rahul gaitonde dot org

Today in tech, we’re reading about couples who’re split between physical books and reading on the iPad or Kindle. The larger story, of course, is about how publishers are walking the delicate line between appealing to adopters of digital books and avoiding alienating the larger audiences that reads ‘real books’. (“We used to go to the beach and we’d both take out books, but he had an iPad, and it was almost distracting because it didn’t feel like he was reading with me.” Whoa.)

Then, the Irish web apps company Contrast argues that before you create a ‘community’ site for your niche, start a simple blog or suchlike with great content and no network. Only after you’ve gotten a critical mass of regular readers can you add those ‘community’ features like profiles, galleries and more. (“…you’ll need a large crowd before you get worthwhile content from them. You know what they call a content driven site without any good content? A load of bollox. So you need great content from the start.”)

Finally, the University at Kentucky has gone nuts with Facebook’s new Places feature (where you can ‘check in’ and broadcast your location to your friends). It’s put up giant wooden pointers resembling the ‘Places’ icons on its campus that are supposed to remind students to ‘check in’ on Facebook, that will be broadcast to their friends network, so that “maybe their friends still in high school will see it over and over again”. And come to UKentucky. To check in themselves, I suppose.

In non-tech, we’re reading how the author (well, we’ll forgive him for Theodore Boone) John Grisham stumbled upon his calling – after failure after failure. (“I applied for a job at a Sears store in a mall. The only opening was in men’s underwear. It was humiliating. I tried to quit, but I was given a raise. Evidently, the position was difficult to fill. I asked to be transferred to toys, then to appliances.”)

Then, a college professor find out that letting students pick their own due date for coursework actually resulted – contrary to rational behaviour – in earlier deadlines, and higher grades. (“When resolving to reach a goal—whether it is tackling a big project at work or saving for a vacation, it might help to first commit to a hard and clear deadline, and then inform our colleagues, friends, or spouse about it with the hope that this clear and public commitment will help keep us on track and ultimately fulfill our resolutions.”)

Finally, a short post about how our ambitions keep shifting downwards, as the years pass. (the blogger quotes a book where the author went from wanting to be Einstein to “the point where I merely envied the postdoc in the office next door because he had been invited to give a seminar in France.”) Your conversations with kids will be all about what they want to be when they grow up. And you won’t hear developer, mid-level manager, or –horrors – HR executive.

Today, we’re reading commentary on our age’s inability to disconnect from work while on vacation, our self-expectation of all-time-availability. Just very good, very true and quite sad. (“Five years ago, in Barbados, none of us consulted a computer. Three years ago, in Costa Rica, a few family members walked to an Internet cafe and checked our e-mail one afternoon just for the novelty of being online in a faraway place. This year I stood in a long line in the lobby of this resort in the Dominican Republic, to wait my turn to sign up for 25 hours of Internet service for $25.”)

Also, ReadWriteWeb posted a selection from its call for comments about the workplace of the future. (“The long-term impact of this trend (an increase in the share of part-time contractors v/s full-time employees) may yield a more knowledgeable workforce constantly aggregating and fine tuning skills as a function of the need to truly multitask efficiently.”) The commuter scene in Indian cities – and I’ve commuted in Pune, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Bombay – is insane. We could each save a couple of daily hours of time, massive amounts of stress and liters of fuel by working mostly from home. I’m a big fan of this. To the fear that “I just don’t trust the productivity levels for when people work from home, and I know our CEO agrees with that.”, we’re just going to have to build teams of people who can function well as a geographically dispersed team. Think Automattic (“We’re very much a virtual company where everyone primarily works from home (or their coffee shop of choice). The half dozen of us in the Bay Area will go in on Thursdays to have a little company, but six days out of the week the space is usually empty.”)

Finally, this lovely live visualisation from Book Depository of books being sold at this moment around the world.

In non-tech, a website that became a favourite destination of ultra-conservative Christians in America, linked to from other popular websites, mentions on a radio show – but is actually a prank. (“… they were posting collaborative humor pieces on the Web. Mr. Butvidas bought the ChristWire.org domain name, and the partners began to conceive the Web site that exists today, something like what The Onion would be if the writers cared mainly about God, gay people and how both influence the weather”). Hilarious. For such gems as “Is My Husband Gay?”

Also, what’s behind the Times of India’s sustained, extremely negative coverage of the Commonwealth Games (CWG). Apparently, a failed attempt to get the “official newspaper” tag (“For 2-page reports on five key milestone days (carrying a half-page ad of CWG at DAVP (department of audio visual publicity) rates and a half-page ad at commercial days); for six one-page reports (where in 65% of the page will have edit and 35% will be paid-for); and 12 full pages of advertorial at DAVP rates, Times proposes a Rs 12.19 crore package.”)

Finally, while we’re on the CWG, my friend Karthik Gadiyar on the Commonwealth Games theme song that (this week) has gotten as many newspaper inches as the Games themselves. (“I don’t know about the Indian spirit, but there is a lack of a high point in the song. The wait for that one memorable point continues through the song, but the one high point (using Rahman’s own previous compositions, a “Jai Ho” chorus or the Sufi qawwali part in “Kehna hi kya”) never comes. As a result, there is no one line or one lyric that you can immediately recall from this song.”)

Today we begin with this rant from a colonel stationed in Kabul about Powerpoint use gone crazy in the US Army. (“The commander’s immediate subordinates, usually one- and two-star generals, listen to the CUA – commander’s update assessment -  in a semi-comatose state. Each briefer has approximately 1 or 2 minutes to impart either information or misinformation. Usually they don’t do either. Fortunately, none of the information provided makes an indelible impact on any of the generals.”) Turns out that the colonel was fired a result of this.

Also, we have this internal 2003 email from Bill Gates to senior Microsoft managers, complaining bitterly about a download experience from Microsoft.com (“These 45 names are totally confusing. These names make stuff like: C:\Documents and Settings\billg\My Documents\My Pictures seem clear.”)

Finally, a delightful little story about a tiny pony that hangs about in an Apple Store that no one notices. Ever. (“Since then, John and I have a term called a “tiny pony.” It is a thing that is exceptional that no one, for whatever reason, notices. Or, conversely, it is an exceptional thing that everyone notices, but quickly grows acclimated to despite the brilliance of it all… a black president, whose father is from Kenya and mother is from Kansas, being elected President of the United States is a tiny pony.”)

In non-tech, Bloomberg examines how the sheer scale of China’s investment in Australia is changing the landscape, the economy and society, leaving Australians deeply ambivalent about it (“”Are they just here to make a buck and go, or build something sustainable? The question is whether we’re going to have mines with towns, or towns with mines.”)

Speaking of China, what of Americans who’re working, increasingly, in China? (“… Americans need to understand the importance of building so-called guanxi (pronounced GWAN-she). The word means relationships, but has implications beyond the obligatory happy hour, occasional lunches with the boss or networking… in China, it’s really expected that you become friends with your boss and you go out and socialize in a way that doesn’t happen in the U.S.”)

We end with this little piece in the New Yorker that compares living in New York to hanging out on social media online (“I had similar lopsided intimacy with all sorts of people in Manhattan. There were the regulars at the dog run, whose names I didn’t know but whose lives I got familiar with; fellow runners I’d end up alongside for miles on the Central Park reservoir track, yakking all the way… exactly the same experience I have trawling the waters of Twitter and Facebook.”)

From a BCG report, as reported by the WSJ India blog. The Internet population will triple in the next 5 years, but

“A lot of the growth in India will come from users who first surf the Internet from their mobile phones… India is going to be different than what we’ve seen in mature markets but also in emerging markets. It’s going to be predominantly a mobile experience.”

And what will people experience?

“The traditional Internet in its current form would be largely inaccessible even if it were to be available,” he said. “The language and literacy barriers in the country—those are formidable.”

Global sites that want to keep the edge they already have in India, compared to some other emerging markets, will have to Indianize more than they have so far.

Last week, we learnt that the Web Is Dead. Actually, it turns out that everything that’s alive today has already been dead once before: Facebook, Microsoft Office, Microsoft itself, E-mail, the Desktop, the iPod and more.

Then, we read an article from last December about a website that combines city crime reports with maps to find for you the safest path home; in fact, how local Governments making data available to programmers and data miners is resulting in a surprising – and useful – burst of creative applications.

Finally, we read about how, to achieve wide partner adoption, you need to treat the API of your web-based business like a product in itself, with marketing and love (the API, not the business itself). “API cannibalizing Business Development”, in other words.

In non-tech, we read how citizens of Gujarat, so used to having movies banned for them, simply assumed that the movie Firaq would not release in their state when in fact it hadn’t been banned and was playing.

Also, if both parents are psychologists, do they ‘shrink’ their kids? (“to help him get over a bout of teenage impotence… she took young Micah to a local park and had him pretend to be his own boner… “You are an erection. What words come into your head?” He visualized himself as a “victorious penis,” running around the park triumphantly.”)

Finally, Germans work shorter hours, take more vacations but are more productive and have better quality of life. What’s wrong with the American work ethic? Apparently, capitalism gone amok.(“The whole system (in America) is just grossly inefficient. All of those European countries have one system. There’s cost control. There’s no cost control here; there are four or five systems competing simultaneously.”)