Betting on my memory!

Yesterday my bank again asked me to identify myself with the security questions. On answering the three of them correctly (not easy at all which I will tell you in a minute) I was asked to choose a different set of 3 questions from 5. It makes you laugh.What were the questions: Roughly they were
-What was your grandfather's first name
- What was your first bike
- What was your mother's maiden surname
- Which was your first school
etc etc.

What's amusing about these are couple of things. One, the questions themselves are 'spoof'able which means a hacker can create these questions with fair predictability because more security based checks use the same question bank.

Two, most of my close friends or cousins who knew me from the last 25 years will know the answer for all these. So, it is easier to regenerate and hence hack my password than guess/break the password by brute force!

While multiple layered checks are touted as additional security, the layers are as strong as the weakest link.

Some of my other accounts allow me to choose my own questions. Now there are isues there as well. One, I need to choose those questions for which only I know the answer. I need to remember the spacing, the acronym and if the answer is in my native language then remember the phonetics as well. Now this is betting on my memory too much. Given the fact that I hold at least 5 online accounts how many answers can I remember?

And if I forget my password after 3 years, I may not even remember the answers to my self generated questions.

Security and convenience never go hand in hand. Fortunately I'm too small a person for someone to hack.

Personalization of mobile

Guess how many applications I have and regularly use on my Symbian based Nokia phone?

- Outlook synced email service

- Reuters news on Business, Sports, Technology....

- Flurry Mail to get the quick views across my Yahoo mail account, Gmail account etc etc

- Flurry Feeds to get me regular RSS for cricket scores to technology scores

- Gmail for mobile

- Mobi Reader to read documents in mobile format

- Various widgets that gadget freaks ususally have.

Going forward, Personalization of the mobiles is where the money is.  The need would be more on functional parameters rather than heavy graphic based simple applications. For example, research suggest that the mobile market will grow to 4 Billion USD in the next few years.

However there will be a change in the portfolio offerings from mobile providers dictated by consumers.

- Most of us would lose interest in that Britney or Aishwarya Rai wall papers or posters. There is nothing dramatic in wall papers today compared to what it was four years ago. Today one could store any picture, perhaps taken from one's own mobile camera as wall paper.

- Ring Tone.  I do remember, about 4 years back, when I tried to compose my own ring tone. I was fed up with the standard Nokia tunes and my handset had an application that would convert standard frequencies (denoted by keyboard characters) into a tune. Being an Indian classical enthusiast I had composed a tune in standard Mohanam and my husband did an even better job of composing it in Kunthala Varali.  However the purpose of a personalized tune was this - the tune had to be distinct for one to recognize it in a crowd.

Today, any audio file can be converted into a Ring Tone.

- I have heard of Ringback tones and I think this is very attarctive and 'hip' for the next four years.  A Ringback tune/tone is what would be played by the receipient of your call.  Other than the usual touchy-warmy uses of a personalized ringback tune one can also use this for functional purpose I guess.  I would love to call my kids with a ringback tune 'Have you completed your home work' ? I think there is some money here to be made.

- I think the most flexible and useful feature would be SMS for a long time to come. It is non intrusive and very effective. One can use this almost for anything - collaborative applications can use SMS as text interface, document writing, getting scores, voting, applying leave, sending a build for compilation.....it's versatile.

- There will be more interest in Video blogging and video watching via Mobile. However providers (atleast Airtel, BSNL) should provide higher bandwidth for premium subscribers. If infrastructure (read bandwidth) is not improved, no application or feature will work effectively or earn revenue.

So, what are we looking forward to really? A highly personalized phone almost like your pet dog without which you would get withdrawal symptoms :-)

Cloud Computing and My Obsession with it

Cloud Computing and my obsession with it.

Part -1:

I like anything that does not bind you to a certain framework or thinking while you keep evolving your own, configurable set of values deriving from various sources. Most of our lives, just like what Robert Pirsig says in ZMM, is like a Chautauqua.

Cloud Computing is a refreshing bout of fresh air for the bound, hostage, clustered society who want freedom! Okay ‘ll stop my rhetoric and begin with the basics. My obsession with this started a year back and one of my most fundamental questions was ‘How does this differ from Grid Computing and utility computing’? The following paragraphs specify what I have understood so far as the cloud’s evolution and are by no means that of an expert. Only amateurists travel by Chautauquas.

The first thing I identified within cloud computing is that it feeds off virtualization. Now that’s a big difference. Earlier we had cluster computing, similar to what Google did about a decade ago wiring together many small computing platforms and PCs to make ‘one big’ computer. Google has the best of minds working for them and they could aim for such a thing. But companies whose competencies were not from parallel processing or distributed computing had to adjust to buying mammoth super computers or hand over the applications with proprietary OS, applications, configurations to big data centers such as Rackspace in return for a hefty monthly fee. With virtualization around and the Hypervisors and ESx servers in, we are already looking forward to reducing the cost f computing, forty percent of which is power consumption alone not withstanding the associated niceties of freedom from maintenance and freedom from higher costs of ownership.

However I again thought that cloud computing services are largely storage providers. I had questions about how they distributed data management, security management, access provisioning. With memory and hard disk prices coming down at a rate that internet bandwidth is not able to catch up what would happen to massive storages across the world which would effectively hit the bottleneck when the data is transported across the world via cables? Will companies take the risk of cables being cut during a war or a natural catastrophe? The human tendency is to keep your secrets closest to you!

I checked on how services are offered. While I give specific details in my next blog, I roughly found that prices were based on one or more of these combinations.

- Number of database access,

- Network upload and download units,

- No. of instructions, TFLOPS and of course on the

- Disk storage.

A highly evolved provider offers a lot more services on mashup services on top of these to the topmost provider on the other end of the spectrum who provides an entire virtual data center for you which you can drag and drop and edit using a virtual data center editor. Howzzat for technology enthusiasts!.

So what new jobs are emerging now? Well, soon the typical IT administrator will vanish and in his/her place we will have a highly analytical administrator who can calculate whether the applications they want to cloud-source is more DB intensive or disk intensive or I/O intensive J. You always need to know the basic computer architecture and there is no running away from it.

Similarly the best programmers and designers would be those who can write applications or APIs that manages federation, data consistency, access controls, P2P and virtual distributed Ethernet.

In my next post (part-II) I will write about how I see different combinations of providers showing up which also is an indicator of how this technology is emerging.

Virtualization - hyped or for real?

Everybody in the industry is talking about Virtualization and it's somewhat synonymously used along with VMWare perhaps dictated by the huge market share that VMware has over the virtual market. Some of the obvious benefits talked about (and not really proven) are:
- 50-60% of the hardware maintenance costs are from energy costs and cooling. So with virtualization of those big mammoth servers we can save a lot of money. But from WHEN?

- Buy a really expensive VMWare ESx server that will run each as ten to thirty machines and you get a whole lot of savings with minimal administrative tasks, hardware cloning, no need to install and uninstall operating systems, no need to ghost image and everything will work like you have ten machines for each machine you have now.

The questions on a typical CTO/IT admin's mind would be -
- Well what's the cost of the ESX server? Greater than 15K USD?
- Well, what do I do with all the smaller Sun, IBM and HP servers that I have and what about the data center space and maintenance that I pay a fee for? Can I cancel my contract with the data center hosting company and just have one big ESX in my local data center?

- Will ALL my applications run on virtual environments? Very few applications are actually certified on VM and even fewer actually leverage the VM specific APIs.

- There is no miracle cure for performance. With a plethora of Load balancing software being sold for 'Virtual environments' it is obvious that performance will be a trade off unless ofcourse you buy very expensive hardware.

So I think, Virtualization is a very good thing to happen to the industry with it's third level abstraction of operting system layer. However, it is good factor for cost savings if the systems are based on an incremental model and not on a replacement model. If you are planning to setup new labs, new product systems, new network assistance then Virtual systems is the way to do.

Just see the various VM software / Hypervisors bundled with branded hardware now and that will say how much research and optimization is in the works. Even humble desktops are bundled with hypervisors. Intel has VT for its x86 architectured systems, AMD has something similar to Xen, Microsoft has it's own VM server software and I'm sure the HPs and IBMs are doing the same.

Old wine in a new bottle? But if you are planning to buy new wine, better buy the new bottle :-D

My iPod is a parasite

I didn't quite realize that it is three months since I blogged. It's very unusual for me. I got really busy at work with multiple products going into the market and the nitty gritties associated with those.

So, here's my thought for the day, month and the decade that iPod is going to dominate dumb minds. Oh yeah, I got cynical only after using the iPod. I didnt buy the iPod but got the latest generation device gifted by my brother and everyone on seeing that said 'wow'. I will tell you why it doesn't 'wow' me at all.

1. First of all, the iPod is a parasite. It clings on to the laptop/PC or that mother device and feeds off from it. Does anyone know of an iPod that can update itself without those cables?
2. I stopped using the laptop at home, after work, about two years back. I use my mobile for almost everything one would use for after work. Reading and responding to mails, reviewing document and even editing PPTs, setting, accepting or declining meetings, reading various web feeds, stock updates, political or economical updates and read news and sports. I even read all my spiritual stuff via my mobile. So when the mobile is the device of choice for the upwardly mobile and when the laptop is reaching a stage when it's going to be used only for serious, heavy duty work it appears strange to me that Steve Jobs and co. think that everybody would switch on the laptops and connect to the internet for the podcasts to automatically be updated? Integration is key to me and any device I use must be able to communicate with other similar devices that the user with the same profile uses. This profile matching has not happened with iPod. Maybe it's not meant for me but to a larger audience who value simple and traditional ways of updates.
3. The battery - if I forget to charge my iPod for two days, the battery is low. If I have to charge the iPod with power, I need that propreitary cable which means that I carry not only the iPod but also carry the long cables, travel adapters and what not. If only the cable was not propreitary I could have fed power off from any USB port. Devices should be flexible for use and not be monopolistic.

4. Sleekness and aesthetics. Okay, I concede here. However there are other sleek models out there in the market and you get sleek phone cum MP3 players which serve the same purpose of the iPod. Yes, I got the podcast software Juice and that automatically updates podcasts to my Phone or pendrive or any device as long as that is connected to the USB drive. My phone (used as a podcast player) can also update itself via GSM/GPRS. Checkout Nokia's podcast software for example.

Ahem! I'm not young any more and perhaps that has influenced my priorities. However, come on everybody, are iPods for Dumb college goers or for traditional heavy laptop users? I'm ofcourse assuming that iPods are used for podcasts. The case is worsened if it is used just for static music.

Google's mobile phone is coming

I have always been a fan of Google's innovations and I'm very excited to see this news: Google Enters Wireless World.

There's not much information out yet about what's going to be packed in the device. Knowing Google, I would bet that it will be simple, with a simplistic look and feel and packed with lot of functionalities. The news is that it's going to be packed with open source software and I'm sure it will have a great email service (client or hosted?) , great and simple document editors, collaborating tools and anything web 2.0ish.

What Google plans to do with mobile gaming will be interesting to see. According to Gartner reports, Mobile Gaming revenue has grown 50% (!) this year and is at 5 billion USD now. It's growing at an amazing pace and mind you, this revenue is largely out of revenue on product purchases and not around services built with that. Google also has noble policies on adult content and there's huge revenue on that segment which Google may not cover too much.

I hope that Google will displace the bully - Blackberry. I hope the proprietary technology is stashed away with and all office employees can safely, securely use their official email accounts via the Google phone and increase their productivity. And use SAME phone for other tools that they like depending on their personal tastes. (Read Opensource, Free sourced, Free Willed...)

Okay, if everything is open sourced and free, where does the revenue come from? We all know that Google can be innovative from that too :-)

Welcome gPhone .

Micro businesses and Web 2.0 as I see in India

I was looking at the trends of Micro Businesses across the globe (a Micro Business, simple definition is a business consisting of max five employees and largely caters to local market. It is smaller than Home Business), I came across a staggering list of small businesses - perhaps micro startups already leveraging web 2.0 in India. My observation could be slightly skewed as I relied largely on internet and there could be businesses in other geographic regions not linked to internet...but nevertheless....

Let me give you some samples:

1. Event manager on Mobile - nothing new, eh? Well sample this. While the general apps like this cater for events such as Meetups, Class Reunions, Dating etc, this is for largely indian events such as weddings, traditional 1st year birthdays, house warming ceremonies etc. I think innovations like these are very important and caters to the local market and has a great opportunity to grow. Wasn't Bharatmatrimony a big success? These event managers are installable on mobiles (I'm not sure which OS) and cater to address book, invitations, tracking of invitees, specific preferences, profiling, notifications.............etc.

2. The second one I noticed was this one. This was Video resumes on your mobile. Well, lazy (busy?) interviewers like me would love it. All that my recruiter has to do is upload these screened video resumes on to a calendar that I use and that is automatically downloaded onto my mobile using either push or pull mechanism. So, I just play the resume on my way to the interviewing venue and i not only get the usual details in a CV but can notice communication, presentation, body language etc upfront even before I meet the candidate. There is nothing specific here for India but I have a reason for this. 80-90% of hiring happens in India now for atleast IT companies!

3. Public examinations tutorials and quizzes on mobile for GATE, IIT JEE, CAT, UGC... and it's not just the lessons and tests, but these include wikis, chat rooms, social networking...I guess how much you can extend these functionalities is really up to one's imagination. Here was a real need by aspiring students, a real opportunity and a real market since almost every student aspiring for higher studies has a mobile handset.

In some ways, everybody wants to be listened to (translates the need to write a blog), commented upon and get a chance to improve or fine tune. I think Web 2.0 helps this need so much saying 'let's collaborate, your feedback is as important as mine' and this is a way shift from 'I know, I speak, you listen' of the older 'article writing ways'. Asians (Indians and South Koreans) blog the most or contribute to other blogs as per various studies.

I dread the day when pokemon web2.0 sites are installable on mobile and I really dread that day when kids will shift from the humble telephone to the mobile social networking site to discuss which pokemon has a fire attack and which one has a laser attack! Until then...all web 2.0 is welcome :-)