ambition of Google to own worlds data (organise worlds data), these to me seem legitimate concerns.

Perhaps it would be better, if the UID project is given to an Indian company, even if the decision compromises on technological ability- in any of the foreign giants’ hands the easy access to sensitive data may lead to an unfair advantage at best and compromise national security at worst!

Maybe I am being myopic and maybe the Tech giants are interested in UID project for the moolah involved or even to give back to the country, as yahoo claims. Maybe I should stop watching too many conspiracy movies! Do let us know via comments, what you think are the reasons why the tech giants are so keen for the UID project and whether there is a cause for concern?

img src: india-server.com / ideachampions.com

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Recently 9.9 Media Pvt. Ltd said that they would launch Indian version of Inc. magazine in October. India Inc hence will be the second foreign magazine targeting Indian Business segment, the first being Fortune launched by Network 18 in May.

While Fortune targets business enthusiasts of India by putting up short articles with strong focus on the Fortune Lists, 9.9 Media would focus more on high-growth, mid-sized companies.

We are now seeing an increased focus on Indian business and startup segment from media. Television is also not behind in catching up this trend. We have seen a surge in Business Channels from past 4-5 months.

We now have 6 business news channels (2 Hindi and 4 English) targeting a segment which accounts for 0.2% of the total viewership and has 2% of the advertising revenue pie.

Current market leader is CNBC TV18 and has been around since 1999. NDTV Profit comes 2^nd. But the market share is fast shrinking- with UTV and ET Now competing to get small chunk of the large pie (CNBC accounts for more than 60% of the market share).

This again brings us to same old point I have been making. In this fight for getting viewership out of a small segment aren’t these channels asking too much from the audience.

How we can track of interesting shows based on our interests, when they span across 5-6 Channels in more than 1 language.

Challenges are not just for the Broadcasters. It’s also a challenge for viewers to keep updated with the channels and shows. Soon there will be more Channels in a segment than the number of shows which any user could watch.

This Media Monday post has been written by Rabi Gupta, a start up enthusiast and soon to launch his first product iDubba (Intelligent Box).

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