OK, finally i was able to play with my new Leap Motion . Pretty cool technology that detects your hand motion and transfer it to your computer screen.
Some notes on Day 1:
* Setup is freaking simple! Plug it in, install the Leap Motion and go!
* Leap Motion is small in size and fits on most desks
* This is a new way of interacting with the applications
* Current FREE Apps are *NOT* enough to explore.
* I would like to see more FREE Apps. I don’t want to buy Apps! No way!
* Hopefully I should be able to control the whole desktop (not just the Airspace App) with hands.
Am I excited now? Yes. Will I be excited the Day 10? Not sure yet.
I started blogging about year 2006 and since then I take time to express my ideas, opinions and reviews in this blog and ultimately enjoy the experience. In 7+ years of my blogging experience, I learned several cultural, writing, technological and emotional aspects of blogging.
All blogs on internet are subjected to random viewers (strangers) looking at the content and reviewing it very critically. They probably do not care that you posted the content out of your passion and you spend time to create that content.
The beauty of the internet is you consume and contribute (mostly for free).
A different dimension of blogging is that it provides a way to structure my thoughts, express them to wider audience and in the worse case it is my journal.
Each blog on an average takes about 30-45 minutes of my time to structure the thoughts and then self-review the content and post. That’s a lot of my personal time per blog. While I love to contribute to the world with the little i know, I am also deeply saddened when people copy the content and don’t attribute the material. Recently my friend brought to my attention 2 different blogs that took the content and just changed the names. While I have no problem in people using my content, it dot not sound right to treat my content as YOUR content 🙁
My request to everyone on the internet is “You can Copy but do Not Paste”! Content creators take enormous about of time to create the original thoughts, reviews and ideas. Copying them and using them as a owner is “not fair” (as my daughter says).
I love blogging and I will continue to do this. Most bloggers don’t do it for money, they do it because they love it.
People are people! We deal with variety of people in our community, work place, family, friends and many other random places. While we know some people close enough to get around the unpleasant nature, with others we get into trouble because of unmet expectations. A topic of interest for me is how people behave and why they behave in a certain way.
Why should you care? Each of our tolerance levels vary and we all are vulnerable to ill treatment by others. We want others to treat us with respect and dignity and vice verse. While we can not totally avoid “bad behavior” people, realizing them early in the game helps us to minimize the losses (emotional, psychological and economic).
Below is a summary of types of people that I encountered. Of course, some people might have a mix of several characteristics embedded in them, but for the sake of clarity, I want to distinguish each. If you see other types of people not in this list, please contribute. I want to learn too.
1) People who are always with you no matter what happens to you
2) People who are with you only when you are happy (or celebration time)
3) People who are always with you when you are in need. These people give you emotional help. They are there with you days and nights when in need.
4) People who are always with you and want to see you regress (or downfall)
5) People who are praying for your downfall from behind you; You don’t see them. But they are watching you.
6) People who puts you in trouble. They are smarts who always know how to escape a situation to put you in the hot seat.
7) People who brings you out of trouble. These people differ from #3. They suggest you what to do and may also work with you to bring you out of trouble.
8) People who praise before you and bitch about you from behind. These are dual personality people who you would not even think tal bad about you. But shit happens.
9) People who always hates you no matter how nice you are to them. Dont know why but they are there.
10) People who think you are good and want to see you grow personally and professionally. They believe in you and they stand by you.
11) People who are role models for you in some categories of life.
12) People who use your relationship (with them) to get their work done. They neither like you nor hate you but you are a means to their end 🙂
Surprisingly there are many good people who pass around the positive aura. So, don’t get depressed about negative people. Remember that just you being positive is not enough and will not sustain for a long time. You need to choose your company (of people) wisely.
Now that I am done with my MBA, I have weekends for myself. More than anything else, I am happy to spend time with my family and learn many things that I missed in these 2.5 years. In the last couple of weeks I observed many kids playing in my neighborhood and parks which helped me develop a perspective on their behavior.
I have observed enough kids to categorize the sample as below.
Leaders: These kids wants other kids to follow them. They don’t care what other kids think. Unconsciously they show direction, they lead and there are “some” who follow them. These kids often are very assertive and they do stuff no matter what others think.
Followers: Clear…! These kids follow the leaders. Not because they like them because they need someone to show the path. They want someone else to entertain them. So, the leaders take this opportunity and take the followers for a ride. Followers simply can’t decide or they need some assurance from others. So, they fall pray.
Observers: Observers pretty much sit beside the Leaders and Followers and jsut relax. They are not very dynamic in nature and they like watching the action from outside. They have the most fun because they do not get involved in any action directly or indirectly. If a kid falls down, they laugh; If couple of kids are fighting, they still laugh; Pretty annoying to see such kids.
Discoverers: These kids are explorers trying to understand themselves and others. They want to try, understand what they like and what they don’t like. They lead based on the situation but not necessarily a leader personality. They usually don’t get into fight, because they want to learn and experiment. They don’t care about the cool kids.
Haters: No matter how kind and gentle a kid is there is always a kid who hates him/her. These kids usually try to be a leader, fail and then start blaming the other kids for unsuccessful attempt. They induce poison to other kids and instigate some wrongdoings. The hate in the minds of these kids so sophisticated that these kids are pretty hard to identify for the first time.
Now, think about these kids and fast-forward their lives for 20 years. Do these kids remain the same with their traits? What re-shapes them when they are growing? Does parenting influence a LOT? or is it just a personal trait that does not change over time?
While it is easy to push everything that a child behavior on individual traits and parents, there seems to be lot more factors that influences what they turnout to be as an adult. Did we not hear parents saying that my son/daughter is “very intelligent” at young age and then they turn out to be real “hope less human beings” as adults? It would be pretty interesting to study some of these factors that drives a child’s future. I will write more on what i find and when i find.
OK, now I am done with my MBA, many current students asked me about my personal preference of classes at UC Davis GSM. I have posted all of them in “UC Davis Class FAQs” and for those who like to see it in a single place, see below 🙂
Markets and the Firm (Victor Stango) – I never studies economics before and Victor brings in many many practical examples in the class from various industries. I only wish it was a case study based class but never the less, his class really was my foundation for future classes and I apply the basics everyday.
Data Analysis for Managers (Roger Edelen) – Simply put this is a statistics class. But with a twist of how to represent the numbers in spreadsheets and present it to senior management. I like the practical aspect of using the spreadsheets and getting things done. Don’t miss the Bayesian concepts : it just becomes so important as a manager.
Organizational Strategy and Organizational Behavior (Gina Dokko) – Covers the fundamentals of the strategy and human behavior and biases. This class is case oriented and this makes it much more lively and enjoyable. Everyone in the class has a different opinion. That’s OK. There is tons of reading and there is a lot to learn in this class. In my view, this strategy class is foundation for anyone going into (or planning) general management.
Negotiation in Organizations (Joseph Radzevick) – Negotiations is part of everyday life and this class makes you aware of various techniques. Irrespective of who is teaching this, the material and the class interactions makes it worth. At least when i took it, every class had at least 2 negotiations with fellow members using the techniques that i learned in previous class. I highly recommend (again, if you don’t practice it’s of no use).
Mergers and Acquisitions (David Petroni) – My time and money was well worth for this class. David is a industry veteran with a lot of M&A experience and brings in the financial, organizational, cultural, legal and industry aspects to M&A. He brought in many speakers who lived through M&A and that was very insightful. Most interestingly, I was involved in two M&A teams after that.
Executive Leadership Seminar (Jim Wundermann) – This class is very different compared to what we have in GSM. This class has two parts to it. First part is to make you realize your strengths and leadership style. Second part is that you get a perspective on various industry leaders. CEOs from various industries (DELL WYSE, PG&E, Virgin America, Silicon Valley Bank, Citi Bank California, etc…) talk about their leadership challenges and experiences and you get a chance to ask them questions too.
Product Management (Marcus Lowe) – This class needs a *lot* of work. Pick a good group that you can work with. This is a highly analytical and quantitative class and a must for anyone who wants to do product marketing, product innovation (R&D) and new product introductions. Though i do product management for work, the markstrat simulation puts you in various phases of product life cycle that one many not always gets exposed to.
Multi-Channel Marketing (Rubel, Olivier) – Olivier is very knowledgeable and one of the very few professors who presses you to think “as a decision maker”. I have got a lot out of his multi-channel marketing class.
International Marketing (Peters, Kay) – This is a very interesting class for people working with international firms and looking for global expansion of products. This is a one unit class and Kay provides a wonderful framework to think about the international product marketing. This could be a three unit course and get into more details of the nuances of the international marketing.
Technology Competition and Strategy (Hemant Bhargava) – People get what they want to get out of this class. Due to the inherent nature, the class discusses a lot of technology companies and products. This is a must class for anyone building the technology products in startups or corporations. The modern nature of the platforms (internal or external) and network effects makes it much more challenging for the survival of the technologies and this class addresses exactly that. This class provides a framework to think about when building products. Its difficult to appreciate this class if you have not faced any challenges to promote your product or standard in your firm.
From iPhone 3GS it was a natural upgrade for me to 4S. I was so happy to be getting the 4S mainly because of the camera and #Siri. But not anymore.
Battery drains too quick. I keep it charging the whole night and when i take it to office the next day morning, it lasts only till 3.00pm to 5.00pm. Yeah.. yeah.. i did remove the location based services and all.
iOS 5 hangs frequently. Unfortunately this is the least I would expect from #Apple’s software.
When you are on a call and then you open Camera, my phone almost always goes into “dead” mode. The only way it comes back is when all the batter is drained. Till that time I can not even force restart. None of the buttons work.
At times I see funny scroll of numbers on the event notifications. I attached my company outlook to my 4S and during certain situations, the time on the event notification message just rolls randomly.
I was very exited about Siri initially but not anymore. Especially, for my Indian-English accent, Siri is not the best voice recognition software that i would rely on. Instead, when i use my wife’s #Samsung #Galaxy S 2, I thought #GoogleVoice has a better capability than Siri.
May be i should have got the Samsung’s Galaxy S 2 ? I am still confused.
I have been using iPhone since 2007 and thought of moving to Android. Unfortunately, this did not happen. After 2 days of playing with the Samsung Infuse with Android, I returned this device in favor of iPhone 4.
Background : In the past 4 years many called me Google and Apple fan boy. In general, I am passionate about how technology changes our lives and Google and Apple definitely had their share in this world. With Google, I am a daily user of the GMail, Calendar, Docs, Chrome, Google TV, Sites, Picasa, Blogs, Youtube, Reader and especially in the past few days the Google+. As a user, i get much more out of Google for “free” (?). Yes, people might argue on this “free” stuff from Google, but that’s a separate discussion. The first time I bought an Apple product is in 2007 ( I know, i was introduced to Apple pretty late) with iPhone (EDGE). Then I moved from EDGE -> 3G -> 3GS, in spite of expensive upgrades from AT&T and Apple.
All these years, I used products from Apple and Google enough to form some opinions and evangelize my thoughts. The fact that Google was my “window” to Internet world and Apple was the inventor of “cool” gadgets, I never had them as competitors. Until the introduction of the Android mobile platform from Google. With Apple’s iPhone – “Software and Hardware engineered to work together” and with Google’s Android – “Mobile OS became a commodity”. With Android, technically any mobile phone manufacturer can come forward and start using the Android OS with their hardware.
I hated iPhone : Yes, right from 2007, so many people around me have this iPhone thingy that i slowly started getting “sick” of iPhone. Every year, there is a new release and if you don’t upgrade, you look like an old 70’s guy these days. As a user, I would like to have unique phone (at least in thoughts) or at least a phone that’s popular and not many people have. With iPhone, this sense of “premium” is lost. I live in Bay Area and when you walk in the streets of San Francisco/San Jose, you will know what i am talking about. However, in the mean while, i never realized how i got used to the iPhone UX. Its not just the user interface, but the elements of hardware in iPhone is what i think is the novelty.
I loved Android : For many doing businesses, it is a intuitive part to think about “giving choices” to users. Yes, Android did that. You could choose from LG, Samsung, HTC and others as mobile vendors and any mobile carrier at least in US. The Android applications are raising in numbers fast enough to touch or surpass the iOS applications and of course many are *free*. Many phones that had Android OS had better features “on paper” compared to a iPhone 3GS or 4G. e.g. Camera resolution quality, front/back camera, video quality, integration with Google Apps and others. And then, I love technology and I am a java programmer. So, i thought that going to Android would give me the “virtual” power of choice, software upgrades, and play with the applications as and when i want.
Something Changed : Last week (06/30/2011), i got my Samsung Infuse and played with it for few days. Its a great phone with 4.5″ Super AMOLED Plus screen looked great with emails, pictures and in general the screen looks very bright and lovable. Its very light and thin that i can carry it in my jeans. Believe me, for the screen size of the phone, I expected a lot of weight. The 8MP still camera and 720p HD video camera are very usable as if i don’t need any camcorder or digital camera (which i love that idea). But it was not the same when i used it for the most what i do – email and phone calls. The biggest WIN for the iPhone is that i got used to it unconsciously to the “simplistic” approach of the UX.
Rest is a history and please see the below video to see why i say “UX of iPhone is a lot better than Samsung Infuse phone”. Again, these are my views. Not many people may use the phone as i use and not many may see UX differences. When i used Samsung Infuse, i realized what i love about iPhone and what i got used to with Apple’s UX design. Its not just the software but the hardware too (a single button interaction for all the 4 generations of phone).
I love both the companies Apple and Google for their novel products and the ability to bring in a lot of innovation. I love Android technology and iPhone for my personal use.
I am a huge believer that the way we consume the video is going to change. And its not far off. Google TV made a bold step to bring the online video content to the TV. The Google TV platform went into the Logitech Revue and Sony Internet TV. Below is a short review of the Revue that i have been using from past 3 months.
Well.. not exactly. Till now, video calling has been a luxury and expensive act that remained with in the corporate walls or riches. What Skype did is to bring this luxury to common man and small businesses. Yeah… you may say, this is not a big deal. Yes, i agree! But the recent Skype move to provide Video calling on iPhone 3G and Wifi is phenomenal. Combined with the iPhone 4 face time feature it is just a great feature for the “globalized” families and businesses.
I have a iPhone 3GS model and this feature works as you expect with the back facing camera. You can just innovate the usage scenarios…
When i am on the move, or at restaurants or at grocery stores, i could just Video call from iPhone+Skype and ask my wife which specific flower bouquet she wants?
If i see a wonderful scenery, i could just call my daughter and show it to her.
You are walking along the Golden Gate Bridge and at a perfect sunset, call your parents in India (or anywhere in the world as long as they are a Skype user) and share the joy.
Thanks to 3G data speeds, Internet and Apple (iPhone) for making this possible. Thank you Skype. This is an amazing job!
Thanks for those invisible researchers/scientists who made this video compression techniques possible to travel across world.
Note : My AT&T signal sucks on iPhone (even on freeways). Good luck Verizon users.
I am planning to do the below Market Research for my Marketing class. Any takers ?
Topic : “Google TV – Customer’s Dilemma” Abstract : Every year $70 billion is spent on the ads alone in US and 4 billion users world wide. Google TV integrates the traditional TV and Internet for a seamless user experience. With ever increasing user generated video content on the internet, Google TV would like to capture the ad $ by marrying the TV an Internet. In October 2010 Google inters the market via hardware vendors Logitech and Sony. Soon enough, customers are thrilled about the capabilities and at the same time they are confused thinking where does the Google TV fit into their current home entertainment.
In this market research and presentation, we will focus on the various aspects where Google, Logitech and Sony would have done better to segment and position the Google TV.
I will post the research results by the end of March 2011 for sure.
Below is the update on March 4th 2011. This presentation is done at the UC Davis marketing class by my group.
