Gaurav's world: Technology

Next-Gen TV

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 20:42:57 GMT

I was in the sin city attending the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conference and exhibit, the largest broadcasting event in the US with 25,000 attendees. I was there for a couple of days exploring the competition, evaluating where we are better and where we lag, eyeing the latest technology in TV, Mobile, Electronics and Media products, and trying to see if I can take some valuable ideas and feedback from what I have seen and heard from others including exisitng and potential customers.

The Panasonic exhibit displayed some fantastic new generation TV technologies including a 103 inch plasma ($75K!) and a touch screen/tablet plasma. Apple had a huge exhibit featuring Final Cut Pro 6 and other media/publishing/editing tools. Surpisingly I did not see any Apple TV exhibits. The Google booth was a bunch of guys with no real product - was not impressive. I spent some of my time walking around the exhibit and looking at fascinating equipment to cover media events including choppers, trucks and cameras. One amazing sports technology I came across was the statistics and field views and positions gathered by this company for a soccer game and overlayed on live broadcast feeds to give a unique experience to the users; this includes statistics such as team fitness, area covered and field positions of all players play-by-play.

My focus for the event was IPTV (TV delivered through the internet). Microsoft had an impressive booth with a section for IPTV, HD-DVD and HDI, TV Guide, Silverlight among other technologies. I spent some time at our booth watching customers reactions to the product, most of which was very positive. While seeing competitor products, I realized why most operators are using ours - it looks so much better! Speaking to people at the conference reiterated for me why IPTV in the Next-Gen TV experience and will change TV forever. It is expected that the next 5 years of TV will bring more change and innovation than the last 50 years! Some examples of what IPTV may provide in the future or already does - Ability to order pizza from your TV while watching a movie; answering conference calls and receiving voice mails on your TV; ability to purchase products you see in ads immediately through TV; personalized ads and recommendations targeted specially at you; interactive applications like GPS while watching a car chase; watching the same content on TV, PC and mobile with the ability to control any of the devices from the other; pause and interact with live sports programming content; Subscription Video on Demand services to replace stores like Netflix and Blockbuster forever.

Microsoft Research Silicon Valley Road show

Wed, 03 May 2006 02:59:13 GMT

I attened the Microsoft Research Silicon Valley road show today. A very interesting gathering with the intention of 1) displaying all the latest work from MS research and 2) encouraging high school kids to pursue a career in technology. Here are a few interesting projects I found:

- Location services for Family & Friends: Get alerted on your mobile phone when Timmy enters Macy's. Know exactly where your mom is right now. This is based on mobile tracking, communication and synchronization. Useful but I had privacy as well as application usage concerns with this.

- Browsing the Physical World in Real Time: Finding out which restaurant has no wait at the moment or what the traffic is like on the 101. Again synchrozied with the mobile device.

- Nocturnal: MSN messenger based sharing of search preferences. If you search for Gaurav, your top search result Gaurav from Hyderabad. But if I have rated my homepage as the highest relevant search result, and I propogate/share that with all my contacts. Then if one of my contacts searches for Gaurav, his top result will be Gaurav. Again great idea, concerns of mine were related to having a database on a local machine and again privacy issues.

- Shortstop: Send email to a mobile phone only when it is predicted that the person is sitting in a stopped car. This one I did not get. Who would buy this application? Also what if the mail is very very urgent.

- Wild Thing goes mobile: Search Arnie the Governator without knowing the spelling using wild characters - for example ar* sc*w*. I just couldn't believe this doesn't exist already.

There were many more, but these are the ones I found to be directly affecting a lot of people and not just techies. I did have a lot of comments, suggestions and cynicism for some of the projects, but that's just me.

Service Engine Soon

Wed, 12 Apr 2006 02:16:52 GMT

I'm driving from Berkeley to home on a Saturday afternoon after a tiring hike and after scratching my car in the garage, and suddenly the dreaded light comes on - Service Engine Soon. What the hell does that mean? Will my car just breakdown and refuse to move? How much will it cost to fix? How long can I go without fixing it?

The most ambiguous, non-informational, frightening and upsetting light. As soon as it comes on, your heart starts beating twice as fast, it adds one more uncertainity in your life and you can almost see the cash flow out of your bank fixing it. You think it could be anything - somethign screwed up under the hood for which the dealer/mechanic will charge a bomb, a failed sensor, a failed something youve never heard of, a software bug or simply nothing. What I have found though, that more often than ever this is related to the fact that you just filled gas and you didn't close the cap correctly which causes the pressure sensors to alarm in the form of "Service Engine Soon". Why car makers didnt call the sign for this something less alarming is a whole different discussion.

Obvious thought in my mind at the time was that this must be something to do with the scratch. But ofcourse I remembered the gas cap thing, as this had happened to me earlier. And thank god for me it was that. Happiest moment is when the light goes off. FYI this light usually comes on after a day or so or a few drive cycles (start, drive, stop) after you fill gas. And after you have refit the gas cap, dissapears in a day or two and some drive cycles. So have patience - do the necessary and wait a bit before showing your car. Let the stupid sign not scare the hell out of you.

Airline industry still in the 1980s

Wed, 25 Jan 2006 21:32:10 GMT

Lets think for a bit (I know it can be hard sometimes, but lets give it a try) - What has changed in the last 20-30 years? Cars, Trains, Buildings, Movies, Evolution of computers, internet, cell phones etc etc etc, Bottom line almost everything in the world has changed over the last 20-30 years.

Except one thing - Airplanes and in general the airline industry. Still the same as it was in the 1980s. It still takes 30 hours to get from SF to Mumbai. There is still a halt for 8 hours in HK. There is still no legroom in the planes, and there is still a middle seat. Airline food stick sucks and air hostesses are still rude. It still costs exactly the same as it would have 20 years ago. Commercial planes still can't fly for longer than 16 hours. Point is that flying long distances is still a nightmare and very expensive.

And we say we are making progress? I can't believe that if the Concord was started 20 years ago and that could complete a flight from London to NY in 2 hours, 20 years hence it still takes 6-7 hours. My theory is the technology has been out there for years, but giants like Boieng and Airbus are not releasing it for commercial use for selfish, monetory reasons. At least I want to think this way, otherwise I must say the growth in the airline sector has been astonishingly non-existent.

All I want is a 4 hour flight from SF to Mumbai - that's all. I want to go home for the weekend :). Not too much to ask for in this day and age I think. Specially when I can almost do anything sitting at home or in the office.