Most of the talks were about Mobile content, everyone seems to be obsessed with that single idea, the next idea is social networking in online space. Some of what I heard in the day:

The biggest challenge is the variety and difference of off-deck sites and the way you work with careers, the consumer experience is so different that you have to teach them to get each site working. The other challenge is I watch two videos, do a call my battery dies. You have now plenty of content now available, the real need is how to discover the. The reason why YouTube is successful it makes the finding of content like what people are watching made very easy.  2% (or 6 Million or so) of the 240 Million subscribers in USA have downloaded ever a video in their mobile. The offdeck world is important because you can do sharing of content between subscribers of different careers. The careers have no big interest in scaling video downloads in their network.

Bernard Gershon Sr.VP of ABC News says it is 2 years away where people are going to be very comfortable watching videos on Mobile. Tammy Franklin VP of Turner broadcasting said Phone is still a Hardware business, the phone needs to have the capability to play videos and people are stuck in 2.5G and their present plans before you can move them. There was a mention on how OEM and Device manufacturer would like to get into the service revenue, they feel left out and now with iPhone they are tempted again.

In another track there was a demo of Titan TV that helps local Television stations to go broadband, titan does the encoding, geographic based advertisements, etc.

I was interviewed today about Vishwak twice in Digital Hollywood at Vator.tv and Nowlive.com

I am here in LA with my team for the Digital Hollywood 2007 Fall event happening at Hollywood & Highlands (which is where the Oscar Awards famous Kodak theatre is). As we went up and down the floors between the conference floor and the exhibit floor I noticed this big piano complete with sitting stool hanging in air above 5 floors. What a creative use for a old piano!. Click on the photos above for a larger view.

DH Fall 2007 just started. The first session "Media, Entertainment and Social Change" talked about how Digital Film Making Tools helped the campaigners behind the "Darfur Now" movie to produce it. "Ted Braun" said how they are using the Community tools to spread the message through viral marketing (embed the original videos produced during the movie). Participant.net company's "Adrian Sexton" says their goal is to be make entertainment meets social action meets social media. For them using the community/social networking technology tools means not only making profit but action social awareness. Most of the Social causes sites and places are not engaging and compelling, they are largely inert communities and no entertainment proposition. People want to be in active communities and have entertainment as well. Good Philanthropy should also give good entertainment and they call "Social Action Network". There tenets are to "Connect, Collaborate, Engage, Activate" basically take part!.

I was pleased to know that the technology we feel is only for the urban elites are helping greatly in effecting a social change.

Few other points - YouTube has a new initiative "Broadcast your cause" where they give free cameras to community journalism, Al Gore has launched Current.com (2.0) Digg Like System for social causes sites, Kiva.com is about loans that change lives (based on Micro finance) and Clinton plugged it in Oprah on Sep 4, 2007 and they got more money they can give, MSN Messenger works with the IM donations model, Development of original multimedia content based upon community engagement in a subject area.

"We Make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give" - Winston Churchill

Mobile TV & Video: Content & Commerce: A movie clip was demoed by Motorola using Mobiclip player from Actimagine corp. Transpera demoed their solutions to connect multiple devices, multiple gateways, etc and also social community sharing features. MediaFlo (Nalco) shows their TV Experience in Mobile and channel surfing as fast as in tv and not battery draining, uses Qualcomm's nationwide 700Mhz spectrum. Actimagine says they expect the Nokia, Motorola & Windows Mobile Smartphone will be 400Million+ by next year. Choicestream talked about their personalized recommendation software. Verisign talked about their DNS Services, SSL, Mobile Messages (60% of world wide messages are routed through them) and they have more TELCO integration than anyone else. Fun Little movies demoed their family/kids/international friendly comedy in Sprint Mobile channel.

• How do you make people watch the content they have already paid for, say by $100 per month for their cable connection
• Internet has taught us that Media houses will have significant share, but the hockey stick long tail approach/inflexion point is user generated content
• Discussions on whether content programming (like what they cable networks do) is important or not. Or is only the content producers (professional or user) important
• In the question hour I talked about how in India people wait for 5-10 minutes to download a paid content; it is about empowering people who don't have access to content (connecting the unconnected)
• There was another question - In TV advertisements happen because it was free; why will we watch advertisements while we pay for Mobile. It was answered as the same scenario that happened 10 years back - why see advertisements while we pay for ISP for internet, why we watch advertisements in TV while we pay for cable.

I am  writing this post on a flight from London to Los Angeles. Since I had a good night sleep on my previous leg from Mumbai to London, I didn't want to sleep now, instead spending the time got on clearing my backlogs of emails and tasks. I own a Zune Player that I rarely carry outside, I think I already have enough electronics with me all the time - Laptop, its cables, cell phone and USB drives. I use my Zune most of the time while I am at home connected to Lansec speakers. Recently I found a good use for Zune, it is to take it on long trips for watching movies that I don't get time to watch while at time. The best thing about Zune is that it has a quite big size screen which makes it comfortable for watching movies, battery that lasts for nearly 2 full movies and I can charge it back by connecting it to my laptop.

I bought the DVD of the movie "World Trade Center" few months back but never had the time to watch it at home. Before leaving I converted the DVD into Zune format using PCDVD software. The software does a good conversion, but freezes once in a while running in Vista.

Coming back to the movie, I was expecting (should I say ignorantly) the movie to be the story behind the plot & how it was executed. Instead the movie was about how two cops from Port Authority (PAPD) who risked their lives to safe people after the first tower coming down, got themselves trapped in concourse of building 5. The whole movie revolves around these two officers and their anxious family. The director has nicely handled the story on the lines of human spirit, moments before death and courage of people in uniform. After watching the movie completely, it struck me if the movie had covered any other story line or talked about the plot it would have been disrespectful to the thousands of families who lost their loved one's on that tragic day.

I have said it in the past, I will say it again. The best airport to go abroad from India is Chennai International Airport. It is small compared to Mumbai and Delhi, which means less flights depart, fewer people so you will have comfortable space. I am doing this post from Mumbai International Airport, even after privatization this airport has improved little. It is one big corridor in two floors, packed with people every where - easily few thousands and no place to sit, windowless gates and Cigarette smoke everywhere near gates. It is a complete chaos. Compared to the International Airport, the Mumbai Domestic Airport is far better.

Last week I went to Colombo and returned. I found the Arrival terminal in Colombo to be world class and the departure to be the same old airport. On return to India, I was surprised to find a new arrival hall in Chennai International Airport, this one is more spacious, more conveyor belts. One more reason for me to like the Chennai Airport

At Vishwak we have over 10 years of experience with Media and Mobile Portal solutions. Recently we launched www.deliveranexperience.com as a branding site for our offerings with Silverlight, Sharepoint, VPF (Vishwak Portal Framework) and MCDS (Mobile Content Delivery System).

We are showcasing this for the first time in upcoming Digital Hollywood (Fall) event being held at Hollywood from 29th Oct to 1st Nov 2007. DH is a premium event that connects Hollywood and IT industries. I will be there and if you happen to be in LA area, please visit us at Stall #60 at the Grand Ballroom at Hollywood and Highlands.

I have been invited as well as a speaker in a panel discussion on Day 3 (Nov 1):

Track III: 12:50 PM - 2:00 PM - Personalized and Innovative Mobile & Broadband Services: Advertising and Content

• Steve Bava, Group Account Director, WHITTMANHART Interactive
• Mike Fitzsimmons, CEO, Delivery Agent
• Jonathan Cobb, Founder and CEO, Kiptronic
• Venkatarangan Thirumalai, Chairman, Vishwak Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
• Jordan Greene, VP of Mobile Marketing, MindMatics
• Dina Pradel, Vice President of Marketing, StyleFeeder
• Michael J. Pinto, Managing Principal, mCapital, LLC, Moderator

For Session Description & Speaker Bios Click Here

Update 1/Nov/07: My panel went well, Michael did a good job. Though the discussions were more on the advertisement/agency topics I presented an Indian perspective on some of the innovative products that are being launched in India.

As I have said in the past, many times I find interesting articles handpicked and featured in MSN.COM homepage. Today I read one such article on World's Cheapest destinations. It covered about places where you can spend a day for $20 - Laos, Bali, Vietnam, India, Zambia, Tunisia, Honduras, Guatemala, Peru and Argentina. Sadly it has left out Sri Lanka - may be it was because of the ongoing unrest there.

Though India is featured there, don't get fooled. Anything in Travel that falls under luxury is expensive in India compared to other Asian countries. Five Star (though not everyone will be looking) accommodations are the most expensive in India, even Las Vegas is cheaper than Indian Metros. One of our abroad client is visiting us in Chennai this week and Chola Sheraton's per day rate for them is Rs.8800 (USD 225).

Last week just before my Sri Lanka short visit, I finished this audio book. It was "Tough Choices" by Carly Fiorina who spent nearly twenty years at AT & T and Lucent Technologies before working as CEO for HP from 2000 to 2005. The book is a must read (or listen) for people starting their career in a large organization and especially Women Executive's will find themselves relating well to Carly's experiences. The initial chapters are definitely inspirational for fighting against the odds in modern businesses.

If you have read Who says Elephants can't Dance Audio book by Louis Gerstner Jr., the former IBM CEO on how he transformed IBM, you will expect similar material here on what happened in HP. In which case, you will be disappointed. Though there are elaborate coverages on her interview process for the CEO post and her firing from HP board, there is little coverage on her job as CEO. I was surprised to hear her bold statements about few executives who she comes across in her career, some of them quoted by her with actual names I am sure are still around in the industry. She raises strong criticisms about Michael Capellas (Ex-CEO of Compaq) and David Woodley Packard (son of HP co-founder David Packard) in the book.

The title Tough Choices indicates the tough one's Carly had to make in her personal/career life as an individual. I liked her repeatedly used quote in the book about "my soul is still with me".

On being selected as Fortune magazine Top Woman CEO she had the following to say: “After striving my entire career to be judged by my results and my decisions, the coverage of my gender, my appearance and perceptions of my personality would outweigh anything else”

As I have kept noting down in this blog, Microsoft's Live Service offerings are improving day by day. In the recent weeks there have been significant improvement in the search relevance, breadth of offerings and more so on the improved user interface. Today when I went to Live Search Maps, I liked the Single Text box Interface (shown above), the earlier two text boxes UI was a pain to use. What impressed me most was their support for business owners - I searched for "Vishwak Solutions" looking for our company in Redmond, WA. It didn't give up any results, then I clicked on the Help button expecting no useful information or out dated links. I was surprised to see the first topic itself being what I wanted - How to list my business?. The steps that followed was easy to complete and they verified real time with a PIN number by calling the business phone number I had furnished. Overall excellent consumer experience, keep up the good work Live team!

As I wrote yesterday - On 16th October I presented in Sri Lanka DevDay 2007. The audience were more than 500 in number and were enthusiastic bunch, who were very eager to learn new things in technology. This was different from the programs in India, where Audiences are not that excited even when you show them new stuffs. This may be because in India you have lost the charm of big events as too many of them happen that too throughout the year.

Anyways, coming back I presented on two topics I like a lot nowadays - WPF and Silverlight.

WPF, a new way of looking @ your Windows Applications
Overview of Windows Presentation Foundation, the goals behind WPF and the power of XAML language. See for yourself how the UI world around you is changing forever. The session will cover the design and implementation of UI using Microsoft Expression Blend and Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 “Orcas”. It will get into discussing about the popular controls in WPF including Layout, Data Binding, Audio/Video, Flow Control and composition techniques. We will wrap up the session by looking into the new features introduced with WPF 3.5.

Silverlight: The web just got richer
See Microsoft’s new arsenal for the web, the cross browser cross platform Silverlight.  In a world where designers had more say in Web Applications this session will show you how developers can get back into the driving seat. The Session will go into details of case studies of applications built with Silverlight 1.0. You will see demos working across browsers seamlessly. We will wrap up the session by discussing the new capabilities that .NET integration is bringing to upcoming Silverlight 1.1 version.

References:
1. The presentations I made (Thanks to Tim Sneath of Microsoft) are available here
2. Most of the demos (other than the demos we built for our customers in Vishwak) are taken from Silverlight and WindowsClient.net sites.

I was in Sri Lanka for last two days on invitation from Microsoft (Sri Lanka) to present on their DevDay 2007 event. The event happened in Mount Lavinia Hotel and I stayed there as well. What a beautiful place this is, with clean unspoiled beaches and adding to the vintage effect given by a Railway station right in the front of the hotel. Imagine the place that has Railway Station in Front and a long unspoiled beach on the other side. The hotel itself has 200 years of history starting as the house of the British governor and moving to various owners. Check out the photos of the place below:

MT. LAVINIA Hotel 16 OCT 2007

Microsoft gave me a beautiful gift, which was a replica of Sigiriya style of art of a Fresco maiden holding flowers. The replica was done on a irregular shaped stone giving it a genuine antique look - may be this is what made the Sri Lankan Customs question me on whether I am smuggling out one of their antique piece out of country. Of course, they allowed me to take it after they found it to be a replica. I have given below the images of the original painting (Left) and the replica (Right) I got.

Earlier today when I was doing a WPF demo in Colombo for Microsoft DevDay 2007 I wanted to show the new Solitaire and  other games rendering smooth UI in Vista. But I didn't find any of the games in my demo laptop. The last I have used the games in Vista was when Vista was in Beta and in Vista Ultimate edition. On further investigation and looking into other Vista installations (Windows Vista Enterprise x64, Vista Business x86) I realized that games are not installed by default in these editions - obviously why do you want them in a business edition of the OS?. The good news is that you can go Programs and Features applet in Control Panel, and install the games. Immediately upon installation, I played and won a game with Solitaire. Hip hip hooray!!!

சுமார் இரு வாரங்களுக்கு முன்பு மக்கள் தொலைக்காட்சியில் என்னை பேட்டி எடுத்தார்கள். ஒரு இருபது நிமிடங்கள் ஒடிய இந்த பேட்டியில் என்னால் முடிந்த அளவுக்கு பிறமொழி கலக்காமல் தமிழியில் பேசினேன். எனக்கு தாய்மொழித் தமிழ் என்பதால் தமிழில் பேசுவது கடினமே அல்ல. ஆனால் அலுவலுக்குக்காக தொழில்நுட்பங்களை ஆங்கிலத்திலேயே பேசிப்பழகியதால், தமிழில் கணினி மற்றும் செல்பேசி முன்னேற்றங்களைப் பேசுவதில் சிறு தயக்கம் அவ்வளவு தான் .

இந்த நிகழ்ச்சி நாளைக் காலை 8 மணிக்கும், மாலை 11 மணிக்கும் ஒளிப்பரப்பாகிறது. மறக்காமல் பாருங்கள்!

Video: TNCV Interview in Makkal

If you are like me who has multiple mail profiles configured in Outlook 2007, you will be tired of selecting the profile everytime. Instead using command-line switches (parameters) for Outlook.exe you can create a shortcut for each profile that you want to run. For example I have a Profile (configured using the Mail Applet in Control Panel) named "Vishwak" and another named "Hotmail". So to run the Vishwak Profile I create a Shortcut that points to:"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\OUTLOOK.EXE" /profile Microsoft

Needless to say, the above path is specific to my Vista with Office 2007 machine. To learn on more switches and what they can do read this article from Office Online.

Like I have written earlier Outlook.exe switches can also be used to do tasks that are not exposed in User Interface like cleaning rules, etc.

I had a small accident with my car of 6 months a Honda City ZX GXi today. Thank god, no one was hurt and more important only my car got damaged. It happened while I was driving and about to stop for the Traffic Signal to take the Right Turn in Mount Road/South Usman Road junction.  My son was sitting next to me and was constantly asking me one question or other, there was an Ambassador coming from behind trying to go straight and honking nonstop. Disturbed by the horn sound, distracted by my son's queries I turned back, and the next moment my car banged into the Mahindra Jeep in front of me which had stopped for the signal. The front of my car got hit badly but we felt no impact in the passenger cabin. Since it was my fault, I apologized to the other driver and came home feeling bad for driving carelessly. I am sure Honda will charge me a minimum of few grands of rupees to fix this, let me check with them!

Just like every other year, we had a wonderful Golu (Display of Dolls and Idols) festival celebrated in our house this year. Instead of keeping it in Steps fashion this time we had a linear display.

Navarathri Golu 2007

Cybermedia (Publishers of PCQuest and Dataquest) have a job's portal at Cybermedia Dice. Recently I was interviewed by their reporter Harshitha B Hegde, and here is the summary of the coverage:

"Vishwak Solutions is a decade-old company offering successful desktop and mobile portal solutions. T N C Venkata Rangan, the founder CEO of Vishwak, shares his views on the market growth and career prospects in portal development". Full Article (PDF) is published here.

This is sensational at the same time scary. As the saying goes "the higher you go, the harder the fall ". India's Stock market index today closed just 150 points short of the 19,000 mark. This is happened within few days of it crossing 18,000 and few weeks after crossing 17,000 mark. Though the fundamentals of the Indian Economy now is doing good, I am not sure it can handle so much money coming in so fast. Now any bad news that can affect the sentiment of the investors either internally like fall of this government or externally, will likely to trigger a huge fall. Such a fall can wipe out few hundred thousand millions in days and push into a burst. This scene is not very different in other Asian markets, everywhere fund is pouring.

On top this, Rupee is appreciating day by day. From Rs.44 a year back it has reached Rs.39.5 and is heading quickly to Rs.38. This is making Indian Products (whether it is Leather, Garment, ITES and to lesser extend Software) unviable in abroad markets. And Central government is merrily encouraging the rise, as it helps them to buy oil with lesser rupee. We can't also blame the government has their Left coalition partner are giving them no room to increase the Petrol Prices, inspite of oil is at an all time high of $85 per barrel.

One thing is certain - for everyone in business and money markets, challenging times are ahead soon.

Microsoft have released for some time now preinstalled and preconfigured Virtual Images (in Virtual PC VHD format) of Exchange Server and SQL Server for evaluation. The list is expanded to cover many more of MS softwares including ISA Server, BizTalk, System Center, Windows Server 2008, Vista Enterprise and Office 2007. There are also candidates that are time consuming to install and configure like MOSS 2007 & VS 2005 Team System. With these images, all you have to do is download them and run the VHD files with Virtual PC or Virtual Server (both are free from Microsoft). It can't get easier than this.

At some point I guess all server software will come in this fashion, even for production environments. Whether it is Windows or Linux, Server software are becoming more and more complex to configure and secure that it is only logical for Product companies to give them precooked and ready to eat.

You can download the images from microsoft.com/vpc

Microsoft demonstrated their Multipoint technology where two people can use one computer at the same time.

I am in Microsoft India's i3 2007 event in Leela, Bangalore. Many eminent speakers are talking today about how India is innovating.

Mr.Ravi Venkatesan talked about "How a World Bank report that says India's GDP can become 5 times of what it is today. As a country we have learned to innovate around constraints. Look in the Mobile phone industry where we have the lowest ARPU but still some of the highest urban teledensity. Take say Tata ACE or other innovative products built on Shoe string budgets when compared with rest of the world. Take for instance a gentleman from Chennai is able to produce solar power heated water. The challenge is to accelerate these sparse and spread innovations. Only 16% of Manufacturing industry in India have forward planning for human resources, in China it is 92%. We have done a bad job of applying IT within the country. Investments in IT in India is only 3.5% GDP same as Bangladesh & Sri Lanka. Today we are talking about Innovation from India, Innovation for India, Innovation with India. India has over 8 Million SMEs and they are the primary employment drivers and only 2 Million of them use computers other than Mobile. In Tirupur we have a model for Software plus Service model for garment industry by paying Rs.5000/2500 per user. Our DPE team is going to work with Startups in enabling them with technology, opening doors, connecting to venture capitalists"

Ramgopal Subramaniam from Aztecsoft did the demo of their Tirupur Garment cluster for SME.

Prof.Sadagopan talked about "I will talk about Innovation East of Bangalore, West of Bangalore and lastly in Bangalore.

1. For example nearly a decade back In Tirupathi, we developed a system where by each pilgrim got a barcode tag which replaced physical queue with a logical queue. It costs 10paise and over 26 Million people have used it so far. Later we found that the pilgrims took bath in the template tank, so we moved to water proof tag. Now we have extended the system to Internet. Initially critics said illiterates will oppose it, but they support it b'cos they don't have the bribing opportunities that literates have. To make it India it got to be Absolutely low cost, reliable  and easy to use.
2. Moving West, in Udipi we have a company called Robosoft serving Marquee Top 5 Japan companies for Device driving with over 2000 people and he calls his place Silicon Beach, this proves innovation can happen anywhere
3. In Bangalore - From JP Nagar few years a 30 people company managed to make USD 6 Million for a gadget that unwired iPod. They are closed now, but the point that innovation can happen from anywhere.

Most of the innovation can happen from most unusual place. So India innovating should be India innovating from anywhere in the country.

There is a social dilemma, because in India everyone wants to be developing software, but the bigger opportunity/large number of jobs are in maintenance of software/business. The message should somehow reach the youngsters and that Maintenance is cool. Even in Microsoft, people will like to first go to MS Research, then to MS Labs finally to Sales or Support. But most of the challenging work happens in Support.

Automotive and Retail are the next booming industry and both are IT intensive"

Srikanth Rao of Affordable Business Solutions says the "biggest gap of man power exists for SME players. They can't train people because if they train the trained resources will quit. If you can do a solution at less than 10% of the overall cost to company and produce 20 to 30% cost saving, you got it"

One of my good friend and well wisher is Mr.Siva Pillai, Computer Officer of Goldsmiths College, UK. It is interesting on how we got acquainted. That was way back in 1996/97 when we were both members of a Tamil IT Interest email group. Then in 1998 when I visited London I was treated to be a guest in Siva's house. From there over the years our two families have become good friends.

Coming back to this post, I am happy to learn last week that Siva has won a well-deserved award - it is a European Award for Languages for this year. This was for his work on the Tamil Primary Language and Family Learning Project which has made a significant impact on parental involvement in education and learning of the Tamil language in the Downham (UK) area.

You can read full article here published this month in the CiLT UK Magazine where Siva Pillai describes the project's development and continuing success. The full list of 2007 winners can be found here.

People who know Siva including me are certainly not surprised for this well deserved award for him. Even at the age where he has grandkids, his energy levels have to be seen to be believed. Above all his passion to help children (குறிப்பாக புலன் பெயர்ந்த தமிழ் குழந்தைகள்) to learn Tamil language is infectious. He has several works to his credit on this topic, including the recent project for Learn Tamil - through English (Primary) were he helped the founders.

I just finished reading Richard Branson's book "Screw It, Let's Do It", for the ignorant Richard Branson is the Founder and Chairman of Virgin group of companies. The first thing that strikes when you pick the book is the title, especially the first part that is unconventional and bold. Just to see how people are feeling ab