O-Turn

to be continued

2008-04-05T20:50:00.001+09:00

Moving to o-turn.wordpress.com!

vegetarianism

2007-12-25T07:32:00.000+09:00

while i am not the right person morally to talk about such things, i am wondering if a rising occurrence or severity of bird-flu or mad-cow disease - or something else - can put us on the path to vegetarianism.

Just as a Katrina woke the rest of us on the perils of Climate Change.

climate change

2007-12-23T17:02:00.000+09:00

While its a welcoming change that people are more alert to climate change than before - and demand any products as long as it is green - i am wondering if we are fixing the problem and not the symptom with the carbon cuts.

I mean shall we look at ways to reduce this constant need to consume more and more and instead live a life that is less sense gratifying.

A revenue model for WebX.0

2006-10-15T08:37:00.000+09:00

The proliferation of user-generated-content networks and the success of YouTube/MySpace, makes me think if the 'user' in the content should be owning these things.

What if the next GTube/ Wikipedia/ SecondLife/ WoW/ Digg issues 'shares' or 'stock options' to users contributing content/ presence. This will mirror the value of such a service, splitting 50-50 between content owners and the service/experience providers.

A wouldbe GTube will initially be fully-owned by the creators of the service and as it becomes popular, the ownership will start reflecting the strength of the content and its owners. Also this can nicely complement the current advt-driven revenue model.

PDAs with built-in Projectors

2006-09-30T20:14:00.000+09:00

I don't see the likes of palm, blackberry or motorala building in a mini/nano projector into their pda-s or cellphone-s.

To me that makes it an interesting combination - more than the picture-taking mail-sending pda-s and blackberry-s thats in the market.

is it time to lookup

2006-09-25T18:11:00.000+09:00

Wonder why no one has come up with a way to exploit the ceiling space.

hindsights

2006-09-18T10:04:00.000+09:00

Its amazing how sometimes companies don't see what seems obvious in hindsight.

Microsoft - despite trumpeting all the time about empowering individuals, never created a blogging software or wiki-tools.
RealNetworks - with their early lead in the online music distribution game, one would expect them to have comeup with an iPod.
TiVo - i guess they are just waiting for iTV or XBox to come and claim its life.

hollywood movie murder mystery

2006-08-22T17:45:00.000+09:00

Looking at the movie making process, with so many stages from concept to distribution all with its checks and filters, one would think that the product that comes out of it all is bound to be a masterpiece.

But the truth has been the reverse.

I don't know if there is a lesson here. And if there is, what is it!

Some pointers: PBS Frontline on Hollywood.

on 'vertical news'

2006-08-13T11:39:00.000+09:00

Maybe its about time for 'Vertical News'.

As opposed to the barrage of snapshots we periodically get from the current mainstream media, with vNews (we news) you can see how things snowball, at what pace and in what sequence etc.

So the RSS readers in future, will be delivering updates to the exisiting posts instead of just delivering the new posts, since with vertical news one will have the same theme developng over time.

on barrier to entry

2006-08-06T11:01:00.000+09:00

Found this article titled Valley Boys in BW very inspiring...

To post some snippets, before the link becomes stale:
The barriers to entry are now so low that all it takes is a laptop and a $50-a-month Internet hookup to make a kid the next mogul.

That's possible because the cost of jump-starting a good idea has plummeted. At the same time, the sources of money have multiplied, swirling in from new VC shops, angel investors, and strategic partners galore.

"It's a good time now for the entrepreneur," says John Freeman, a professor at University of California at Berkeley's Haas School of Business. "There are lots of different pots of money. It gives them the ability to modify when they take it, [and] how much they take, and leaves them with more control."

This time around, the entrepreneurs worry that, within a moment, the money -- and their projects -- could vanish.

...someone from the last boom who was worth millions one month, only to move into his parents' basement the next.

some web2.0 thoughts

2006-08-04T17:23:00.000+09:00

Just was wondering today if we will ever start to see blogs as open-classrooms.

I didn't know if it makes sense to even ask this, but this article on the economists blogging pointed to such a potential trend.

The explosion of user-generated content via Podcasts, YouTube-s and Blogs, combined with the level of interactivity that these web2.0 technologies offer, maybe we should even start expecting it now.

With blogs of such quality around, and with the amount of research-grade information already available through sites like Google's Scholar, will an university degree become irrelevant (or even a cause for suspicion :-).

21st century ism-s

2006-07-15T22:45:00.000+09:00

sometimes i wonder if terrorism is an unexpected outcome of democracy. And Whether the pro-majority nature of democracy can solve all the problems of minority.

In a world thats increasingly globalised with labours and immigrants more and more mobile, we are bound to have pockets of minorities that feel isolated and under-represented in all countries.

Will be interesting to see how democracy can evolve to solve such an increasingly complex multi-cultural society.

make an ipod wish

2006-07-10T01:42:00.000+09:00

how kewl will it be to see all recorded lectures of the great and the good available on a service like iTunes.

Seems to me as a less controversial (than the Google books) and more usefull project to try.

UPDATE:
Seems someone overheard this: Univ of Alberta's Mike Getz

micro royalty

2006-07-09T22:26:00.000+09:00

why don't we have the likes of Google evolving a system for a micro-royalty payment.

With the proliferation of micro-ideas through blogs and other viral ways, it only makes sense to have a system that tracks back the original creator and rewards him for his contribution.

A reward system such as this for blogging, along with a peer-to-peer giving and/ or lending network will be on my top-10, most-needed list in this web 2.0 era.

adopt a country

2006-07-07T20:52:00.000+09:00

I will always remember 2006 as the year when Adopt-A-School gave way to Adopt-A- Country.

securitize this

2006-07-07T20:44:00.000+09:00

Talking of patent trolls, why don't we have companies securitizing their patents.

The move to synthetic and hybrid securities, makes me wonder will we also see the days where a given security (say, stocks) will be decomposed into its constituents and traded independently. Say, a company's brand-name, strength of their ip and so on.

I predict a big industry around this solely because of the profits it can bring to the investment banks that can underwrite it and the research departments that will trumpet them.

Sounds dumb to me right now, maybe when thinking of it as incentives-driven it makes sense?!.

y! insure against patent trolls

2006-07-04T20:55:00.000+09:00

With these lawsuits abound i am surprised to not see much news of insurance companies willing to insure companies against such risks.

Something that amounts to giving companies some sort of patent-liability protection. Seems to me that a well developed market in this space should be good for everyone.

video games

2005-12-10T23:24:00.001+09:00

I started thinking about Games ever since i read somewhere that the later Matrix movies will be made more appealing to the Gaming population.

I loved The Matrix movie and as a Non-Gamer, I really felt let down then.

But it also made me think why would anyone make a very successfull film. And then follow it up with something that appeals more to a more narrowing Gaming population - unless ofcourse there is something.

links on japan

2005-12-10T19:53:00.000+09:00

Talking of Tokyo, I always look for sites that i can regularly check to learn of happenings in Japan. Find them listed here

manga manga

2005-12-10T19:29:00.000+09:00

Being in Tokyo, i found this entire genre of manga/ anime/ video games to be very fascinating. In my search for more, i stumbled* upon a book by Peter Carey titled Wrong About Japan that kind of reflects my own feelings towards this whole phenomenon.

*at one of my favourite haunts here The Blue Parrot

lost + found

2005-12-10T19:14:00.000+09:00

I had this one great* idea to have a Lost AND Found site where people can post messages of things they Lost and/ or Found - city wise. And I was somewhat depressed to discover Craigslist with its simple Lost + Found section.

begin at the beginnings

2005-12-10T18:00:00.000+09:00

I had been thinking of having a blog from the days i saw the first blogs robotwisdom, memepool and need to know.

I had first heard of these blogs via the tbtf newsletter that i liked so much then.

I still visit and love the first 2 sites: Memepool and Robot Wisdom. The 3rd one - ntk - i had a suspicion that it was designed to keep me out. It was just too hard to read stuffs here.

misplaced thoughts

2005-12-10T17:25:00.000+09:00

I have no idea how embarassing it is to going to be to lose - and then find - ones own thoughts.

Maybe this blog will show me that.