This week, it was news everywhere in the technology world about Microsoft's new computer interface - Surface. It is basically a Coffee Table that doubles up as an interactive computer device that recognizes Multi-touch.

At first when I read the news about Microsoft Surface, I dismissed the idea as one more Fancy world imagination. After I saw the below video, the article from Popular Mechanics that went it and this video from 10.net, I was simply blown away.

I can image a day in the next decade when I might be struggling with one of these devices while my 4 Year son zips with it. It will be just like how today kids teach their parents on how to use Mouse and Keyboards.  

The entire UI for Surface I am told is done with WPF. Surface runs a customized version of Windows Vista, a rear projection screen and five cameras that look through the screen from behind to recognize and read items placed on the surface as well as to track hand gestures and touch. It has wired 10/100Mbit Ethernet and wireless 802.11 b/g and Bluetooth 2.0 support built in.

I am not predicting that this exact one from Microsoft will be the only one or that this interface will completely eliminate Keyboard and Mouses. But I certainly feel that something on these lines will be a big hit in next decade.

Though I was thinking about this for sometime, I didn't feel like posting this till today. Today I had a general discussion with a colleague on the extremely low cost (sometimes free) pricing model of Air Deccan and other LCCs (Low Cost Carriers) in India. I don't fully agree on the extend of price cutting done, which definitely is below cost and is non-sustainable for the long-term. At the same time I feel you cannot term the whole business model unvaiable. If the same approach of low pricing was to be done by groups with deep pockets like Reliance, Tata or UB, then it will be seen by media as a bold step and a big strategy. Just because it is done Air Deccan, it is being criticized heavily.

Anyways, for these LCCs to succeed the approach has to be different in India. Unfortunately every carrier is targetting and falling over each other for the big six metros, instead it will be wise to go after Tier-II / Tier -III cities. This is more like the approach Wal-Mart in its founding years choose to do - go after towns with less than 10,000 people, which eventually makes them circle completely big cities without getting into them. Also in many cases, though the tickets are sold at few hundred rupees or even Zero (free by Air Deccan) it costs more than Rs.1500 for the consumer because of the huge Taxes. India doesn't have a Low Cost Airport like Singapore has for LCCs .

The problem for the carriers certainly is a lack of necessary Airport infrastructure in the non-metro cities. But here, I see a big oppurtunity for them. The plan should be to start tens of mini-airports in private or in partnership with Government. Each of these Airport should be situated in Tier-III towns or certainly not inside a Tier-II/Tier-I city.  The Airports themselves can be extremely small, handling the smallest commercially viable planes and should cost few hundred crores (as low as say Rs.100 Crores). Government can help by giving the non-agro lands on lease and the airports can be on a BOT (Build Operate Transfer) model. For a country as big as India, where it takes 2 to 3 days to travel by Train/over a week by road from North to South (or East to West) this will produce tremendous movement of labour and oppurtunities.

As an example, consider this. Instead of building a new Airport for Chennai, it can be build on Pondicherry. The new Airport can handle mainly International traffic and Airlines should be charged considerably less (or Zero Tax like in a SEZ) to land in Pondy than in Chennai Airport. This way consumer will get a choice, it should cost few thousand rupees cheaper if I choose to land in Pondy. As a consumer I will go for it, because it just takes just 2 to 3 hours and few hundred rupees to travel from Pondy to Chennai - which I won't mind for the savings I got. Hypothetically consider the venue instead of Pondy to be the temple town - Tirupathi. Airlines can offer a package deal of Lord Balaji's Darshan plus flying, they can even advertise with the slogan "Pray and Fly" (Pun Intended).

15th June 2007 Update: I am surprised that my wish for a Puduchery (Pondicherry) Airport is coming true with in weeks - though not for international flights but Pondy Govt has decided to give land to AAI to make it operational and expand a domestic airport.  

I was reminded yesterday while reading Economic Times paper, of a book "Far from the Madding Crowd" by Thomas Hardy. The book was in my 12th Standard syllabus and our English Teacher "ShantiShri" was very fond of the book that she made us read it umpty number of times. The most likely question on the book was to be on "Chance Happening" - on how few of the unplanned events resulted on big turning points in the characters lifes.

(Scanned copy from my XII school book)

Anyways, the reason for me to be reminded on "Chance Happening" and hence the book, was a piece on the paper's ViewPoint section. The piece was an extract from a lecture given in New York University-Stern by Infosys Founder Mr.N.R.Narayana Murthy. The lecture was titled "Learning from experience: Some lessons I have learned from my life and career" where Mr.Murthy talks about "Chance Events" that changed his life and hence Infosys. What I enjoyed most was his first paragraph where he talks about the impact role models or a one-off speech can have on an individual. I could relate to that in an indirect fashion.

"The first event occurred when I was a graduate student in Control Theory at IIT, Kanpur in India. At breakfast on a bright Sunday morning in 1968, I had a chance encounter with a famous computer scientist on sabbatical from a well-known US university. He was discussing exciting new developments in the field of computer science with a large group of students and how such developments would alter our future. He was articulate, passionate and quite convincing. I was hooked. I went straight from breakfast to the library, read four or five papers he had suggested, and left the library determined to study computer science."

LIFCO's (our family publishing firm) guide to Far from the Madding Crowd (Published:1957)

Yesterday I felt very happy, special and humbled all at once by my well-wisher Mr.J.Kesavardhanan, CEO of K7 Computing - the makers of World Class Anti-Virus Solutions for nearly two decades.

The reason I was happy was the occassion of K7 Computing moving to a new sprawling 25,000 square feet new office in OMR (Old Mahabalipuram Road) about a kilometre from Tidel Park - in between MARG and HCL buildings on the left hand side when coming from Madhya Kailash Temple. I have great admiration for Mr.K7 (as he likes to be called), learned from him over the years on both technology and on running a business. As a matter of history, K7 Computing is the only employer for whom I worked for (for about 3 months), before I started Vishwak and I greatly cherish the experiences I went through in that short duration.

I was feeling special, because K7 after honouring his guru Mr.Pulikesi, gifted me with a "Gold Coin" for being their first customer of Vx2000 15 years or so back. In 1991 or 92, when I bought the copy of Vx2000 for Rs.190 for our publishing company LIFCO, I was in my school and honestly didn't know I was their first customer nor realized it will become history one-day. I remember seeing the below issue (November 1990 or an early issue of 1991) of SysReader, going to a small lane in Saidapet, Chennai and meeting a smart, bearded person Mr.Balu in a tiny room with a PC. Balu acted normally, sold me the product and that I time I didn't get to meet K7. In the next few years from then, I met K7 many times in SysReader office and events. It was in 1996-97 when I worked briefly (thanks to my other long time well-wisher Mr.Asokan P) in K7 Computing I got to meet K7 closer and the Balu I met in 1991-92 was my line manager (he was a tough manager to satisfy on delivery schedules). 

 
(Vx2000 Floppy placed on top of a November 1990 issue of SysReader)

See here Vx2000 earliest advertisement copy that appeared in the above SysReader issue.

Finally, I was humbled to see the simplicity of K7 - even with all these successes behind him, K7 hasn't changed a bit, he is the same person I met 15 years or so back.

Instead of gifting people items which never gets used, they kept a selection of books in the exit. People were requested to pick their choice. A very thoughtful act, considering that K7 Computing is a Knowledge (IP) Company and even on these Google days - what is more apt to symbolise knowledge than books. Earlier someone gifted me a book was in an event at TCS - read that post here.

Today in HBO I saw a good comedy movie "Vice Versa". Simple story line on how a father and son get switched between their bodies through a magic. It was hilarious to see a 8 year old brain for a 30+ Year successful manager and vice-versa. When I searched Internet I was surprised to find the movie was 20 years old taken in 1988, and around the same time about 5 other movies and TV Serials had come with similar story lines.

While watching the movie, the boy actor was very familiar. When I searched on the Internet, I learned his name as "Fred Savage". Going through his movies/serials I recollected having seen him in his very popular serial of 1980-90s - Wonder Years and enjoying it a lot in my high-school days. I should have seen the entire serial, the serial had the boy speak out his feelings to the audience in an adult voice. Every boy in adolescent age could relate to this serial, an all time classic.

I also learned the boy seen above has now grown up (obviously of course), married and have a kid!

Recently I read in Economic Times this article about a forrester report. The report said over 60 per cent captive centres in India are struggling and this trend would further accelerate the move favouring third-party outsourced vendors by 2009. Running a outsourced IT services firm this is a topic of significance and interest to me, I have lot to say, but I will try and keep this post brief. 

In the early 1900s the trend was to do everything yourself to ensure quality, classic example for this was Rockefeller's Standard Oil, India's Tata and others world wide. They didn't have much of choice to do it any other way as well. Rest of the industry (eco-system) didn't exist or was not yet ready. In the late 1990's the trend with Jack Welch in GE and Louis Gerstner with IBM was to focus on your core competence and outsource everything else. This helped cutting costs certainly but more than that freed management focus and time to do what the company was all about in its core. This is why Indian IT companies are successful and I believe will help them to retain their edge.

At Vishwak, we have been working on Live.Com gadgets, Vista Gadgets and other mash-up technologies for quite some time. Out of this, I personally feel the Vista gadgets to have the most potential to be useful. Lot of people seem to understand its potential though a bit delayed - including BBC Radio in the Vista gadget that I talked about in my Mix '07 posts.

When we published to Live Gallery few of our experimental gadgets, we were really surprised by the number of downloads they made. The gadgets we published were Dictionary Gadget, Media Player Gadget, System Notify, CPU Meter, History on Today, Outlook Task and Radio Gadget. Out of this Dictionary and Media player have got over 9000 downloads and growing.

Few months back I was interviewed by DataQuest magazine (a popular IT Industry Magazine in India) reporter, on our Mobile and Portal Initiatives at Vishwak. The interview got published in their April Issue. Interactions with Press is an interesting oppurtunity but at the same time a stressful one. It is an oppurtunity for good marketing and publicity, but it is stressful because you can't afford to have your tongue slip even a bit. Having said that if you play it too cautious and textbook fashion, then the reporter gets bored and you are un interesting as a news item. So you got to walk a fine line, for this I admire the industry stelwards who keep meeting press everyday.

A brief from the Interview: TNC Venkata Rangan, CMD, Vishwak says, "Primarily we are into portal management. We provide solutions to both desktop and mobile environments. Our portal framework is a valuable tool that provides a single point access to information resources and services."

Read the full article - DataQuest Online, Print Copy (PDF format)

Yesterday was a big day for me and for the entire team at Vishwak. We had completed 10 Years in Business as on 1st April 2007. We had a big dinner to celebrate this on 10 May 2007 at Courtyard Marriott, Chennai. We were joined by many of our customers on this happy occassion - including Microsoft India, Hindustan Times, Hutchinson Essar, Bharat Matrimony, ChennaiOnline, K7 Computing, Wipro and others. Mr.Jaspreet Bindra (Country Manager India, MSN & Windows Live) was the Chief Guest.

We had many enjoyable programs in the dinner, but the one I treasured most was when we had the 10th Anniversary cake cut by Vishwakians (shown in the photo below) who had been with us for more than 5 years. In this time of great volatility in Indian IT job market - we are lucky to have these dedicated individuals powering "Vishwak" for 5 years+.

Since it was celebration time, few of us spoke and that too briefly. In my speech, I touched on How did I decide to start Vishwak, what does the name mean and what I enjoy in running Vishwak?. 

See the entire photo album here | Video of the event here.