Blackberry is headed for a decline – so says this analysis  which was endorsed by Fred Wilson (a well known Silicon Valley VC). Indeed the analysis is quite convincing the graph does show that BB may be at its peak and on its way to decline as a platform. But I have 3 reservations for this analysis: Its too early to comment – the subscriber growth drop is only 1 quarter old trend, not something to base a future scenario on It ignores the power of network effect – while apple and android are growing faster than BB, we must acknowledge that blackberry already has a large installed user base and hence it’s not so easy for the whole platform to wipe out instantaneously. More importantly, BB users are primarily corporate users and it’s quite difficult for them to migrate away from the platform based on individual will and whims. The corporation must decide to change before the end subscriber moves. The opinion is based on sample surveys – this objection especially applies to the ...

In my job as a management consultant, the primary function is to interact with people – clients, product vendors, government officials, bankers, and of course other consultants. Most of these are executives and over a period of time, I have started developing certain classifications for them. I know this sounds a little profane because people are not commodities; and personally I am a follower of Gandhi in terms of treating people. Most of Gandhiji's ideas can be ascribed to some inner quality of his mental eyesight that kept him from seeing people as a mass. He never saw or judged Indians or Frenchmen or Christians or Muslims in millions. He considered each human being too holy, too important to be the mere instrument of a remote impersonal terrestrial power called state. So before I start the main agenda of this post, let me clarify that this is not an attempt to define people as a collection. It’s a more mundane exercise to define certain common characteristics I have seen in ...

There's an interesting discussion going on at Hacker News about using Reason vs. Intuition - but one of the answers to it is quite pertinent to any kind of decision making. I found it worth reproducing for the benefit of all of you to be used in any situation. There are three tools for discovering truth and making decisions: reason, intuition, and revelation. Revelation means ask an expert, read the documentation. It is most appropriate when you don't know what you're doing at all -- when you have no sound first principles to feed into the engine of reason, and no experience on which to build intuition. Revelation is fast but limited; you instantly gain a conclusion as sound as your expert, but you cannot improve upon or critique it. Reason is most appropriate when you have moderate experience in a field. Through revelation and limited experience, you have developed some sound, inviolable principles, and can reason your ways to new ones. You know what  must  go here beca...

Continued from here: Tamrapatrak Vyavastha (Arthvyavastha - Part II ) Anugam's tamrapatrak scheme received a phenomenal response - also because Anugam had offered his tamrapatraks at a discount to all the workmen whom he employed or bought his wares from. Saakshaat became the official scheme operator for Anugam also, and soon many more traders wanted to float their tamrapatraks. By the end of the year, two more traders had started tamrapatrak schemes, and many more were planning to launch in the next year. Saakshaat then started training more and more young pundits on managing tamrapatrak schemes - he realized that this would be a huge business and efficient and skilled handling of  tamrapatraks would make them even more popular. With more than one tamrapatrak schemes in the market, people often came to Saakshaat looking for advice on which scheme to put their money in. Some even wanted to surrender tamrapatraks from one trader  and buy someone else's in exchange...

Read Arthvyavastha (अर्थव्यवस्था)  Part I here. Saakshaat was the first 'tamrapatradhari' or shareholder of Aanglesh's trade - but many Saamanyas followed soon - it started with Aanglesh and Saakshaat's friends, then their acquaintances, some of whom were good friends of Aanglesh's father also. People saw Aanglesh's firm prospering, making more and more money with the growing number of tamrapatrakdhari's. Most of the community's elders saw this scheme as a devious one - it was helping people earn money from money, without actually requiring people to work to earn their bread. This included everyone including Aanglesh's father who was a devout disciple of Pramukhji. But the younger and middle aged Saamanyas loved the scheme, they put in every small bit of savings they could into Aanglesh's company. Aanglesh's was able to grow his trade beyond foodgrains using the money gathered from the sale of tamrapatraks. But as more people bought...

In a sleepy town, in ancient India named Arthvyaap (अर्थ्व्याप) lived a community of people called the Samaanyas (सामान्य). Arthvyaap was a typical setting, an elder was considered the head of the community - Pramukh, a group of traders, an elite crowd of intellectual pundits, and other  workmen like farmers, cobblers, blacksmiths etc. One of the young pundits was an extremely sharp mind called Saakshaat (साक्षात) who had such a sharp mathematical brain that even though he was just 17, everyone from the Pramukh to the traders consulted him in matters relating to finance and numbers. Saakshaat was also good friends with his childhood buddy name Aanglesh(आंग्लेश) who was the son of a not so rich but well to do trader. Aanglesh's father managed a large trade of fruits and vegetables in the town market and to ensure an early start for Aanglesh had allowed Aanglesh to start a foodgrain store alongside his shop in the town. The economy of Arthvyaap worked qu...

Amitabh is re-delivering his famous dialogues on Sony right now ... go watch followed by KBC! Below - a poem of Harivanshrai Bacchan he just recited .... जीवन की आपाधापी में कब वक़्त मिला कुछ देर कहीं पर बैठ कभी यह सोच सकूँ जो किया, कहा, माना उसमें क्या बुरा भला। जिस दिन मेरी चेतना जगी मैंने देखा मैं खड़ा हुआ हूँ इस दुनिया के मेले में, हर एक यहाँ पर एक भुलाने में भूला हर एक लगा है अपनी अपनी दे-ले में कुछ देर रहा हक्का-बक्का, भौचक्का-सा, आ गया कहाँ, क्या करूँ यहाँ, जाऊँ किस जा? फिर एक तरफ से आया ही तो धक्का-सा मैंने भी बहना शुरू किया उस रेले में, क्या बाहर की ठेला-पेली ही कुछ कम थी, जो भीतर भी भावों का ऊहापोह मचा, जो किया, उसी को करने की मजबूरी थी, जो कहा, वही मन के अंदर से उबल चला, जीवन की आपाधापी में कब वक़्त मिला कुछ देर कहीं पर बैठ कभी यह सोच सकूँ जो किया, कहा, माना उसमें क्या बुरा भला। मेला जितना भड़कीला रंग-रंगीला था, मानस के अन्दर उतनी ही कमज़ोरी थी, जितना ज़्यादा संचित करने की ख़्वाहिश थी, उतनी ही छोटी अपने कर की झोरी थी, जितनी ही बिरमे रहने की थी अभिलाषा, उतना ही रेले तेज ढकेल...

I remember my college days when Internet access was only through the nearby cyber-cafe or the college labs. Home speeds were pathetic (thanks to dial up access - no broadband), where you would take 1/2 hour to check your mail and if you wanted to do extended reading you'd rather download the page, disconnect internet and read the document offline. However, computers were still the primary forms of listening to music - hostel rooms used to buzz with all kinds of songs from dawn till late nights. There were no iPods but students used to carry their songs in USB drives and CD's. I even remember once removing the hard-disk of my PC, connecting it as a slave to my friend's PC and copying my 10GB music library to his computer. In these pre-iPod/iTunes days - the music player of choice across the world was Nullsoft Winamp. Winamp was a pioneer in the 'app design' space. Unlike any existing Windows applications, it did not have a title bar, its colours were not shades of gr...

This is the question in minds of gazillion Indians both in India and abroad - offices, homes, streets and cyberspace are full of muted discussions between the calm, quite and most importantly largely secular Indians about the fallout of the Babri Masjid court trial . The Supreme Court cleared the way for the High Court to announce verdict on 30th September 2010 - the date may be seen in future as a historical landmark. People, especially those who remember the 1993 riots which burned the nation for months (after the mosque was demolished by kar sevaks on Dec 16, 1992), are afraid that history may repeat itself - irrespective of the side the verdict takes. There are some optimists also among us - those who think that India has changed. More than 15 years of liberalization, globalization and capitalist mindset has changed the populace which no more cares about religious animosity but is more concerned with progress. Hence, irrespective of the verdict - people will be much more tolerant a...

Google killed the Wave project on 04th August 2010, while promising to "extend the technology for use in other Google projects". "Wave has not", Google said, "seen the user adoption they would have liked". Wave was an exceptional product, a revolutionary way to look at communication and documentation in today's world. As Lars Rassmusen, one of the brains behind the Wave said Wave was answer to the question - "What would email look like if we set out to invent it today". And it was not just that - wave was: how a word processor would look like if it was invented today; how a calendaring solution would look like if it was redesigned today; how people's text-chat would get logged if it was logged today, and; most importantly, how web-pages / web-apps would communicate with the server if the protocols were defined today. The last bullet is important because Google Wave was not just a jazzy collaboration web-app but a platform in itself. ...