The Branded and Gilded Life: Recent Episodes

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He's known as 'Lipstick Brother' in China

In a pandemic, Li Jiaqi, sold $1.9 billion in goods on the first day of Alibaba’s annual shopping festival in August 2020

He tries on various makeup products on his show, ranging from brands from top companies including Sheshiedo Co lotions and Apple Air pods - though there's no make up connection there!

It's not as if he has an unusual format.

The sales are more than what some profitable retail chains in the US would sell in an entire year.

He earned fame by starting off with 'lipstick marathons' - applying several brands of lipstick over several hours. Naturally, he's a Guinness Record holder for applying the largest number of lipstick options in 30 seconds!

Starting off in sales at a L'Oréal store, he developed his own unique style of describing beauty products. That lead to his trying out livestreams which got progressively popular, and he built up a huge following.

For the moment, he seems to have escaped the government's drive against 'effeminate men' The sheer volume of sales he generates on a single day is hard to replicate.

As dialog writers in Indian films have known for long, a single popular catchphrase becomes legendary and builds recognition.

Li's catchphrase is 'OMG sisters, buy this!' Now, that may not be seen as particularly creative but there's no doubt that it works.

On average, he makes about $10-20 million per month.

Making a personal connection with millions of women

And leaving a trail of luscious, glowing and smiling lips.

Which billion-dollar pool should you play in?

If you haven't heard of Anker, you will.

They started out making chargers for mobile phones.

Now, that's not a market entrepreneurs would enter instinctively. But Steven Yang, the founder and CEO saw the long-term potential of a fragmented market that would grow steadily over time.

Apple has now stopped including chargers with new phones. So has Samsung. And the EU has mandated USB-C chargers as a standard. That expands the market for third party chargers exponentially.

Anker has excelled at increasing charging power while reducing the size. They bet on Gallium Nitride which keeps the size small and multiple devices can be charged at the same time.

And they identified the pool they would play in.

Not in mobile phones, which is close to $500 billion annually and the largest product market.

The next is laptops and PCs, which is a $200 billion market.

Then come the tablets which are at $60-70 billion annually.

Followed by smart watches and headphones which make up a growing $40 billion market

So, the markets diminish to 10% of the size of the biggest ones in just a few steps.

But there are a lot of $3-5 billion dollar pools which will grow in future.

That's a great way to understand where the company's strengths lie.

And the options available there are truly widespread.

Plus the realisation that the company's structure is built to generate revenue from the smaller growing pools, not the monolithic ones.

That's the kind of clarity that helps companies and decide where they can play their best game and succeed.

It gives Anker pole status in the smaller categories - and that is a great place to be.

In a goldrush, sell mats

Yoga is getting traction worldwide.

From recommendations by doctors to expensive Yoga studios, it is growing exponentially not just in the US but China and Australia as well.

One of the biggest signs of it becoming a worldwide phenomenon is the number of variations that have been invented.

Superstar gurus wanted their auras to glow brighter and establish their own gravy train of followers.

Like Starbucks has multiple flavours, there's now Kundalini, Hatha Yoga, Restorative Yoga and the controversial Bikram Yoga which has even got its own scandalous Netflix special.

When a movement becomes a gold rush, there's another indicator of success.

The growth of accessories like Yoga mats.

They come in a striking array of colours, materials including thermoplastic elastomers, apart from the basic woven grass mats.

But that does not align with upscale settings.

So, the mats have evolved as well to meet the luxury needs of patrons, who don't want to rest their finely toned bodies on commonplace mats.

As a result, the accessories market in Yoga is taking off faster than the search for salvation.

Like Gucci and YSL totes being carried around, there needs to be a category appropriate brand to flash your Yoga credentials.

And brands have understood that this can be milked for a couple of decades, at least.

The Yoga mat market is projected to grow to $17 billion worldwide by 2025.

Even while proponents and disciples stretch, swivel and contort gracefully, it becomes another thing to talk about on the cocktail and fitness circuit.

The flavour of Yoga, the pedigree of the teacher and the branch of Yoga being practiced.

The pursuit of calm has become a mint!

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Or Korean, for that matter. Or even Russian.

The evolution of subtitles and dubbing in films is going in unpredictable directions.

Streaming services are running into problems with respect to dubbing and generating subtitles in multiple languages.

One runaway hit can change equations.

The Squid Game on Netflix was watched worldwide by audiences who didn't know a word of Korean. But Netflix found another fascinating detail hidden in the data.

People preferred the dubbed version of the film in their local language instead of subtitles. Makes sense because for some, subtitles are a distraction.

The problem is how this can be achieved.

Here comes AI to the rescue. A company called Veritone has access to petabytes of data from media libraries. That is being used to create a synthetic version of a familiar voice speaking a different language, keeping the same tone and emotion.

Nvidia is developing the technology to move lips of the characters to match the audio.

Right now, it is being used in short duration projects like advertisements to get the technology going and iron out the creases.

But in a few years or a decade, we'll probably have actors whose versions of their hits will have them speaking foreign languages as well.

Even if they don't have a clue as to what they're saying.

The translators and subtitling industries may become collateral damage,

But imagine stars who are truly cross border, speaking any language with perfect intonation and emotion.

Now that could create the first global superstar!

Rethinking QWERTY

It has resisted everything.

The so-called 'inefficient' placement of keys was the original design mapped to make typing slow. Created specifically so that they keys did not jam up in the manual typewriter.

Fast forward to the computer and innumerable placement options have been tried without success.

Keyboard design has remained, or at least imitates the original layout of keys.

The T9 that briefly dominated mobile phones in the early days of cell phones did not lead to a long-term change.

Even the 'soft' version on smartphones stays true to the original.

Why has this layout triumphed? One of the reasons is that early laptops may not have wanted to change a design people were familiar with.

Navigating a new paradigm was complex enough.

That's why Chara Corder is a complete rejection of the original keypad layout.

Like a gaming keyboard, each of your finger’s rest on a set of keys. It is supposed to make typing stupendously faster, once you master the basics.

The switches detect finger movement in 3D rather than along a single dimension.

It also looks completely unlike any keyboard you've seen so far.

Each of the keys can be programmed to operate four or more functions.

It looks fiendishly complex but apparently has found a sizeable audience willing to take the time to master it.

And once you do, they promise that you can type as fast as you can think.

It has been breaking all kinds of speed records. Sites like Monkeytype have banned Chara Chord because the speeds are completely off the charts.

Maybe QWERTY has finally met its match.

The shark discovers a whale of an opportunity

Mark Cuban is recognized more for his appearances on Shark Tank rather than his ownership of Dallas Mavericks, a major baseball team.

But his latest venture could impact more than sport.

He's waded into an area where health, politics and policy intersect.

Setting up an online pharmacy for generics.

The high prices of medicines in the US is an intractable problem. People with chronic conditions end up paying a fortune every month, just to get by.

There are currently about 100 drugs on the website and the price differences are revealing.

The difference is as much as 90%. For a month's supply of Imatinib, the branded drug costs almost $10,000 dollars. He is supplying it for less than $50.

Now that puts him into a major confrontation with the whole ecosystem.

The patients are all going to be on his side because it directly impacts their lives and well-being.

And by cutting out insurance companies from the mix, he's removed one of the key pillars that govern the healthcare business models.

The battle could redefine how the entire health industry works.

There are billions, if not trillions of dollars at stake. And if the drug companies and hospitals are impacted, there will be repercussions.

Mark Cuban knows what he's letting himself in for. He's opted to go against companies with deep pockets who will see this as an existential threat.

Until now, there hasn't been a coordinated effort to cut prices across the spectrum. The loyalty of patients is guaranteed.

The US pharmaceutical market is the largest in the world at nearly $500 billion. And that's what Mark Cuban is taking a hacksaw to.

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It started off as a way of getting paralyzed people to walk.

Now, it has evolved into military, healthcare and industrial solutions.

The basic idea is to enhance human capacity for walking, carrying weights or doing repetitive tasks.

The Exoskeleton will probably transform more industries in future than robotics alone.

The number of applications being simultaneously worked on is staggering.

Helping soldiers manage everything from long tiring treks over harsh terrain to reducing joint strains and fatigue.

The same holds true in warehouses and manufacturing lines where the exoskeletons help workers lift massive weights on the assembly line, or manage delicate tasks which require limbs to be held aloft for long.

It reduces back strain by providing support even while the person is standing straight.

Robotics built into the suit work in tandem with the wearer and the result is fewer industrial accidents and prevention of long-term damage to muscles.

It's early days but there is a definite advantage to making people superhuman rather than have robots develop human capabilities.

That difference in perspective is helping to change what assembly lines look like and function - the idea is to make people manage working heavy tools and at dangerous heights easier.

Over time, as costs drop, they will become a common sight at manufacturing facilities worldwide.

Right now, the costs are quite high because the solutions are in an early stage of development.

But looking ahead, in everything from helping paralyzed people get around to long army marches and building new efficiencies on assembly lines, exoskeletons will become commonplace.

Wearable skeletons are the idea we didn't know we needed.

Corporate bonds you can eat

Paul & Mike make chocolates. World-class stuff.

Their chocolate concoctions win prizes at global competitions.

They have also demonstrated their ability to think differently when it comes to raising money.

Anyone who has ordered online from them in the past would have got a message asking whether they wanted to subscribe to 'chocolate bonds'

The offer is this.

Any customer (up to the first 500) can invest Rs. 5000 in the company. In return, they will get chocolates worth Rs. 6500 over one year.

Basically, the interest component is paid out in extra chocolates.

This will be in force for one year from the date of investment. Since the chocolates cost anywhere from Rs.250 to Rs 375 for a single slab, it means that customers can order what they like for Rs.6500, not including shipping costs and taxes.

They have also been upfront about the way the money will be used - to fund the upgradation of their facilities.

Now, this is a way of ensuring loyalty with an upfront payment - and for customers who are sold on the brand, an investment in pleasure.

The company gets the funding practically for free. The payout is only in the product itself and that means their profit margins may only have to take a small hit. For a short while on a fraction of the customer base.

Paul & Mike have also tied up supplies to these customers for the next 12 months. Now that's called predictable sales figures. And while it is small at the moment, they can go on to increase this over time.

From the comments on the site, it looks like their customers are well and truly sold on the idea.

The simple brilliance of Wordle

The man who created the game is Josh Wardle.

So, there's a bit of serendipity right there, apart from the fact that 'word' in the name already lets you know what you're getting into.

There are numerous word games on the net. So why did this one take off spectacularly?

Here are a few pointers.

First of all, five letter words are easy but not super easy. The UI is crisp. Six rows of five squares, with the keyboard at the bottom.

The second are the rules. You guess full words, not one letter at a time. You know the difference between letters in the target word and the ones that are wrongly placed.

And the ones that are not there in the word at all. Progress is measurable.

Plus, the same colours are reflected on the keyboard, visually helping you focus on guessing options.

The third is rationing. There's only one game a day. Scarcity creates habit, not overload.

The fourth is sharing - the people who have guessed the word in 3 tries want the world to know - without spoiling the fun for others.

The grid is a great way to evoke intrigue and show off. Hordes of people have been drawn into the game because they wanted to know what these green graphic squares meant. And once they arrived at the site, they would certainly attempt it at least once.

The fifth is that it is free. But that's the least important aspect of the game. Wordle would not have succeeded without thinking through the entire experience of gameplay.

Once you get into it, you're guaranteed to spend a few minutes every day.

Attention alternates between frustration and triumph - and that's the cherry on the sundae!

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The tweet set off a firestorm.

Imagine printers not being able to recognise a company's cartridges!

We have all grown used to the cat and mouse games that printer manufacturers play.

Replace all the four-color cartridges even though only one of them is drained.

Having to waste expensive toners because all the cartridges don't get empty at the same time.

Users try and find workarounds or cheaper solutions.

Companies find ways to block them.

And even though there are entrepreneurs who try to establish a market in the replacement market, they find it hard to succeed or scale.

So, it seems like poetic justice when companies have to deal with systems flagging genuine cartridges as counterfeits!

This is the problem. A semiconductor chip was the one blocking duplicate cartridges from being installed.

The moment the printer came on, it would check if the cartridge was from the company and if it wasn't, the printer would no longer work.

Now that there is a chip shortage, the cartridges are being shipped without them. And there is no way to differentiate.

And Canon admits that the toner levels cannot be detected.

Here's the formal statement from the company: Due to the ongoing global shortage of semiconductor components, Canon is currently experiencing challenges in procuring specific electronic components that are used in our consumable products for our multifunction printers (MFP). These components perform such functions as detecting remaining toner levels.

Look for the 'counterfeit' market to be rubbing their hands gleefully while the shortage persists.

Getting rid of homelessness

As economies rise and fall, the hardest hit are people rendered homeless.

It could be for a variety of reasons.

Traditionally, the solution has been to provide temporary rooms or dormitories.

That creates another layer of management and oversight - and any funds allocated to these options gets lost in the maze of government spending.

It's also a sticky issue politically - the homeless living on the margins have to use all their wits to merely get through a day and they're political footballs passed around from one constituency to the next one.

Finland is simply giving people homes - no questions asked.

What takes on added urgency is that temperatures in winter drop to -20 degrees and being out in the open means that even survival is in doubt.

While the population is nowhere near as large as some of the developing countries, it is still a tall order to provide a home when necessary. But the effect has been remarkable.

The first goal was to create 2500 homes, but they went up to 3,500.

The number of long-term homeless people has dropped by 35% and there is only one 50 bed shelter that remains from the earlier network.

It's not just space to live - the government follows up with support services like education, training and work placement help. Apart from teaching people to cook and clean the homes.

It may not be the solution that every country can implement but it may be a far better way of solving the problem than anything available today.

The question is, will every country be able to afford it?

5G runs into an air pocket

In most cases, the rollout of a new generation of telecom technology is a highly anticipated event.

However, in the US, the launch of 5G has run into a major problem.

The FAA has warned of 'catastrophic disruption' at airports.

Apparently, 5G interferes with sensitive altimeters inside aircraft.

And for planes coming into land in bad weather or poor visibility, it's a dangerous problem to deal with.

As the wireless spectrum gets more expensive and crowded, we'll face more of these issues.

Technology has to keep pace with spectrum requirements from communication and broadband companies to military and aviation needs.

For telecom companies, the investments they have sunk into purchasing spectrum and upgrading customers will take longer to recover.

For airlines, it impacts bottomlines when flights have to be canceled owing to 5G problems.

Some of the disruption is already evident. Air India and Emirates have canceled some of their schedules to the US.

Now comes the painful part. FAA will have to draw up guidelines for telecom companies to follow. The antenna cannot point upward, for example. And that could have an impact on coverage.

At the same time, it will have to test altimeters and see which models from airplanes are safe to fly in adverse conditions.

Since telecom spectrum is auctioned differently in other countries, they have not faced the problems yet.

There's no doubt, however, that technology cannot be permanently in expansion mode.

The scarcity will no doubt lead to technical innovation and breakthroughs.

But these are air pockets few anticipated. And the 5G rollout in the US is in for quite a bit of turbulence.

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Chatbots have to simulate human conversations.

And we think they're free flowing, the way dialogue is delivered in movies.

In real life, they are halting, awkward and filled with long pauses. Even between friends and colleagues, conversations dry up after the common subjects are exhausted or one of the people conversing loses interest.

There's a lot of 'ummm..', eh.....' and clearing of throats, apart from the same thoughts going around in circles.

At parties and networking events, people play out introductions and opening lines in their minds before actually speaking. Trying to sound friendly, knowledgeable as well as intelligent.

It's a hard act to keep up.

There are times when you know you aren't getting across to the person you are speaking with.

So, why do we assume that chatbots will be able to simulate human conversations without difficulty?

They may go through machine learning on millions of conversations and then reconstruct them for certain contexts.

But how people think and what they say is still unpredictable.

No machine can come up with all the branches of a conversation that humans explore in unstructured ways. Flitting from one subject to another. Starting off at random points and leaving things unsaid midway.

Intense exchanges followed by contemplation and thought.

Plus, no chatbot initiates conversations. It waits for you to ask the question to hopefully provide answers.

Even the most advanced program stumbles.

But then, so do humans!

The yoga in power storage

Compress. Decompress. Compress. Decompress.

The idea has been around for decades. Compress air into underground caverns and decompress when required to release energy.

The problem with managing electricity is that it has to be transmitted and distributed as soon as it is generated.

Storage was not given the recognition it deserved.

Now, wind and solar power generation have improved dramatically - but they're still unpredictable and the power generated needs to be stored, so that it can be supplied to the grid during lean times or when demand hits new peaks.

Hydrostor, a Canadian company has breathed new life into the storage idea.

Using electricity, a fixed amount of water is run through a complex system of pipes to compress air stored deep within the ground. When required, the water is pushed back through decompression and that generates electricity.

Several versions of the idea being tried out across the world, including in India but that's more on the lines of a closed loop power generation system.

This one focuses on compressed air generating power to be fed back to the grid.

They have built a 2-10MW hour project as proof of concept and it is already generating profits.

Goldman Sachs has invested $250 million into the company. The potential for energy storage is massive as the electricity market shifts to 'power on demand'. Optimizing that is only possible by building storage solutions that can tide over situations of alternating scarcity and excess.

Like yoga calms the human system through a series of breathing techniques, Hydrostor may be the answer to what future power markets need.

Deep storage.

VR programming for cows

Cows don't need multiple entertainment options.

Or role-playing games filled with fast-paced action.

All they require is immersion in a pasture.

In today's confined spaces, letting them out to graze is not an option.

They're lined up next to each other and even the space to move is limited.

A Turkish farmer came up with the idea of using a VR headset on a cow.

Imported from Russia, it puts the cow in a completely outdoor environment.

It does make a difference apparently - milk production is up and the cows seem happier.

There are a few tricky questions that come up.

When the cow sees grass and attempts to eat it, what happens? Has the farmer placed fodder in the right place, so when the cow goes for it, the assumption is that it is eating fresh grass?

Humans are harder to convince. They are far more finicky about the environment and have suggestions as well as ideas on the kind of environments they would like to immerse themselves in.

But cows have no such problem. Put them into a VR headset makes them believe they are out in the pasture.

They don't need a change of scene or anything more exciting - what can they get anyway?

Maybe they will simulate calves to nuzzle close when they tire of this, or when milk production goes down.

And will there be resistance when VR headsets are removed at the end of the day?

As far as cows are concerned, the metaverse is already here!

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His name is Nasir Ahmed and it won't ring a bell.

But hang on a minute because it will all make sense.

He went from Bangalore to the US in the early 60s for higher studies and for his PhD, he came up with the Discrete Cosine Transform - an algorithm that would prove to be crucial to the future of the world.

It compressed images and later was applied to video compression as well.

The major use at the time was for defense. The military had a massive network but it was next to impossible to send images over it with limited bandwidth.

As the web took root, Nasir Ahmed's algorithm became the default for sending images.

It was built into browsers and email programs by default.

Users, of course were oblivious of how images were moved across the net. All they had to do was attach a file and hit the 'Send' button.

The man who made it all possible languished in complete obscurity. He was well-known in academic circles and the enormity of what he achieved came into focus during the pandemic.

Zoom or Facetime or Google Meet. None of these would work without deploying the algorithm.

His net worth is a micro fraction of the wealth these companies have amassed. But he isn't bitter about it, merely bemused.

He speaks of the scientists at the time who developed the base technologies that drive today's internet focused only on their vocation.

And he changed the world by making the real time transmission of images and video long before anyone had found widespread global use for it.

Was the makeover only for the cameras?

It's one of the popular sub-genres on TV, but not in India as yet.

In the US, home makeover shows are quite popular.

Practically every channel has a take on how to do home arrangements, or cut clutter or tips to modify the home.

But there appears to be a seedy side to the sub-genre where reality stops with showing what's good on camera.

The format is quite simple - a home or a room is chosen for a transformation and while the family leaves town for a couple of weeks, the makeover team arrives to work their magic.

It's supposed to be done for free and viewers think that the chosen family probably has saved a ton of money by being selected.

It turns out that the reality is not as rosy.

Buzzfeed profiles several makeovers that went completely wrong and the residents ended up with a huge cleanup bill after the camera crews left.

Some of them complained that the whole thing was more like a set with everything held together with staples and glue.

The problem is that most of these shows start off with good intentions. But then, every makeover can't be a repeat of a previous episode. They have to riff off the themes.

And the final result has to be dramatic enough for viewers to tune in week after week.

That's probably where the divergence between expectations and reality happens.

And keeping TV viewers happy and coming back for more is quite different from making homes livable!

The soap, shampoo and toothpaste wars

In this one, the customers aren't involved at all. It's all behind the scenes.

The distributors of these products are the last place you expect an all-out flaming war.

For decades, they have followed a regular plodding cycle.

The distributor sends a sales team to collect orders, deliveries are made. Every year, the distributors and manufacturers haggle over the profit margin and compromises are made.

It was a system that sustained close to 600,000 distributors and the small shops they supplied to.

Then came the disruptors with the big bucks. Udaan, Jio mart and Big Basket had the capital to strike massive deals with manufacturers and pass on some of those profits to small store owners, cutting the distributors out.

It would also make small stores dependent on the larger suppliers over time, given that once the power shifts, the small stores would have less bargaining power.

And the distributors have decided they will do all they can to make things difficult.

So, they issued ultimatums to the big manufacturers - give the same rates to them as well or else they would boycott the brands altogether.

Now, manufacturers treat distributors with kid gloves because they know the havoc they can wreak on the supply chain, at least for now.

It's a cycle that repeats time and again. Remove the inefficiency from fragmented distribution networks and there's lots of money to be made - at the regional level, the state level and the international level.

For the moment, the boycott has been postponed because the manufacturers have bought time.

Distributors in India and small shopkeepers are wily and have quite a sting in the tail.

Especially when they assemble their collective firepower and disrupt the disruptors.

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Imagine eye drops that improve eyesight.

It's the decision most people confront late into their 30s or early 40s

Probably the first sign is when distant objects look clear and one has to hold books a little further away to focus.

Then comes the hard part. Mentally admitting that one needs reading glasses.

The first time is self-conscious. The emphasis on telling people 'I only need it for reading' is repeated several times a day.

Some self-deprecating jokes among close friends about finally 'growing old'

Dyeing hair is easier because it retains youthful looks. But eyeglasses are a definitive giveaway.

That's why Vuity, a new approach to handling presbyopia - the loss of eyesight that comes as part of the natural aging process, is getting attention.

The way it works is that you put in the drops, wait for about 15 minutes and like magic, your ability to read improves.

Unfortunately, the effect lasts for about 6 hours after which your eyes go back to their earlier state.

But it is a huge improvement from actually having to wear glasses - and the audience would be those who want to delay the inevitable.

It's going to be another stealth weapon for those who insist on staying young - and depending on how the early reviews are, it should be an easy sell.

How many products are focused on preserving and extending our youthful state?

The fountain of youth has more devotees than the fountain of wisdom!

A dark rum is about to become famous

Diplomats are rarely, if ever, involved with product promotions.

And the circumstances were bizarre.

Lithuania grows no sugar, so it imports the rum base, sugar cane molasses from Trinadad & Tobago.

The distilled rum, called Propeller Dark was marketed as a Caribbean original to China.

Then Lithuania made a misstep. It opened an embassy in Taiwan.

20,000 bottles of rum floating in mid sea were not allowed entry into Chinese ports.

Taiwan stepped in and bought out the entire shipment.

The national development council even created a series of ads with recipes of how the rum could be used.

Even if it was to help an ally, marketing realities can't be ignored.

Since the government cannot advertise a private brand of liquor, it built awareness of how rum could be used to spice up a meal or make exotic cocktails.

The ads show a bottle without the label and feature in social media.

Must be one of the rare occasions where the government is forced to play an anchor role in promoting a product category.

It was simply to make the point that they would not let down a country who supported them.

But in the process, Propeller Dark has got a dream launch in a country that was not part of the forecast!

It remains to be seen if they will use this story to get a foothold in other geographies.

But they have to win hearts and minds through the product, even if they've got a launch story for the ages!

Chal meri Luna - on Hydrogen

First things first - this is not an Indian product.

It's a new hydrogen fuel cell two-wheeler from a company in France.

However, it bears an uncanny resemblance to the Indian Luna from the 70s.

That became a major hit. Though it didn't have the design dynamism of the swankier 100 cc bikes.

But it had what mattered - amazing fuel efficiency and great carrying capacity.

For Indian small towns, it was a godsend. Good to load all kinds of things and transport them to the nearest marketplace.

There may still be pictures in newspaper and magazine archives of Luna becoming the all-purpose two-wheeler in India.

But then, things changed. Fuel costs increased. The Luna evolved but not enough to withstand the competition from the Japanese bike JVs.

The Alpha from Pragma Industries rides on hydrogen with a range of 100 kms.

he hydrogen filling station can be connected to a renewable energy source and the two-wheelers can be filled in less than a minute.

Obviously, buying the filling infrastructure is part of the deal and it makes the most sense for captive fleet operators.

Hydrogen is among the cleanest fuel sources in the world but the competition from lithium-ion batteries is stiff.

So the company is sensibly targeting those who have a fleet of vehicles and want to keep fuel costs down to the minimum, without significant increases over time.

And that benefit beats looks and design hands down.

Will it succeed? Let's check back in a few years.

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User manuals are dry and factual.

They tell you how to use a product but never how the experience can be enjoyable.

But we need user manuals because that's where user experiences begin.

Take a simple thing like getting the best out of your fridge.

The user manual tells you how to make ice, what different compartments are for and how to maintain the fridge.

But a personal user experience of fridges tells you how to stack things up inside, how to make out if stuff in the fridge is past its prime and how to remove icky smells.

Similarly, take Twitter.

It is basically status updates, links and now, threads.

But people have found that much more can be accomplished.

They have found friends, co-founders and collaborators.

All through a series of unconnected messages posted on an impersonal platform.

There have been terrible experiences for people as well - no denying that.

The question is how to find enclaves of tolerance and goodness and make that your place of bliss.

Though Twitter was launched way back in 2006, it's the people who grew with the platform who are able to define and communicate the experience for others.

This may work for some, not for everyone. Tasshin's blog post, is not a user manual as much as an exploration of the various facets of Twitter.

And that's the enriching part. You can follow this or devise your own ways of exploration.

There are times when nothing will happen, and your tweets will be lost in the vastness of the chatter.

But the spark of happenstance is just around the corner.

The chaos in human logistics

Thousands of flights were canceled everyday in peak holiday season in the US.

The reasons given were that crews affected by the Omicron variant of Covid were grounded and that sent schedules haywire.

But when the New York Times dug deeper, additional reasons came to the fore.

Airlines were badly affected by the pandemic. That lead to a government bailout to keep them running - over $54 billion was paid out.

To get the money, they had to accept strict limits on layoffs, dividends, stock buybacks and pay increases for senior executives.

They were, however, permitted to reduce head count through early-retirement incentives and voluntary furloughs. They did, and those job cuts have been only partially reversed, even when the market revived.

Passengers were encouraged to do their own checking and baggage tagging.

Optimisation, code for doing more with fewer employees, became the default for airlines looking to survive.

They tried to increase capacity and raise it to previous levels without adding the same ratio of people.

For a time, it worked.

But the recent wave showed that there was little room for error, or even comfort.

Without spare capacity, there is no room in the system to shift things around.

And what started off as a few cancellations went on to become a rolling snowball.

Every canceled flight is revenue loss that can't be made up.

And the fragility of business models and supply chains is being exposed like never before.

How computer punch cards launched a giant - IBM

Anyone who's been though a computer science class would have heard about it in a historical context.

What exactly did programming a card mean?

An article in Ars Technica showed how it was an elegant solution for the late 1800s - and transformative as well.

The problem was tabulating census figures in the US. Conducted in 1880, it took over 8 years to collate.

When the first census was done in 1790, only age and sex in addition to a person's name was recorded. Later occupation, marital status, education and place of birth was added. Each parameter added increased the complexity of the data to be processed.

Herman Hollerith was the inventor of the punch card and he phrased it this way, in the 1889 revision of his patent application, “A hole is thus punched corresponding to person, then a hole according as person is a male or female, another recording whether native or foreign born, another either white or colored, &c.”

Special machinery had to be developed to punch holes with accuracy and efficiency.

Next, Hollerith devised a machine to “read” the card, by probing the card with pins, so that only where there was a hole would the pin pass through the card to make an electrical connection, resulting in advance of the appropriate counter.

This accelerated the counting to the point where the entire census tabulation was completed by 1890, just a year later.

Hollerith went into business selling the technology by incorporating Tabulating Machine Company, which went on to become International Business Machines - IBM

The semiconductor revolution in computing would take a few more decades.

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Or teacup, for that matter?

Some people prize massive mugs that hold large amounts of coffee and nurse it for hours.

So, why do we slip into these habits?

Why do we want to repeat the familiar?

There's an aspect of selecting cups that we're hardly conscious about.

The mouth comes in contact with the rim and unconsciously drives our preferences when we make a choice.

The fancy ceramic designs with delicate handles and ornate graphics have a different texture when your mouth settles on it. Think about the feeling and you'll recall it.

The same is true of the earthen 'kullar', the terracotta cups that are simply smashed after use.

There's a way your mouth feels around different cups - the thicker the rim and the more the curvature, the more your face 'dips' into it.

Some love it steaming hot - where the liquid is close to scalding temperatures. Others like it lukewarm and a few are perfectly happy to keep sipping on something that has gone completely cold.

You've seen people wrap their hands around hot cups in winter. The warmth from the cup is a source and a daily ritual of pleasure and sustenance.

The morning cup is an ingrained habit. It's makes people less irritable and willing to face up to the day. Delay it and you delay the pickup.

We've built some strange affinities. But it has a cascading impact on the way the day unfolds.

It's the first of many comfort zones we enter on a habitual basis - whether we're aware of it or not.

The Ratan Tata effect

You can't miss him on LinkedIn.

Every day on the feed, you're guaranteed to see at least 2-3 selfies put up by adoring fans.

They've probably waited months for the day.

And it's gone down in their personal history - the few moments they had with him. Captured in a frame where they're listening attentively or gazing at the screen in pride.

What everyone notices about Mr. Tata, however, is the gaunt, slightly bent figure, with the kindly smile.

Everyone else is a footnote - and that's the way it will be because people only notice the famous figures in any picture.

So scrolling through the feed, especially when it was his birthday recently is seeing a succession of pictures of Mr. Tata with dedicated fans.

Personalities like Mr. Tata and the former President Mr. Abdul Kalam are 'like' magnets and used to drum up attention.

Their quotes may be authentic or made up. But that is not the point.

The Ratan Tata effect generates a small spike of attention in a sea of posts which are just pictures. Like this one as well - guilty as charged!

I first began to see one occasionally a few months ago and then, there were breathless comments and congratulatory messages on getting an audience with the great man.

Now, of course, it has become the standard 'bucket list' item.

In most cases, the interactions are little more than an exchange of greetings, which is how this works. How deep can anyone go in a conversation that barely lasts for a minute?

A brush with fame, no matter how fleeting, is irresistible!

Does 31st December matter?

We've had lists, lookbacks, love and loathing for the year gone by.

And yet, when the countdown begins and the clock strikes 12 to indicate that we're in a 'new' year, there's a curious sense of things being exactly the same.

Change, for each one of us comes at different times.

No announcements, no calendar connections.

We see it when students get their final year college marks.

The haves and the have nots.

The ones who get distinctions and the ones who think they've been left behind.

The first time you fall in love.

The birth of a child.

The death of a parent.

The disappointment of losing out on something you worked for years on.

The small victories and moments that you recall after decades.

The music in the car on a long drive to nowhere.

Heartbreak.

The designation that finally gets attached to your name after slogging for years.

And then finding that it doesn't matter in the long run.

Lusting for one possession after another.

Left to languish after the thrill of acquisition passes.

Like forgotten trophies in a musty cupboard. Symbols of victory and pride that seem to be as fleeting as the ceremony and the applause.

They don't come on a schedule or follow the metronome of time.

Some dates we remember.

Others we purposely forget because we don't want to be reminded of what we felt like at the time.

Time, the cliché goes, is the great healer.

We look in a mirror and see a wrinkle we didn't notice before.

Then, we realise that time ripples through our life marking its passage exactly as it pleases.

Tomorrow is a mirage.

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There was a camera called Flip before smartphones in the early 2000s

It did just one thing well - video and made it easy for just about anyone to make and edit video.

As it soared in popularity, it was bought by Cisco for almost $600 million.

It proved to be a purchase fraught with problems. Cisco was geared to sell to enterprises and Flip was essentially a consumer product.

Somewhere within the company, it got stuck in the red tape and Cisco decided to completely withdraw it from the market.

That brought about a great deal of hand-wringing from customers who had committed to the camera and recorded several home films on it - but to no avail.

Now, here's another similar story.

We all have a pileup of remote controls for different devices at home. Part of the problem is that the gadgets use different base technologies and integrating them into a single remote is a technical challenge.

But a company called Harmony did do it. It provided one of the best examples of being able to use one remote to control practically every entertainment device at home.

However, Logitech bought Harmony a few years ago. And now, they've decided to stop production altogether.

Looks like it's not profitable for the company or they haven't figured out a way to make it work - even though the article below says it was deliberate. No company deliberately decides to lose money.

It’s tragic when concepts have been developed into successful, full-blown products are simply lost in the wilderness of the corporate woodwork.

Maybe there is a logical explanation but no one's willing to say what happened.

The camera doesn't forget

Our memories may dim over time, but cameras don't.

Unless the software that manages the images gets corrupted, for some reason.

Face recognition is already being used for everything from unlocking phones to identifying travelers at an airport.

Now that seems like perfectly legitimate use of the technology.

But once the genie is out of the bottle it can go anywhere.

When Facebook said it would no longer use its tagging system to identify people, it was a temporary blip because people saw how easy it was to track individuals for no reason whatsoever.

With technology that has legitimate uses, things can evolve both ways.

Police forces would want to keep tabs on those identified as criminals to track their movements. And that opens up different kinds of intrusions into a person's private space.

Banks would justify face recognition to identify customers when they're opening an account or transacting, so that the wrong people are not able to access an account.

But hackers can find all kinds of uses that simply go against the grain. If a face tagged to a real person exists in a database, it can be used for things without the person's knowledge.

Let us say a company enables face recognition within the company for access.

If attackers gain access to this database, they can 'spoof' employee identities and then access proprietary information.

And governments would want to track opponents - the number of potential uses and misuses just keep multiplying.

It's a hard question to answer - whether facial recognition solves problems or creates new ones.

A test case for renewable energy

Is the future inevitable?

Media stories drive the narrative that renewable energy is the way of the future along with the gradual easing of fossil fuels.

Puerto Rico is one of the staging grounds of future battles.

When the electricity grid was flattened by a couple of hurricanes, the emphasis shifted to rebuilding.

It was clear that existing electricity companies wanted to get back to the regular generation mode, utilising the funds allocated by the US government.

In other words, it should go back to business as usual.

But renewable energy companies see this as the perfect opportunity to make the switch - and the case that electricity generation should not go back to the old mode of working.

So, will decentralised power generation where solar panels are put up on homes and industry roofs to generate power become the new model?

There's no clarity on which way will work better in the long run. Scaling the power from each rooftop and then creating an overall grid to distribute it will take time. But people and industry need power here and now.

It's a tricky rope walk to manage needs now while creating a fresh infrastructure. If people make the investment in their own power, who pays for the overall power generation as a backup? There are no easy answers to that question

For both the segments involved, it's a battle for survival. One into which politicians, consumers, companies and policy makers will take up positions and fight tooth and nail.

Whichever way this plays out, similar battles will open up everywhere.

A transition on such a scale is like pulling out teeth without anesthesia!

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Imagine you could.

Your smartphone would instantly become a glass brick, assuming it could travel through time. So, unless you had some way to stay connected to the present, there would be no coming back.

Even if you went back 20 years, you would not have the smartphone or social media. Now that's an idea worth thinking about, given that we know how polarised the world has become.

Go back over 100 years and you can mostly forget about cars .

No telephones either - not even land lines and rotary dials.

Go back another couple of hundred years and homes would have no heating or lights. Conveniences we consider basic.

All those fast food cravings would have to remain as cravings. Unless you took a whole lot of ingredients and the recipes back to the past.

Question is, how would you take back plastic packs and even books to a time when they didn't exist?

Think about it. A thousand years ago, books had not been invented. So they would disappear when you traveled.

Even the clothes you wear today - they weren't invented, so how can they stay on you?

Going back in time means reversing all the advancements, good and bad. Its not about transplanting the present into the past.

Now, would you actually know that you were back in time? In your mind, maybe but it would be hard to explain how much the world changed to the people around you.

If you could speak the language, that is. Apart from explaining that you aren't an alien from another planet.

There's this mental picture we have of travelling to the past and moving back to the present, as if it were simply a physical journey.

You can't go back in time as a tourist. With a real risk that you can cease to exist!

Slumming it

India has the dubious distinction of having the largest slum in Asia. Or is it the world? Dharavi.

It's where people live on the edge, every single day.

The facilities and the space available are among the tightest in an already expensive metropolis.

And yet, it produces stories of entrepreneurship and triumph against the odds.

Including something as strange as 'Slum Tourism' where the affluent gawk at the unfortunate.

There is really no parallel.

Rashmi Bansal wrote 'Poor Little Rich Slum' documenting the lives of hardy entrepreneurs from Dharavi.

They aren't asking for handouts but contributing to the economics that drive the city.

And that's a clear sign that people braving the biggest odds need support from the government to improve their lives.

Rather than redevelop the slum and build something for the affluent, Brazil is trying a different approach.

They are mapping out the byzantine lanes and the cramped access that people living in the slum navigate every day and seeing how the slum can access public services.

Resilience is built into slums as the recent experience of managing Covid in such tightly packed areas demonstrated.

People who were informed and educated on the dangers did a great job of managing the community and stopping the spread - even though they were living at a tremendous disadvantage.

There's no doubt that the people who live in the slum have little room for maneuver - and that's precisely why health and some of the welfare services could play a great role in easing lives.

They shouldn't be forced to slum it.

Thank your stars you have to worry about your future!

There's an interesting discussion going on in a forum.

A young guy got an unexpected windfall of $7.5 million - setting him up for life essentially.

It meant he would not have to work another day - which is what most of us would see as a stroke of amazing luck.

And yet, that's not what happened.

As he describes it : And I also have no idea what to do with my life now. I have not talked to anyone about it but I start to feel fatigued, even though I am not doing much. My motivation for my study is gone, I stopped working out, stopped reading books and am basically becoming insanely depressed in the process. The covid situation is not helping much either.

Hardly what you'd expect.

He literally has lost the incentive to do anything because he does not have to 'worry' about the future.

Practically all the advice given to him by the others is not to tell anyone - because the pressure on him will only increase.

He will find long-lost 'friends' and relatives eager to help him spend the money and keep some for themselves.

Now that his choice is unlimited, he has no clue on what he would like to do - distorted by having no incentive to put in the effort.

We have been brought up to believe that motivation is internal - and nothing saps it like having enough money to laze around for the rest of your life.

Though I'm sure all of you are hoping that you'll be in exactly the same state he's in.

Think money will solve all your problems? Be careful what you wish for!

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First, you get keyless entry.

Then, if you lose the fob, you pay a huge amount to reprogram it, even though the work involved is minimal.

However, Toyota has demonstrated that car companies can figure out new sources of revenue on a car you've already paid for.

There are a range of 'Connected Services' you opt for and it's only after a couple of years that you realise that it costs you money to enter your own car!

The 'subscription' is $8 a month, or $80 per year.

Imagine paying this, not for a convenience or an upgrade but simply to get into the car and start driving.

There are already howls of protests from customers - all legitimate because it is seen as a rip-off.

Some of these 'services' continue to be available for free only on the luxury models.

The airline pay model of starting at a base price and then paying extra for everything from seating to food is invading other industries as well.

There's software loaded on cars to control several aspects of the driving experience and creating new tiers of customers is an experiment.

As long as our cars were purely mechanical, we owned everything. But the business model of software companies that make recurring payments a tidy stream of growing revenue is spreading to automobiles as well.

An aside - the 2017 models of Toyota where the subscription never kicks in could command a higher premium in the used car market!

The complex wrap on a simple idea

On a large billboard in Piccadilly in London, a small boy walks across and points to the sky.

In the background where he's pointing, a plane passes. And the details of the flight along with where it is headed appears. This happens with every flight out of Heathrow.

It looks absurdly simple and gets attention because the details change, even while the action doesn't.

A nice touch is the boy strolling back after the plane has passed by.

So how was it executed?

An antenna mounted on the roof of a nearby building reads live flight data from every aircraft transponder within 200 kms.

The GPS coordinates, speed, latitude and longitude are read, cloud cover in the area is determined to check visibility and that goes into instructions sent to the billboard.

Only when all these cross-coordination points match does the flight detail and the animation appear on the billboard.

It got over 350 million views and won the Cannes Golden Lion in 2014.

What's admirable is the simplicity and the accuracy of the information displayed timed to perfection.

The costs, paperwork and permissions would have taken an enormous amount of background work, in addition to the setup.

And since it is placed at a high traffic point in the middle of London, the branding opportunity was justified.

For a simple idea like this one, imagine the number of bureaucratic, technological and logistical hurdles that had to be overcome.

In the end, however, the charm works.

Meditation as extreme sport

The ski resorts were closed.

But the slopes were open.

There were no crowds owing to Covid.

And one expert skier programmed a drone to follow his breathtaking slide through virgin slopes as he teetered over giant crevasses and edges.

It's makes you wonder why people do it.

Mountaineers and skiers demonstrating their skill and control long before the proliferation of social media.

It's 4 minutes of sheer adrenalin as he weaves his way down treacherous slopes and the drone swoops in on him from angles that no human could have managed.

At times, he's just a black fleck in an ocean of white.

At others, you can hear him slice through the snow cutting through it with two knife edges, leaving scars in his wake that the next snowfall would fill.

There are moments where he's skiing through pine forests of white trees.

And quiet contemplative ones as he treks up to the mountaintop before he straps on his skis and shoots himself off the edge.

There are times when the cliff face is almost vertical and it makes you dizzy just thinking of what it would have been like when he leans over and lets go.

The point of no return.

When all those years of practice and reflexes kick in without seeming effort.

Almost towards the end of the film is a sheer mountainside of white snow.

And he flies off it at an angle, making his way downwards.

Maybe at that speed, you get meditative and move into a zone where stillness is the speed.

And he wants to be there as often as he can.

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That's how all fairy tales’ end.

And the real world begins. We assume that the attainment of success or money is some point from which we can leap into a higher level of existence.

Question is, we still have to find it.

Life seems pretty much the same for billionaires as it does for us regular folk.

Just yesterday, someone sent a WhatsApp on Jeff Bezos where he said, in a mundane detail, that he washes the dishes at home after breakfast.

Is that the state of Happily Ever After?

You build the largest company in the world but dishes don't wash themselves.

So, is everything spic and span with the picture?

I remember a conversation with a successful lawyer who said he wanted nothing more than to own a Harley Davidson when he was young.

He told himself that he would go for long drives along picturesque landscapes and life would be terrific, all the time.

At some time in his 30s, he made the money.

And the Harley landed up in his garage. He was happy, having achieved what seemed impossible as a child. For a while.

He took a few trips over the next few days and the riding experience was great but not the one he had in his mind as a child - the traffic, the heat and the routine of filling petrol, checking air pressure intruded. He kept wondering if anyone would scratch the beautiful paint job and that worry ate into him.

It's still in his garage gathering dust because he hardly ever drives it.

Another dream realised and stored in the attic of memories.

In fairy tales, the thought is reassuring. But real life has another agenda.

Photo by R.D. Smith on Unsplash

Curing plastic addiction

It's an almost perfect solution.

Seaweed mixed with some plant extracts solving a major problem - plastics in packaging.

There's no doubt we've got heavily reliant on plastic right across the supply chain. It is so versatile, there are hardly any aspects of the chain that can function without it.

Water bottles. Food packaging. Oil packaging. Single use cups. And none of this can be replaced overnight.

It's the result of decades of work that has gone into colours, textures, surfaces to be printed on. And plastic has delivered.

Now, we need to go into rehab. And getting around without the convenience is a hard thing to sell. How many true environmentalists exist in the world?

Let's not forget that 50% of the plastic in the world is put out there by just 20 companies.

That's why Notpla comes as a breath of sanity.

The name is a mish mash of 'Not Plastic' and it is obvious why they had to brand themselves this way.

It looks exactly like the plastics it replaces but it is nothing like it.

Water bubbles you can simply pop into your mouth and bite in. Swallow or wait for it to dissolve.

Edible packaging may not sound very appetizing and companies who spend millions on advertising would not want their products to look exactly like their competitors.

But it's a big step forward. And hopefully we'll return to our senses.

Even if it looks like a journey that will take years, if not decades.

Migrating the internet!

Tim Berners-Lee invented the basic protocols of the internet - html and http

And brought about one of the biggest changes in the world - the start of the world wide web.

However, he was unhappy with the way the web evolved into creating massive tech companies that locked user data in and made huge sums of money out of it.

Now, he's attempting a reset.

Putting people back in control of their data and handing it out to companies only for defined purposes and needs.

Will it succeed?

It's hard to say. But he's creating an option where the early movers will create their own PODs of data with controlled access.

Right now, it's confusing because it's not ready for prime time.

Even people who create their own PODs need applications built on the new standard.

The problem, invariably, is that smart entrepreneurs see potential and the future much before the rest of the market does.

Then, they provide services and make it easy for people to transact.

Now, most of the world already on social media and logged into current web services will not see a benefit right away.

They've heard of privacy issues but it does not seem to concern them. And that's the way existing giants would like it to remain.

The power is in the control of the data and how money can be made from it.

If it goes back to people, how will money be made?

Inrupt, the new company founded by Tim Berners-Lee is hoping to find a way to balance commerce and individual privacy.

This is the real Web 2.0. Not the Metaverse view that is being flogged right now.

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If you've downloaded the VLC media player on your desktop, you know how well it works.

The CEO started off the project in 2003 when he was a student at Ecole Central in Paris.

It ran on the university servers for a few years before it became wildly popular and outgrew the initial infrastructure.

Since 2005, it has been downloaded more than 3 billion times.

And it still available for free.

Jean-Baptist Kempf has steered the project right from its initial development into a non-profit without a break.

When the project became to big and expensive for the university to handle, he decided to cut it loose and find other sources of revenue.

Making it a non-profit was crucial. Now, the core team is made up of around 10 people, but every year 100 - 150 people contribute to the code base.

Much like Linux was overseen by Linus Torvalds, VLC remains a passion project true to its origins.

It could have been abandoned anytime and left to slowly decay but it hasn't. The core team has made sure of that while pursuing other careers.

Felix Paul Kühne started work on VLC in 2003 when he was a 16-year-old student but he remains a lead developer devoting his spare time interacting with other contributors and holding the project together. And in the meanwhile, he qualified and works as a Doctor of Emergency Medicine.

It's hard for people who look at free projects to understand how much work goes into getting it done. Or the money that has to be found.

And yet, it does. That's the miracle.

Image Credit: pngkey.com

Are limitations Ingredient X?

Singapore is a small country.

It does not have the luxury of space and yet, it has to manage growing needs.

It's completely flat and lies just 5 meters above sea level.

50% of its water needs are met by purchase from Malaysia and that agreement ends in 2061.

Climate change is another problem the country is faced with. And yet, it has done remarkably well so far.

One part of the solution came from recycling sewage and transforming it into usable water. Today, it already supplies 40% of the daily demand. Desalinated water will supply another 30% of the demand by 2060.

This means executing consistently with little room for error. It's not just a necessity but the entire country depends on the projects to deliver.

Singapore may have only 6 million people but it is a model of how constraints can shape an economy and drive it.

They made individual cars expensive but public transport is so good, no one misses it.

They have to manage population growth, ethnic diversity, trade issues and the biggest problem of all, a lack of space to grow.

And yet, with precise steps they have built a country that is a model for others to follow.

The question is, what happens when the constraints disappear? That's when governments take their eye off the ball.

Take a look at the countries which have shown remarkable resilience against the odds. And that seems as essential as those blessed with fertile soil and a great climate.

Limitations are ingredient X!

The mosquito's 'spit glands'

That's one of the projects that Johns Hopkins hospital researchers have been working on since 2019.

They've found that it holds the key to curbing malaria - it may be a long shot at this point but we've seen how previous research done decades earlier helped accelerate vaccine development during the pandemic.

We know how the tiny mosquito is able to play havoc with all the repellants, the nets and gadgets and devices that proliferate every year without any lasting relief.

How someone thought of looking into the spit glands of the mosquito to find a solution is beyond me. But I'm glad they did.

Another project is on proteins that could restore damaged sound-detecting cells in the ear - and given how much the current generation uses earphones, it may be just in time for when they hit their 40s and 50s

One more discovery is that Parkinson's disease may be connected to bacteria in the gut, which is a long way from the brain. The proteins that are responsible travel from the gut through a long nerve.

For blood-related disorders, a bone marrow transplant may prove to be a much better option, including sickle cell anemia and beta thalassemia.

And brain implants are helping people to control prosthetic limbs only with 'thoughts'. Its early days but these are truly the kind of breakthroughs that will return people to a quality of life they could only have dreamed of earlier.

Solutions emerge from the unlikeliest places.

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The profile pic is a signal - whether it is on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.

A tiny amount of pixel space where the site allows limited exploration.

A newbie is instantly recognizable - the ones who have the standard issue avatar of the site. It could also signal the rebel who does not wish to play the game. But that's often the exception rather than the rule.

Around profile pics, there's a whole system of small apps which exist to allow you to change and modify the pics in accordance with what the current trend is.

I am definitely old school - I don't experiment with new angles, backgrounds or even the outer colors of the circle.

So it was a pleasant surprise when Titus Snell sent me a message with two profile pic options - and I was touched that he had made the effort to work on the pictures and send it to me.

One of them was a sedate blue, which was calm and collected. And what I switched to. The other was a rust shade of red - which is also quite unusual. Maybe in a few weeks from now.

And then, Prof Alby Kurian told me that a photograph of mine on a slide in the background while I was speaking at a conference definitely created an aura. Far more than any kind of angle or artifice that I could have come up with. So, that went up and by all measures, it does help to set an elevated context.

Though it's small, the profile pic definitely allows you to express your individuality.

And shimmer in a sea of faces!

Routing for roots!

The well-to-do are migrating from India in large numbers according to the ministry. Over 600,000 people have given up their passports over the past 5 years

There will be various interpretations of this move - right from the political to those who believe that a future in a developed country may be a good hedge against climate change.

Like a whole lot of wealthy people in the US decided to get their own homes in New Zealand as a safe haven when Covid was raging in the US.

Now, some of these are simply assumptions. There is a pattern but within the pattern are complex reasons and it never is as simple as the media like to portray it.

Another pattern. Companies abroad are finding it hard to attract Indian techies. There are a whole lot of reasons behind this.

For one thing H1B spouses who earn money on the side by running their own businesses in the US live from one government policy to the next

The coveted 'Green Card' hopefuls live in limbo in the US. Indians are apparently the biggest set of nationals awaiting the change from Green Card to citizenship.

Gen Z in India finds that there isn't much of a difference working from here. The money is good and like techies in the big cities in India who had moved back to small towns during Covid, they're getting comfortable.

On a global chess board, it's like the pawns now have a mind of their own!

The commercial viability of online followers

Businesses are finding that social media followers aren't exactly the best metric to estimate results.

Book publishers who paid massive advances to top celebrities based on their followers-in-the-millions-profile would lead to big sales were sorely disappointed.

There's a slip between public perception and reality.

Building a following in the real world involves tremendous work and effort. Influencers can actually get things moving with just a phone call or an appeal.

On social media, however, the commitment is easily made and just as easily forgotten because there is no firm connection or consequence.

The words influencers and followers don't have the same magnetism and aura when they transition to social media.

You can't blame the portals alone for the way this works. They built approximations of the real thing.

Connections, engagements, feedback and even likes online are imitation versions of what real world commitments involve.

If you're connected to a person in the real world, both of you take the time to meet, talk to each other and help out in various situations. You know each other's families, possibly and have several shared experiences as memories.

But online, it's just a click and you're away. You may like what a person posts and look forward to reading more or watching a video but the connection ends there. They may not know you at all beyond the profile picture.

Having millions or even thousands of online followers is not a bad thing. It even gives a completely different vibe - and at times, that's all you're looking for.

But equating them to real world relationships is a stretch - they exist in another orbit altogether.

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Literally.

A new way of drying off after a bath is here.

Unlike wrapping yourself in layers of Turkish bath towels, turn on the air.

A new design appliance for bathrooms is the all-body dryer.

As opposed to the hand dryers that have become reasonably popular in public bathrooms.

The advantages are obvious. Go from wet to dry in a matter of minutes.

After luxuriating in a hot shower, hot blasts of air blow at you from all directions to dry you off.

So you don't end up creating wet puddles walking all the way from the bathroom to the wardrobe.

If it works as promised, hotels will line up for it because they can simply do away with having to wash, dry and replace the towels everyday. That's a significant cost saving, apart from removing a source of the mess in the rooms.

The only question is whether they will be power hogs. In which case, the savings from buying and maintaining towels evaporates.

All said and done, the idea is worth trying. On rainy days and in winters, the damp smell of towels lingers long in the air.

And there's nothing as dispiriting as having to wipe off with a damp towel.

The first versions of these ideas usually leave a lot to be desired. And some crucial questions are still not answered.

How long do you have to stand in front of the airstream, for example. And when you see the design, it's air being blown at three levels. What happens in the middle, and most importantly, how do you dry off the hair on your head?

Well. it may not be wise to drop that bath towel, yet. For a few years at least!

A single woman ed tech business

Did you ever think that TikTok and Instagram could be used a teaching platforms?

Miss Excel has been doing just that.

She creates Excel training courses on these platforms, and they have been a runaway success.

They range in price from $297 all the way down to $5.

What exactly is going on here?

It isn't as if there aren't enough tutorials on the Microsoft website.

Or even on YouTube.

Excel courses are quite easy to find and a Google search will net quite a few options.

It's probably got to do with the way Miss Excel engages her audience.

She dances, pirouettes and sets her promotions on Tik Tok and Instagram to music.

Corny when you think about it. For example, videos show ' Conditional formatting' and a headline like 'Does your spreadsheet match your outfit?'

There's no reason whatsoever for the colours on the spreadsheet to go with your clothes but she does things like this - get the excel sheet background made from the pattern of her clothes.

You aren't going to be able to read any numbers on those sheets, but like they say, it's 'fun'

Makes you wonder about all the teachers slaving away in classrooms and earnestly rustling up courses that go deep into the subject.

And here's a young lady tripping on Excel to say pretty much what you can find on several sites if you do a little digging.

It helps, of course that once things go viral on TikTok , it propels the course to the top making it highly visible.

So GenZers looking to learn Excel must be instantly hooked. Someone speaks their tongue.

There are days when she earns as much as $100,000 dollars .who says life is fair!

What the $100 billion in UPI transactions mean for banks

The change was swift.

The pandemic drove more people and businesses to digital payments.

Traditional banks are the foundation for the entire system.

And that became the problem which could balloon into a threat in the years ahead.

While banks are the ones approving and managing transactions, they have become invisible to users.

As long as net banking was an option, a user had to log in on a fairly regular basis to manage payments.

With apps like Phone Pe and Google Pay, that is no longer necessary.

If banks get relegated to the background and become the invisible middlemen, their long-term prospects are squeezed.

They have to rely on aggregators for their most profitable businesses like loans for vehicles or personal loans and slowly, get cut out of the reckoning.

A small announcement the other day passed almost unnoticed. That SBI would be adding a Rs.99 charge to EMIs on every purchase. This was over and above the interest payment - a flat charge.

This leads to customer resentment because a customer sees no value in making the payment.

It is a sign that SBI wants a part of the action on payments and they are willing to risk the wrath of customers because they don't have an option.

The writing is on the wall - banks thought that payments were merely transactions and loans were their main product. But if people don't need you for payments, they could look elsewhere for loans as well.

The payment facilitators are building the wall between consumers and banks - how this will play out remains to be seen.

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The QR code was invented back in 1994.

The original use was to scan components at high speeds in auto manufacturing companies.

The biggest advantage of QR codes is that they hold 300 times more data than barcodes

But they became a largely fruitless link between offline and online environments.

Brands used it for years to tempt users to go online by scanning a squiggly square in magazine ads after the invention of smartphones.

It was supposed to be the bridge to landing pages and allow users to go straight to designated pages and get people to interact.

It went nowhere.

People thought that typing in a URL was equally easy.

Until Covid made contact in any form scary.

Even credit cards being swiped implied danger. People wanted to order and pay without making any physical contact with menus, catalogs or any surface.

And that's when the QR code became the preferred option. It had become popular in Japan and China as a mode for payment but with Covid, the floodgates opened.

Today, the no-contact plaques showing a QR code have become the norm in supermarkets and even online payments.

QR codes are generated on the fly on desktops and paid for with scans by the mobile app.

They top up mobile or satellite TV recharges, bill payments, and we interact with them almost without thinking now.

A system that was made for no contact living had to wait for the world to discover it 26 years after it had been invented.

And it looks as if we won't be going back to physical payment modes even after the pandemic passes.

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Nature has expert engineers who work for free

We think of nature as beautiful. verdant and a poet's inspiration.

Turns out that the engineering skills are truly magnificent to behold as well.

A dry creek in California was proving to be a wildlife risk.

It had grown that way after years of agricultural use.

The estimate for 'greening' the land was around $1 million and the time it would take - 12 years.

So the ecologists took an unusual route.

They prepared the land for beavers to operate freely and it cost about $60,000.

In just 3 years, the beavers have completely transformed the landscape.

They didn't need a blueprint. There was no committee constituted to oversee progress.

And best of all, they didn't need to be supervised or told what to do.

Trees, willows, plants that thrive in wetlands and meandering streams appeared across a wild landscape encompassing about 60 acres.

This is a project initiated by the US Fish and Wildlife service.

Hardly seems like the kind of thing a government would do but there are several projects now in the pipeline.

Seeing the success, nonprofits and universities are now on board.

So, an army of beavers is now going to be put to work to reclaim the land. Nature's engineers who have been doing it for eons will be called upon to repeat the magic of breathing life into land that has been denuded and destroyed.

Like the elves and the shoemaker saga - we don't have to tell nature what to do.

Just prepare the ground, get out of the way and come back for a pleasant surprise a few years later!

Can a calendar make money?

It depends, really on what it is being used for.

Practically every email program has a calendar. So what was missing?

The old way to fix a meeting was to email, figure out a convenient date and time.

When you're trying to organise it halfway around the world, it gets a lot trickier. Especially when there are several meetings involved.

Trying to figure out when working schedules intersect and whether the person is free at the time is a problem.

Whether you're trying to line up a demo, get an introduction going or interviewing a candidate.

Calendly was founded by Tope Awotana who faced the problem himself.

He tried every other product in the market and knew what was missing.

Getting the technology to work was another major problem altogether.

We underestimate the level of knowledge that is commonly available - if we are familiar with something, we assume the rest of the world knows. Which is far from the truth.

So the problem statement can be pared down to this. How can you set up multiple meetings a day across time zones and know when time slots with the people you want to meet with are available?

That's the problem Calendly solves.

It let's you synch up slots that people indicate on their schedule without having to exchange emails.

Word of mouth was the single biggest way in which people got to know of it. And last year the company made over $70 million.

So yes, calendars do make money - but not just by printing the months of the year!

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James Dyson built over 5000 prototypes of the 'Cyclone' vacuum cleaner to get it right.

He made one change at a time, so he knew exactly what was going wrong or in the right direction. Not 2 or 3 changes. One.

He was told by every manufacturer that vacuum cleaners could not get any more efficient.

The 'cyclone' technology had to be developed to suck up dust particles smaller than 1 micron. A Physics professor told him anything less than 20 microns was impossible.

He had to buy out a partner who didn't believe it was possible either.

He tried to license the technology to manufacture it but no one was interested.

He finally had to do it himself.

The vacuum had a transparent pipe showing the dust being collected. All previous research had shown that consumers didn't want to see dust being swept up. The engineers liked seeing it, so they kept it.

It was priced at 4 times the cost of the established competitors. No one gave it a chance.

The few retailers who agreed to stock the product paid for it in advance. Those were the terms of the sale.

The people who bought it were not the rich. Their houses were vacuumed by maids and they couldn't care less.

It was bought by the middle class who wanted to keep their houses sparkling clean and found a product that worked as promised.

It took nearly 4 years to develop the first working prototype. And another 4-6 years to get it out to market.

James Dyson put up his home as collateral to raise the money from a bank.

In the entire set of events narrated so far, where do you see the inspiration?

Now, you know!

Photo by Crawford Jolly on Unsplash

Frydom

Sounds a bit like freedom, right.

A guy has created an interesting interactive site on the best shapes to fry.

Not too many surprises, actually.

The ridged shape 'fries' the best because of the surface area exposed to the oil.

What's a little surprising is that only potato fries were explored.

If it was India, you'll get all kinds of shapes and sizes to work with, apart from the incredible variety of things we happily drop into oil.

'Bajjis' the evergreen favorite of the commuters come in round coin shapes, stuffed with potatoes.

The long misshapen ones often hide a fiery chilli.

Entire batches are fried at a time and people patiently await their turn to dig into them.

But we also have this ability to combine the crisp outside with flaky and soft insides in the fries. Which calls for some specialisation and skillful techniques.

The 'fafda,' something that looks like the Gujarati version of the regular 'papad' seems to have evolved into one stage of automation.

Long and thin strips are laid reverentially across boiling oil and then packed off in 1 kg boxes for family consumption.

There are no stopping Indian families who like to fry everything from bitter gourd to capsicum.

There's even a complex recipe where ladyfingers are sliced, stuffed with masala, tied up with string and then shallow fried.

The resulting concoction can convert even the most die-hard ladyfinger skeptic.

May be an Indian website designer could explore the multiple sizes, shapes and textures of Indian fries to show the world that potatoes are not the ultimate gastronomic experience.

People who live in smart homes may be rendered dumb

It's mostly hype.

Reality is another matter altogether.

Lights coming on just as you enter home. The temperature adjusted to the precise degree that you have defined as comfortable.

Music begins to play from your favorite playlist, depending on what your mood is - determined by your latest tweet or smartphone conversation.

The coffee machine begins to bubble and froth based on the recipe you've fed in.

Now, let me pierce the bubble.

This is an account from a person who actually lives in one, so she should know.

The problem as usual, is that competitors are jousting with each other.

Google Speakers can work at odds with Alexa's instructions.

Some of the IoT players have a mind and systems of their own - and that leads to frustrating consequences.

Alexa gets a little too chatty for comfort, making various recommendations over the course of the day without being asked.

Lights come on at night when you're fast asleep - and not being able to put them off adds to a sense of powerlessness. It requires another update. Until it breaks again.

Weather bulletins are read out aloud even when they haven't been summoned.

Some of these are niggling problems but it shows us how far out on a limb we already are.

If our fridges are going to place orders without our knowing, calls made to ecommerce companies to deliver things that have run out, where will it stop?

And what happens when 4 people with different habits start living together in a smart home?

Whose instructions do the systems follow?

It's a recipe for chaos and we're just starting to see where the madness could lead.

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There's something cinematic about platforms - no, not the software version.

It's where family issues get resolved or break up forever - at least in the movies.

The place where strangers arrive in a town and have a profound impact - where their life changes or the town changes.

Scriptwriters need a staging point for life's inflection points - and railway platforms are more accessible than airports. Airports are distant and there can't be last minute resolutions - at least the way they can be staged on platforms.

Bus stands are ordinary. There isn't much potential for drama in drab surroundings.

But railway stations have parallel lines that converge or diverge - and act as final chapters.

The train leaving the station, the guard waving the green flag and blowing the whistle and the closing doors have a finality that can be mined for dramatic staging.

The heroine having escaped the clutches of her dominant family runs in slow motion towards the outstretched hands of the hero.

Will he disappear into the horizon? Or will they unite at the last possible minute? We've all seen movies where both happened.

In fact, it has become a cliché - the movie station ending and trying to come up with variations is now almost impossible.

But that doesn't matter ultimately.

The point is that every story needs a resolution. And platforms offer that neutral ground where conflicts can be either resolved or end in bitterness.

Platforms are cinema's punctuation point. Life has to come to a full stop or go on.

Photo by grayom on Unsplash

Insurers are cutting ransomware cover

it's getting chaotic out there.

Even with strong cyber security systems in place, insurance companies have had to pay out hefty sums to affected companies.

Ransomware, apparently, is the new money making favorite of the underworld.

There's nothing to be transported, and every single successful strike brings in large rewards, directly in cryptocurrency. Making it harder to trace and thwart.

No wonder insurers are having to cut their losses and put up safeguards from payouts instead of protection.

They are paying only half the cover they used to and some insurance companies are actively discouraging cyber expansion.

That is bad news for IT companies which looked at software eating the world. But ransomware is taking a seat at the table and biting off a lot more than any company can cough up.

No one predicted a networking future that would have to contend with such disasters. Effectively, an affected company's data needs to be rebuilt from the ground up and there is no guarantee that they will not face a reckoning again.

The ease with which data is locked up and systems rendered useless is prompting a rethink.

Solutions will be found but since the operation is highly profitable, new attack methods will be tried out as well.

How will insurance companies respond to the new dynamics of cyber crime?

The risks are rising at a fast clip now.

Companies will have to bear the brunt of the attacks. A solution provider who can prevent breaches could be a guaranteed billion dollar opportunity - as long as they can deliver.

Quantum computing may have to be fast tracked.

Explore things you don't understand

We create our own barriers and walls.

I've heard people proudly say " I know nothing about..." as if that was an achievement. It takes so little to find out more.

Maybe you won't be able to understand things in depth right away but it does not mean you don't make the effort.

Babies start out with no understanding of how to move, talk or communicate. But they are observing and making the effort all the time.

The gibberish that comes out of their mouths transforms into words and then sentences. The 'rolling over' in bed is among the earliest things that kids do, not sitting up or even attempting to walk.

They ask an unending series of questions, irritating adults who find that they have to explain the same thing over and over again.

That's the learning process. And somewhere in school, we get used to rote learning. And studying to get the highest marks in class.

As if that is the objective and not the thrill of understanding.

We get used to others setting the limits of what we should and should not know. Like invisible barriers, we never go beyond them.

Take cryptocurrency. There's a series of lectures from Princeton University available online. It's 13 hours of a deep dive into what Bitcoin and blockchain are all about.

But don't limit yourself to what is fashionable right now. We live in a time when there are no limits to learning.

We have to go back to the time when we learned more in those first few years because of one simple behavior. Curiosity.

The rest will take care of itself.

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Formula 1 is all about speed with a core group of worshippers.

But it was a closed world. What people saw was cars driven at incredible speeds around convoluted tracks.

The big names like Lewis Hamilton and Verstappen were well-known.

But a sport is never about the lead players alone.

It's about the thousands of smaller stories that never get a moment in the spotlight.

So anyone placed below the Top 5 got scant attention from the sports media.

The other thing that attracted attention were the slow motion crashes and the way cars careened around the track into massive pileups.

But the human stories were missing.

Once the live telecast was done and the interviews followed, people waited for the next race to watch and cheer on their heroes.

The idea to make a scripted documentary of the Formula 1 world was greenlit by Sean Bratches, a former Managing Director of commercial operations for F1.

Box to Box films produced the first season for Netflix and they were given unprecedented access to all the teams.

And suddenly, the human stories came through loud and clear. It was about crushing defeat and disappointments as much as the victories.

The nail-biting finishes were shaped by teams working in close coordination with the superstar drivers, but every wrinkle and setback was seen as well.

The net result? Viewership of the F1 races jumped by nearly 50% and the managers seen in the Netflix series were mobbed as much as the stars were.

Fi became the sports brand that grew the most on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram

Brand building is fueled by storytelling. Not so much the machines as the machinations!

"A developed country is not where the poor drive cars”

It's where the rich use public transportation"

This is a quote attributed to Enrique Penalosa, a Mayor of Bogota.

And what does Elon Musk think?

From an article in Wired “I think public transport is painful. It sucks..."

Two completely contrasting philosophies.

The first built Tokyo, the largest and most densely populated metropolis in the world.

It's a city without one single centre but many of them and overseen by relaxed zoning principles. So, one area does not get to thrive at the expense of another.

And then you have the US. A country that lives by the principle of individual independence and strict zoning.

Where public transportation is perceived as the option for the poor and not something cities should invest in.

In Tokyo, like in Singapore, trains are the best way to get around a city that sprawls. Riding the train does not say anything about your economic status. So you don't have to invest in a massive car and show it off.

Tokyo ranks 99th in the world for the average expensive price of a single-bedroom apartment.

Mixed zoning allows density and people living in close proximity to each other. As a result, it increases safety because people are out in the streets all through the day. Children walk to school with no problems at all.

The principle of individuality is enticing. But it also separates you from the rest of the people you share the city with.

If you don't want to travel in public transport and interact with only a certain social circle, what does it say about you as a person?

Tokyo should be the model of the world's metropolises. But the one that is packaged and sold is New York.

Do we appreciate risk?

As far as insurance policies go, maybe.

But until the 12 century, the concept was largely unknown. As with most things, it was business that paved the way.

The earliest known usage was with respect to merchant ships and voyages. The captain of a ship would enter into a contract with an investor for a 'resicum' - the Latin word for risk before setting sail.

On return, the captain kept 25% of the profits and the investor got 75%

Now, we're able to calculate probability, eventuality and returns on data that goes back decades.

And it has crept into daily usage that spans an entire spectrum.

The risks of falling in love. Of keeping all eggs in one basket. Of spreading risk like it was a slab of butter. Or de-risking as some kind of sponge that absorbs hard knocks.

And so, the word has moved far away from it's origins to involve behavior - of people who take needless risks and those who don't.

Entrepreneurs have been defined as those who have a high risk appetite.

There are physical risks and mental risks. Each with its own set of payoffs and pitfalls.

There are risks we can control and those we don't even know of. Until Covid, not a single insurance company would have considered a world-wide shutdown and the impact it would have on businesses.

For everything from stock market crashes to F1 results, the risks multiply.

And as global connections increase, all we know is that new risks are just around the corner just when we get comfortable with what we are able to predict.

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We've all seen the grainy footage from newsreels long ago.

Everyone looks as if they're starring in a Charlie Chaplin film comically moving at a fast trot.

Peter Jackson, the director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy turned his attention to real life events a few years ago.

In 2018, he released a documentary edited from over 100 hours of footage of the first world war from the Imperial War Archives.

The film was called 'They Shall not Grow Old' and received a BAFTA nomination for the best documentary that year.

When you see the trailer, it's hard to believe that the film was not shot recently. The colour palette and the movement have been restored to a pristine condition and the film takes you back to what it meant being a soldier in the barracks in 1914.

The audio was restored as well and it's an amazing trip back in time.

Jackson has now put the spotlight on the most iconic music group of the last century - The Beatles. Comprising of footage shot from nearly 60 hours of their music recordings in 1969, it captured the magic that the creative process involves.

We often think about what it took to make the creative leap and while it is hard to document, music offers a glimpse - with all the camaraderie, the controversy, the backbiting and the egos clashes involved.

And we see the nuts and bolts of a classic come into being. Something a time machine allows you to do.

Be in the studio during a recording and in the trenches during the war.

Hacking diabetes treatment

For those patients diagnosed with diabetes early on, managing the condition is a challenge.

They can swing between low and high blood sugar levels over the course of a day, depending on the diet intake and exercise.

In most cases, it involves taking blood samples from the finger several times a day and calculating the precise amount of insulin that needs to be injected.

An open source project - Automated Insulin Delivery (AID) systems automatically adjust the insulin doses required by the body and keeps it steady.

The problem is that this is not a standard measure and has to be calibrated for each person depending on their condition.

And among the several issues involved, this delivery system was created by people who weren't medical professionals or by certified labs.

In what is possibly a medical landmark, these systems have been approved by a team of medical experts from Kings College in London.

While there are blood pressure and glucose monitors that have been built into smart watches, this is the kind of progress that will have far-reaching impact.

There's even a term in the report which describes it - citizen led science.

Traditionally, this kind of research could have taken years because of the regulatory controls that are in place for good reason.

No one wants the process trivialised or patients falling victims to scams.

While it could help patients with severe diabetes manage their condition better, there are significant risks from overdosing and needs to be used with abundant caution by patients who know the risks involved.

Pass the salt, please

It is the first thing that doctors ask people to cut from their diets to counter blood pressure or a cardiac issue.

But salt is far more essential to life than we can fathom.

It may be the least expensive item on the kitchen shelf, but it has fueled wars and revolutions when access or supply was restricted.

The largest consumer of salt in the world is the US but it's not related to diets at all - salt is the only way to keep roads navigable after snowstorms.

It's used to de-ice roads and keep traffic flowing.

Salt domes are what geologists look for in the hunt for oil reserves. Salt rocks are impenetrable, and the organic matter trapped within gradually becomes oil over centuries. The US emergency reserves of oil are stored in salt mines.

And here's the interesting bit. The amount of salt in the human body at 0.4 % of body weight is roughly equal to the salt concentration in seawater.

At 70 kgs of body weight, we have roughly 280 gms of salt. And when we lose it through sweat, it has to be continually replaced because it plays a key role in many functions, from the quality of blood to transmission of nerve signals.

And the simplest way to beat dehydration is to replace the salt. All those electrolytes are mostly sodium.

Let's not forget our own tryst with salt - the Dandi march by Mahatma Gandhi was a shrewd and game changing move because the English underestimated the power it would have.

The salt of the earth is the salve of our lives.

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This will remain one of those hard to decipher phenomena.

While India's UPI has recently crossed $100 billion in digital transactions a month, the amount of banknotes in circulation in India has reached an all-time high as well.

This from the DNA newspaper: RBI data revealed that the currency amount with the public stood at a record high of Rs 28.30 lakh crores for the fortnight ending October 8, 2021. This is up 57.48% or Rs 10.33 lakh crores from a level of Rs 17.97 lakh crores on November 4, 2016. Cash with the public has shot up 211% from Rs 9.11 lakh crore, recorded on November 25, 2016.

So, a surge in digital transactions does not seem to be cutting into the cash economy. They are both galloping.

In case you thought this was curiously Indian, it's global.

The Economist article about $75 billion in pound sterling floating around in the global economy out of which the central bank only has a clear view into about $25 billion.

The rest? No one has a clue.

While the local paan and tea shops are now accepting UPI, cash is finding new friends. But no one knows who they are.

And curiously enough, central bankers don't seem unduly worried or concerned with the amount of money being printed or the notes in circulation.

Like smiles, the value of money only seems to increase, no matter whether it is exchanged in digital bits or little pieces of paper.

How lazy is your file saving method?

It should be simple.

A file name should accurately describe the contents of the file, so that it can be easily retrieved later. That's the theory.

The practice is something else altogether. People have their own individual logic that makes no sense to anyone else. For example, save file names by date, and put it in a folder pertaining to a subject.

That's as good as not having a file name at all because a few days later, everyone has forgotten the date on which it was created and opening up several files to check is frustrating.

Maybe the old systems of physical files were better. Since retrieval was physical, you could quickly go back years (provided the people managing the system were organised) and find what you wanted.

But now that you can save files without thinking, that is exactly what happens. It is absolute chaos when you have to find anything at all.

In the digital world, we're far less organised than we are in the real one. And we are under the mistaken impression that 'Search' will find everything we need at short notice.

There should be a logic that applies - and a system. But trying to get everyone in line to follow is a losing battle.

In physical archives like newsrooms and libraries, you can easily go back decades. That's because a few trained people managed the filing system.

It seems to be a trivial problem. But if everyone decides to follow their own conventions, which is the case, it is a recipe for chaos.

And there's little chance of good sense prevailing anytime soon.

The forlorn daily newspaper

It was one of the early casualties of Covid.

From March 2020 onwards, anything that came from outside was viewed with suspicion, disinfected and sanitised before being brought in.

The pile of newspapers collected outside the front door during the lockdown.

We asked our delivery guy to stop, but he didn't. A habit formed over decades can't come to a screeching halt. And newspapers themselves were trying to navigate the fog. TV and digital sources became the favoured dispensers for those with access.

Every single newspaper knew that this was going to be an existential crisis. They had to figure out a way to survive. And the end of a habit would mean the end of long-held relationships.

They knew that if people stopped reading newspapers, they would not return to the daily routine.

Too many distractions were already available. Perhaps the local aspect of the news was the only thing that kept some of the big names going.

But the cuts were deep in terms of people who lost jobs, news agents who had to find new ways to get from one day to another. A system that had braved and beaten floods and the weather had found a hard to defeat foe.

We still get the newspaper. But it goes into a rarely read stack that gets weighed and sold to the friendly neighborhood recycler every few months.

He confirmed that his own business was now down because people had stopped buying newspapers altogether.

The advertisers on the front page now include crypto exchanges promising heady returns. And like the currency, the returns too will be ephemeral.

Covid didn't just hit people. It infected long-standing business models and left them gasping.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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We remember school days with nostalgia.

But we also remember those days for another reason - time seemed to move so much more slowly. Each period in class stretched like it would never end, especially the ones with teachers who made subjects a dreary bore.

We envied adults who had independence and they went about their day as they pleased - even if we never quite understood why they seemed harried at times.

A scientist has come up with another explanation.

His theory is that as we age, the size and complexity of the neurons in our brain increases. With age, the accumulated damage to our neurons increases resistance to the flow of electrical information and we process everything slower.

Think of it as a camera firing at a rapid frame rate when you're young. So, you see much more of what's happening and time seems to flow slowly.

But as you age, the frame rate slows down and time speeds up. So, in your mind, events blur and everything seems to rush past.

Ultimately, this is rooted in our perception. The passage of time, or the speed at which it moves doesn't change.

But there is a flaw in this reasoning. Because once people retire or get back to a life less eventful, time slows down again.

Or is that a mirage? Does time simply ebb or rush depending on how interesting or insipid life is?

Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash

We're changing the search engine that changed us

We don't see what happens in the split second after entering a search query.

There are millions of search terms being fed into Google everyday and it has become, whether we like it or not, the pulse of our digital existence.

Right from the beginning, Google showed people the sites that other people favored - Page Rank is collective intent, graded by popularity.

As opposed to keywords, which could be easily gamed, Google watched traffic flows and graded websites accordingly.

It created a hierarchy of authority - at the top were government and educational domains. The sites that these linked to got a bit of the authority trickle down to them.

From 3.9 million searches a day in 1999, there are now over 6 billion searches a day on Google. It shows the astounding range of subjects that search has expanded to cover.

Our questions shaped the directions in which Google's algorithm evolved.

Before Google, the questions remained in our minds. Now, Google knows the trends in the world as they form and spread, rippling through the digital universe and uncovering hidden hopes, dreams and aspirations.

There are positives and negatives, much like the vagaries of human nature. The idyllic world of 1999, where we thought the internet would only be a force for good is long gone.

In it's place, we have the best and the worst traits rise to the surface and fight for primacy. And we're still trying to understand what the long-term consequences will be.

Google is the genie we built from our wishes.

Is nuclear power making a comeback?

In 2021, two countries have announced that they will significantly ramp up nuclear power plants.

China announced that it would be building over 150 new ones and France has followed suit, saying that new reactors would be built.

This goes against the grain of how the world sees nuclear power, especially after the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters significantly impacted public perceptions.

India is already the world's 3rd largest renewable energy producer with 38% of its power coming from renewables.

Germany generates over 45%% of the power it consumes from renewables and that percentage is rising

But that model does not seem to be universally acceptable. Some countries have decided that they will move from coal or fossil fuel to nuclear power instead of renewables.

As climate change begins to have a real impact on economies, countries are reacting differently and their goals are to keep energy costs low. And since it is among the largest components of keeping economies going, there is no wiggle room.

So a dark horse, namely nuclear power, is coming to the fore when all possibilities have been considered.

It's not what the environmentalists would have wanted but each country is jockeying for energy independence. They have seen how energy can become a political hot potato with rising prices leading to inflation.

Another aspect that comes into play is energy dependence leads to compromises having to be made on various other fronts, which may not be apparent or ever enter public discourse.

And countries want to hold their own aces when they negotiate at the head table.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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Anyone who has worked on images knows the titan - Adobe Photoshop

Used by experts, pranksters and hobbyists, Photoshop gives you immense control.

You can darken or lighten complexions, change backgrounds, introduce fresh objects and do much more.

The photo 'retouching' that used to happen in studios decades ago had skilled artists physically restore old prints and faded photographs.

Studio artists now use Photoshop or GIMP if the business is oriented towards open source and does not want to pay for expensive licenses.

Of late, there's a trend of one single feature in Photoshop becoming a plugin or a product all by itself.

RemoveBG, for example, removes the background that people have been photographed against and a new background can be added. That's it. One of the problems with removing backgrounds was cutting out the irregular edges around hair. That used to take a long time in the early versions of Photoshop.

Now, it's just a single click.

Cleanup has launched recently - the promise is that it will remove objects, people, text or defects from pictures.

Instagram started a billion dollar business with nothing more than fancy filters to be applied to digital photographs - and that was enough to get millions of people hooked.

It's quite an evolution - from black and white to color to digital to transformation of images. Then, the setting up of companies that simply store and transmit images for ecommerce sites, like Imagekit. They serve over a billion images a month.

This was a change few saw coming - and how it will evolve is anyone's guess.

Update: The speed with which AI is changing these short-lived business models is to be seen to be believed in 2023

Photo Courtesy: Reynier Carl on Unsplash

In business, nothing is a 'sure thing'

You can have a great track record.

And be a stock market favourite without a pause for years.

Spend months on projections that play out elaborate scenarios.

And then, find that things don't go according to plan, or even close to what was predicted.

Zillow is a well-known listings site for homes in the US.

And they had built enough market credibility for a plan that seemed simple on the face of it.

Buy homes available on the market using AI to determine the best options, make the necessary improvements and sell it for a sizeable profit.

It has been done by smaller operators who could manage a few homes a year and they earned much more than a commission on broking.

So far, so good.

They raised a war chest of $450 million from hugely interested investors.

There were even articles in the media that Zillow would drive up prices for everyone with this move. Like brokers slowly but surely kept prices going up in the high demand neighborhoods.

The company moved aggressively ahead and bought up available homes across the country in a massive spree that lasted for months.

Then, all of a sudden came the announcement that Zillow had paused purchases. A few days later, that they were letting over 2000 people go.

And they're writing down purchases of over $300 million.

What just happened?

In a market where the demand for houses goes through cycles, Zillow found that managing everything from buying to refurbishing to selling took a lot longer than estimated.

On a small scale, it looked like a massive business waiting to be tapped.

But then, the gap became too hard to bridge during the pandemic. The 'sure thing' became the impossible.

Telegram tries old style advertising targeting on its channels.

Even the holdouts seem to have switched gears.

Telegram is now open to brands advertising on specific channels with over a 1000 members.

But they don't allow external links or tracking.

So how does it work? In the good old way, by contextual targeting of the channel and ads limited to 160 characters.

That is a hard to sell proposition.

It's not enough to get through to 18–25-year-olds. You need to be able to target 18–25-year-old profiles who play a certain set of games, visit Starbucks twice or thrice a day and live in a particular geographical area - just saying. It is a lot more granular than that.

Facebook has spoiled the game for general purpose advertising where the audience is loosely defined and served.

Apple put the brakes on them by preaching privacy. But going back to advertisers spending money hoping for a connect with a small percentage of viewers is over.

And digital platforms only have themselves to blame for having defined audience segments so narrowly. They're stuck in a groove that gets deeper by the day.

Telegram has also raised the entry level for brands by setting $ 2,000,000 as the minimal spend per year. And if advertisers don't spend the money in the time contracted, they don't get a refund - at least that is what one of the comments states.

The attraction, of course, is that base of over 500 million active users. But clients who spend millions of dollars are a lot more demanding.

Telegram may have to climb down from a high horse to make this work.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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We first experienced it at the hostel.

Bored with the predictable fare served every day, we would escape at least 3-4 times a week to the little shack beyond the gates.

The omelets dripped in oil and were sandwiched between two crusty slices of toast. Yet, we'd wolf it down and be back for more.

The shack was owned by Guru and he taught us how business could be run with a customer base of mostly broke college kids.

He knew what we liked and cooked everything on a small kerosene stove, making omelets one at a time. We were in no hurry, dawdling over idle conversations.

Anything fancy to whet our appetites was far beyond reach on the measly pocket money parents allowed every month.

It had to accommodate snacks, soft drinks, biscuits, movies and cigarettes.

We had a 'running' account at Guru's much like students across the country would have had their own saviors.

Extended credit and collections at the beginning of the next month.

Now I wonder how he made ends meet. With over 100-150 student regulars, I guess there was some business logic that kept things going.

He would even come up with unusual concoctions like 'Cabbage Vadas' - it tasted a lot better than it sounds.

We were never curious about how Guru managed to survive. He was an ex-bank employee trying to get by. But there was no self-pity or hard luck story - he liked the anonymity.

It's probably more commonplace than we think.

Unless Zomato and Swiggy have now taken over the omelet economy.

Image source: https://cookpad.com/in/recipes/14831641-kolkata-street-style-bread-omelette-dim-powroti

Why do we find mimics funny?

Most of the time, the routine involves film actors or politicians.

And unless the actor is popular, the connect does not work.

So why do imitations make us laugh?

In a sense, mimics are like cartoonists performing live.

Caricatures capture and exaggerate aspects of a person's features. Longer noses, wider foreheads, steely jaws are all tools of the trade to tell a joke through illustrations.

Mimics rely on your awareness of the actor's or the politician's mannerisms. They observe and latch on to things that the actor repeats - sometimes unconsciously. And when it is played back, the realisation makes us laugh.

Mimics pick on male actors practically all the time. There aren't too many routines involving female actors. And that's a bit of a mystery.

Take the actor Taapsee Pannu. Observe the way she talks - her mouth moves slightly off centre and it is quite noticeable when you watch her on screen. Those are the things a mimic will concentrate on - the deviations from the normal and push it even further.

Akshay Kumar speaks in a slow drawl, even when he's making mighty threats. Now that's comic gold, because all the mimic has to do is to slow the drawl and build a situation around it.

As babies, we learn by mimicking the people around us. And that's a lifelong fascination - when we soak into the mannerisms and behavior of people we admire.

Haven't you looked into a mirror and tried walking or speaking like someone else? I rest my case.

Is too much information a dangerous thing?

There's information abundance today - but the side effects are terrible.

On Kindle, the estimate is that there are over 7500 new books being published everyday! Not to speak of millions of blogs, social media posts and videos being uploaded every minute.

The fact that anyone can publish has opened the floodgates for 'creators' with no restrictions whatsoever.

The editors and publishing houses were the gatekeepers of an earlier age.

To a large extent, they controlled and channeled public taste.

The same thing has happened in news, politics, fashion, movies and sports.

The results of this abundance?

Public taste and norms are splintering. It's hard to build a consensus around anything anymore.

Take, for example, vaccinations. There's a tremendous amount of information around the subject. Right from how they were developed, tested and the rollout of vaccinations being undertaken around the world.

But there's no such thing as a unified point of view. People who believe in an opposing stream of thought will find supporters, no matter how extreme.

The simplistic view is that we need gatekeepers. We cannot make up our minds about something unless we have trusted sources.

But trust takes time to build in a world governed by the immediate. There's nothing called instant trust.

Naively, we believed that abundance would only be for good. But it's equally true of deliberately false information. And that is leading to subversion around core human values, both in thought and action.

We're experiencing the limits of our abilities to judge and make choices. And algorithms cannot be the solution.

Maybe information diets need to become a thing!

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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When Hertz signed off on an order for 100,000 Teslas to be delivered within 14 months, it sent the company's stock soaring to over a trillion.

This single order is worth $4.2 billion, and it marks a shift in thinking.

Having an electric fleet changes the game for car rentals.

Hertz would have factored in the savings on fuel, maintenance and the charging network before making a commitment as far-reaching as this.

And it proves that EVs are now moving into the mainstream.

It is an acknowledgement that Tesla can deliver at scale as well.

While other major car manufacturers have committed to an all-electric car lineup by 2035, this is one of the goalposts being shifted along the way.

For a company to place an order of 100,000 cars on one manufacturer shows a level of confidence that should help to drive consumer confidence as well.

And that will lead to faster adoption. Once more people experience EVs, they are likely to make the shift faster. Nothing like driving a rental for a week to thoroughly get a feel and decide if this is going to be your 'regular' car.

That's good news, not just for Tesla but for the entire universe of EVs.

One of the hardest bridges to cross is the mental barrier. The next one is to create the infrastructure. And the third is to 'normalise' purchase to the point where buying an EV becomes a matter of choice, not a statement of being environmentally friendly, or anything else.

Update: Hertz placed another massive order with GM for 175000 cars The market for EVs, at least for rentals, has its foot on the accelerator.

Why 'Thank You' works, even in email

There are several customs in the real world that are part of normal social interactions.

When people help out with anything from carrying groceries to checking on friends and neighbors when they're unwell, or holding the door open in a public place, saying 'Thank you" comes naturally.

An app that aims to increase email productivity says that it works even on email.

Which is surprising because you assume that anything impersonal may not have the same effect.

Apparently, ending an email with Thanks gets the most response.

And the least responses? 'Best' and 'Regards'

Now, skeptics will immediately jump in and ask about messages that don't warrant a response.

The app did factor this in and looked only at emails that were meant to evoke a response, not just an acknowledgement.

Another clarification was about the exchange between strangers and known people, so saying 'Thank you' came more naturally.

They checked on this as well and said students were more willing to help strangers with a response when the email ended with thanks.

Some of this could be triggered simply because we're happy to help people who are polite and not pushy.

There's no solid reason for why this should work better but it is probably conditioning. We tend to accommodate requests when people ask pleasantly and then acknowledge the help.

What was more revealing is how the common salutations we tend to use, like Your Sincerely, and Faithfully seem to have practically no effect at all.

But the best way to figure out if this works for you? Try it and see the results!

A degree in social engineering

It isn't taught at any university.

But certain hackers specialise in it. They have ways of earning the trust of people in person or on the phone to get valuable information out of them.

Bank account numbers. Passwords. Social Security numbers.

The victims don't know it is an attack or that their company systems have been compromised until it is too late

In a social engineering attack, a person working in a sensitive position in a company could be approached by a friendly stranger who strikes up a conversation.

For example, they could be told that the company's network has been compromised and no one knows about it. The helpful person shows them a replica of the company page on a screen and they are invited to login.

If they make the mistake of entering company credentials on an unknown machine, they're enabling a hack.

When the login and password is entered, a blank page could be displayed, proving that the site is down.

But in reality, the hacker has managed to secure the credentials by playing on the person's trust.

And once hackers earns entry through a trusted source, they can simply ensure that future access can happen, even when this particular one is blocked off.

Fraudsters posing as bank officials or in positions of authority can get people to provide details simply by playing on their fear, or greed, with the lure of big money to be made in minutes.

Social engineering preys on the vulnerable, the technically challenged and even technical experts by appearing to come to their rescue.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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Read that carefully again.

There's a mountain of difference between being stupid and looking stupid.

And that's the focus of a great article in Hacker News.

If you're willing to ask 'dumb' questions that look obvious to a lot of people, you end up learning things they don't.

Here's an example. At a discussion on disposal of nuclear waste, everyone was focused on the harmful effects it had on the environment and people. Until someone piped up and asked "What's good about nuclear waste?'

On the face of it, a stupid question. But it opened the doors for thinking in a different direction on treating the material.

When it comes to losing at a video game, he gives the example of people blaming everything from screen lag, to teammates, to glitches. And he goes on to say how he improved at the game by examining where he went wrong, instead of making excuses.

There is a huge incentive not to 'look' stupid. Right from asking questions in class to questions at work that may seem stupid on the face of it but is valid when people stop to think about it.

The number of processes that large organisations follow is set in stone - good luck with changing that because no one wants to ask the questions that will expose shortcomings.

In any case, the most likely answer people get if they ask questions? That's the way we've always done things around here.

People hate looking stupid. And they'll do just about anything to avoid it.

Photo by Artem Maltsev on Unsplash

A step to solve supply chain paralysis

Mainstream media is full of stories on how shipping has been disrupted around the world.

Everything is taking longer and the slippages in the chain are cascading in unpredictable ways.

Ryan Peterson is the CEO of Flexport, a logistics platform, and in the thick of trying to find a solution to cascading and knotty problems

He took a three-hour tour of the port in Long Beach to see firsthand what the problems on the ground were.

There was practically no unloading going on because of no vacant spaces available for containers to be unloaded and transported.

He identified the point at which the jam could be cleared.

The zoning at the port allows only 2 containers to be stacked at a time. He suggested that this be increased to 6 for the next 120 days. This increases the space availability by 300% right away.

He also suggested that the government create a temporary yard over a 500 acre area within a 100 kms of the inland port.

Smaller container ships and barges can be unloaded there, rather than add to the congestion at the main port.

The great part of these suggestions is that it is applicable to any port, anywhere in the world.

And if they are temporary requirements, getting government approval for processes can be achieved much faster.

He even offered to lead the effort for federal or state governments, if asked.

A Twitter thread casts light on the supply chain issue than all the handwringing and assumptions I've read so far.

Now, let's see if this spurs people into action.

Egos drive greater change than motivation does

The year? 1983.

India won the world cup for the first time and created a flutter in a sport dominated by England and Australia.

That was a time when Indian journalists were not permitted to enter MCC.

And even when India won the world cup, the top officials at BCCI found they could not procure the tickets they required.

The egos of all the top office bearers of BCCI were bruised and they decided that India should host the next world cup.

They faced resistance when the English establishment said that the sub-continent did not even have the required number of stadia to hold matches.

Another point of resistance? The number of overs had to be reduced from 60 to 50 because of the smaller daylight hours in India as compared to English summers.

Prudential refused to budge until Jagmohan Dalmiya doubled the money that would be paid out for holding the tournament in India, which dissolved all resistance.

India and Pakistan pooled their venues to jointly host the World Cup in 1987.

The fancied teams did not make it to the finals

Even then, a capacity 90,000 crowd at Eden Gardens turned up to watch the face off between England and Australia. That firmly established us as the cricket-crazy nation and marked the beginning of the English reluctantly ceding authority and control.

It was the egos that drove change, more than the lofty goal of making India the fulcrum of international cricket.

Even if it was the players who wrote history and brought home the world cup in 1983.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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Chart above copyright by FT

Facebook has been locked out of Apple's ecosystem for targeting.

And that is impacting their ad business.

Just like it is for Google

Now, here's the sting in the tail. Apple's advertising revenue has tripled. No guessing where that came from!

By playing up the privacy angle, Apple has secured a lucrative market for itself.

Brings to mind what Amazon did a few years ago - introduced ads that almost looked like product placements and now makes over $10 billion in revenue from advertising alone. Adding to the commission it makes on sales anyway.

What Facebook and Google see now is that it is important to be a destination and not just the conduit.

That power and traffic was an illusion.

Apple has to protect that market. What was dominant play by the search and social media giants has now become a four way race for revenue.

Expect fireworks because there will be no quarter given, only taken.

Once companies get used to a stream of this level of revenue, they begin to erect all the safeguards they can, from policy and market strategy because these are high-wire games.

One fall and the valuation as well as the share price get hammered.

A four cornered contest is better than two. Expect Google and Facebook to align with Shopify and scan markets for fast growing segments to either take over or ally with.

The advertising revenue roller-coaster has been set in motion!

The product that gets around every ban

If you ever needed proof advertising works...

In this particular category, even after it has gone off the airwaves altogether.

Cigarette advertising has been banned in several countries for decades now, but it continues to attract fresh followers.

Countries have tried everything from horrendous images on packs to obscuring the brand names to removing them from mass media advertising altogether.

But the number of smokers has not dropped dramatically.

In India, every time an actor smokes on screen, 'Smoking Kills' appears.

And yet, the perception of smoking as a cool way to flash independence and rebellion has drilled deep into the human psyche.

How else does one explain the aura that smokers seem to create around themselves and the habit?

Recently, a quiz question was asked in a WhatsApp group - why did cigarette companies spend the most money on advertising in the month of January?

The answer, it turns out is that they wanted to weaken the willpower of people who would resolve to quit on January 1st!

Wikipedia bears this out by showing advertising spends peaked in Jan. So, the pressure on smokers to return to the 'club' was immense.

Like drinking, social groups tend to follow certain customs and habits - drinking buddies and smoking breaks were the norm. And with all the backlash, smokers still congregate in groups where they find their social standing enhanced by their habits.

What Duke's American Tobacco Company started out in the early 1900 became the marketing template for every other brand to follow.

And with all the legislation, medical evidence and outright bans, nothing has stopped smokers from continuing to puff away.

"Nothing will happen to me" wins the day, every time.

A 4-year-old signed up by Arsenal?

The BBC says that Arsenal has signed on a player, who has barely learned to talk, but he dribbles like a champ.

With a real football, not into the bib around his neck!

It's time for a check. No matter how good, being hunted by a talent scout and put into the fast track of a Premier League team is about being able to handle pressure.

Even if Zayn Ali Salman is God's gift to football, let him be.

He needs to enjoy the game and freewheel for the next decade, without a care in the world. Even if he's far better than all the kids he plays with, he needs to hang out with them after the game is over.

And by marking him out as a special talent, he won't be able to build the relationships that matter. A normal childhood is hard enough. Being stalked by talent scouts who interpret every move critically is more than that little head can bear.

There's a ton of money riding on the teams' performances. They're looking for every little scrap of advantage they can get. Whether it means signing on a 4 year old, who's naturally gifted and locking the competition out

But it will play havoc with ordinary lives. The kid now has to bear the expectations of not just his family and friends but of one of the major League teams.

FOMO is not confined to social media wannabes. And in the race to stay ahead, we're taking the fun out of sports.

And putting a price on kid’s years before they are ready for the limelight.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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We've all got the WhatsApp forwards.

Exercise routines that need to be followed. Strengthening everything from the abs to the pectorals to the biceps.

In most cases, this degenerates into a barely comprehensible routine and for the most part, it's simply people going through the motions.

This site, Musclewiki, has managed to simplify it to the part you are interested in with a solid UX tweak. Instead of words, it connects the part of the body you need to work on to the recommended exercises.

They have a different set of graphics for men and women.

And once you click into the exercises, you're taken to a video demonstration of how it is done.

It is interesting to see these sites evolve, from a collection of exercise positions to GIFs to videos and even animations.

Question is, does this address one of the biggest problems?

Getting people to continue exercising and making it a habit.

That still seems to require a one on one with a trainer. That is the best UX of all and unlikely to change because we aren't looking for clarity alone.

We're looking for encouragement, motivation and validation that we're doing the exercises right.

And for that, a trainer is still the best way to go.

The evolution of the UX is welcome, but that's where it stops.

You have no way of knowing if you're doing the exercises right. That still requires professional oversight.

The crossover from virtual to real is still the hardest bridge to get across.

Indian midwives are possibly better than Dr. Spock!

It's not an old wives’ tale.

Scientific evidence is emerging that tummy rubs and massages for infants is a good way to keep babies growing and glowing.

We've grown increasingly suspicious of any of the traditional forms of early infant care. Which is a pity because hundreds of centuries of native expertise has been relegated to the background because - well, there's no data on it!

We require qualified doctors to put their stamp of authority and tell us what we're doing is good.

Gary Darmstadt is professor of neonatal and developmental medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine. When traveling through villages in India and Bangladesh, he saw several mothers and grandmothers massaging their newborns for hours.

And a study proved that there was a 40% reduction in the infection rate and a 20-25% reduction in mortality rates. This was on a set of nearly 500 babies.

A much larger study is underway and hopefully, it will dispel the suspicion that new mothers have.

Today, protecting children and bringing them up in a highly sanitised environment because they are seen as fragile is the accepted norm. Even though they need to build resistance to several allergens as well as bacteria and it may not be wise to keep them insulated all the time.

But that's a hard story to sell. Children with gleaming oil on their bodies and long massage regimens to be followed is not exactly convenient.

As it is, young couples struggle with the early rigors of managing infants. And massages for the baby aren't a priority, no matter what the promised benefits are.

The fragility of startups

There's an early stage every startup has to get through.

The point from idea to product.

And discovering along the way whether customers will buy into it at all. Several hard knocks and disappointments later, the outline of what the product will become forms hazily

There's still no guarantee it will work.

Remember blowing those millions of soap bubbles that stream out looking brilliant and they burst with a single touch. Disappear completely.

People have worked on the idea for several years and evolve the concept they originally came up with.

How do they keep going through all the rejections and persist?

There's no single answer to that one. It's often about not wanting to do anything else because their belief is strong.

For instance, a story about a naval architecture graduate who thinks that boats running on solar power are the future.

He's managed to persuade a couple of ferry owners to implement it in Kerala.

There are several interests working against him. The existing engine boat manufacturers don't want their business to dry up.

And he's proven that a 20 HP solar boat can go up against the might of a 50-75 HP engine.

Add to the fact that they save tremendous amounts of money on running costs and it becomes an attractive proposition for owners.

But it is a long haul. Convincing people to put in the money, delivering to expectations and finally, establishing a market can take decades.

And that, curiously enough, seems to be the attraction that draws entrepreneurs in.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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The posters freeze Bond in pivotal moments.

Or enhance the aura.

What most viewers never think about is that the movie posters and other shots of the cast are never derived from the footage.

There are still photographers assigned to the set and they are the ones who create the images that go into practically all of the publicity material.

The question is why?

Movie and still photography are completely different from a lighting point of view. When cinematographers light up a scene, they are looking at a moving canvas and the role of the actors in that situation.

The still photographer has to build relationships with actors to get them to repeat some of the action or do stage it with completely different lighting.

Nicola Dove specialises in still photography for movies and she's the one who was brought on board for the last 'No Time to Die' Bond film starring Daniel Craig.

She had to be involved right through on all shooting days at all locations. Her job was to capture pivotal scenes from the movie and shoot it with the actors involved.

Movie sets tend to be chaotic, even though there's a tremendous amount of time that goes into planning each schedule.

The still photographer has to blend into the scenery when the action is filmed and then, using the same set and props, work out what could be used later in publicity shots or posters.

It may look glamorous but like everything else behind the scenes, creating the perfect illusion involves patience and getting the moves right.

Even if they are frozen in time.

Above the waist dressing becomes the pandemic style

The CEO of Tanishq noticed a change.

With video calls and interactions gaining traction during the pandemic, people were forced into picture squares.

One of the ways to stand out was by opting for unusual backdrops.

But unless you had a green screen setup, the background option was 'iffy'

Every time you move your head, there's a wave of fuzziness around your hair and clothes that looks messy. People know that a simple bedroom background is being camouflaged and the glorious sunset or fancy office backdrop is just another illusion.

However, you can shine with great-looking earrings and a bit of makeup. Or even a gold chain designed to attract attention.

Tanishq has been seeing a spike of interest from people who look to combine jewelry with workwear.

The number of social occasions with friends and family on video calls has also increased.

And people are paying attention to how they can look good on the calls with different pieces of jewelry to match clothes.

Cartoonists and stand-up comedians have mined this 'above the waist' look to make jokes about pajama suits, or coats and shorts as viable combinations.

However, this is a window into how people want to come off looking good in family interactions and are making efforts to do so, without being obvious.

As a result, Tanishq is creating a special drive to promote earrings and jewelry worn around the neck.

The 'video-call' look is set to hit the mainstream.

Even after the pandemic has passed.

Are you a zero or 100 percenter?

100% all the time?

Or, do you feel insecure if your battery charge drops below 30% on your mobile phone?

A whole new set of behaviors have developed around batteries and charges. It seems like a trivial thing but there are people who don't like the charge to drop below a certain point. Others will let it run down to less than 10% and even run out before they use a charger.

There are no explanations or even a clue on why people treat batteries so differently.

What battery pundits will tell you is that it isn't good for batteries to keep getting charged from a low start point. Keeping it close to 100% all the time is not good either.

As long as the battery is charged to around 80% and then recharged around the 35-40% mark is the way to get the best out of it.

But that's a stretch. People unconsciously fall into a habit. And they go for the most convenient option that fits their life.

Which is, plug in at night and disconnect the next morning - and the battery goes from a low charge to staying full on standby for hours.

Modern smart phones have created an auto switch-off when the battery is fully charged but if you want batteries to last longer, there's no option but to change behavior.

Resist the temptation to keep it fully charged all the time. Or let it run down to zero as often.

As far as batteries are concerned, like in life, the middle path is best way!

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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It went against the moral fiber.

Only a couple of agency guys feverishly cracking a product brief for a client could have concocted this back in 1973. It went on to become an essential after-dinner tipple in hallowed circles.

But it wasn't always this way.

In 2007, Diageo announced that it had sold its billionth bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream liqueur. But the start or the journey was nowhere as smooth as the way it went down throats.

Would anyone have thought of adding cream to Irish whiskey, for example? And when the vile concoction did not work, they added sugar, and of all things, chocolate to make it palatable.

Then, with no backup plan, they presented it to the client.

As it went around the room, some of those present winced at the taste. There was the sharp accentuation of the whiskey that came through between the smoothness of the cream and the hint of chocolate.

It is a fascinating stop-start-stop journey.

Of a client willing to bet a considerable amount of money on manufacturing and marketing what was clearly an unfamiliar entrant to the liqueur market.

But it paid off in ways that neither the client nor the agency could ever have predicted, when it shot to instant fame and fortune in Australia, where it was love at first sip.

And shops would put up signs saying, 'It'll be here in a week" and people knew exactly what was being referred to.

Within a few years, they had a huge number of competitors. But by then, this Irish cream was galloping into the record books.

Don’t judge doesn’t work

That old proverb may work as a metaphor, but not in actual practice

We all judge books and movies by their covers.

How else are you supposed to make a decision? By reading the reviews or scanning a chapter? Or taking a look at the sales figures and deciding that if it is a bestseller, it must be good.

As it stands, it's hard to rise to the top in the world today in any channel, whether it is social media or a bookshelf in a store.

Kindle has completely changed the experience because you see the cover and then 'Look Inside' to see if the cover promise holds true within the first few pages.

Movie titles are an even trickier proposition. How will decide to spend the next couple of hours on a movie, if the title and blurb describing the film are not attractive enough?

Netflix has found that if people don't settle down to a film within the first couple of minutes after a login, they'll probably wander away to do something else.

So, it has found other ways to keep viewers engaged. The trailer, or a sequence from the film plays as soon as they click the 'Home' button.

Book displays, however, can't be as dynamic and engaging.

So the cover has got to do all the work. And a book is a much higher commitment, for most people. At least a few hours spread over weeks, if not more.

That's why covers are so important.

The reality is that we judge everything, books, movies and music by the covers that appear before us.

Do you dream of being a digital nomad?

Remote work has caught on since the pandemic began.

People speak of staying in picturesque locations and having a better quality of life.

A few of them have taken the plunge and explored not just another city or country. But how do you decide which is the best city to operate from? The same time zone? A great climate around the year? Political stability? High dollar value conversions?

How exactly can you find out all this without putting in the time and research.

That's where Nomadlist found its business model.

It calls itself a community of digital nomads. And they have over 30,000 members already, from what the site claims.

When you first land up at the site, it looks like a holiday destination - but the conditions it flags off are different.

Each city is rated on the cost of living, how good the internet connectivity is, the 'fun' factor and safety.

That's a good set of basic parameters to build on.

It looks like they use the existing nomads in the community to profile the cities.

And it is a long scroll to the bottom.

The business model is coming into view. Offering remote hires for companies is already part of the page design.

So is the opportunity for cities to boost their profile and promote themselves as destinations for digital nomads.

These guys are among the first I've seen - and it seems like another unicorn in the making.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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The other day, I placed an order for some pickles and a couple of other small eatables at an online store.

I don't want to name them because they did follow process and refunded the money for a stockout item.

Zomato and Swiggy have understood the problem and fixed it.

They know that restaurants can run out of the dishes when there's a sudden influx of people ordering the same thing.

Then, there are two options. A refund can be initiated, or the restaurant can call the customer, inform them and ask if they want to replace the dish ordered with another.

Most of the time, the customer will agree.

Back to the order I had placed.

After 5 days, the items were dispatched and simultaneously, a refund initiated for the pickles that were out of stock.

Now, if they had called before dispatching the order and provided an alternative, things would have been fine. I would have commended them on their thoughtfulness.

But this was not acceptable - because of the lack of communication.

The internal system is efficient because the money paid is returned.

However, the lack of communication is a deal breaker.

I'm unlikely to place an order with them again because they've neglected the most important link in the chain.

Keep customers informed when there's a change.

What is your dealbreaker for an online shopping process?

When Facebook's money machine stopped minting

When Facebook went down for six hours, it wasn't users alone who were impacted.

Facebook's outage stopped all scheduled advertising as well.

The calculation, according to AdWeek: Facebook’s ad engine would normally run, on average, $13 million worth of ads per hour or $200,000 per minute, according to figures from its second quarterly earnings. That’s a big hole.

After Facebook came back again, media managers began to notice another thing.

Accelerated delivery of advertising.

More ads were pushed into newsfeeds following the outage and they also noticed that conversions seemed to have dropped.

Now, each of these issues are hard to estimate when there is a continuous spend in place and estimating how it would impact the long term. But for the industry behemoth, disappearing for six hours is a crater - small, but significant.

If advertisers saw lower conversions, they would reduce spends or spread it out over a longer period. No one wants to be at the losing end.

And the objectives are at cross purposes.

Facebook would like to deliver higher conversions, but not at lower costs.

And advertisers want to keep cutting spends.

So, Facebook and advertisers are optimising in opposite directions!

An outage forces clients to hit the Pause button.

Even if the conversion drops momentarily, they hold back and that leads to Facebook losing even more money over time.

For Facebook, this is more worrying than the outage - because it slows down the acceleration of the money machine.

And getting it back to the same levels as before needs more than just a technical fix.

Returned without thanks

Online shopping has given rise to a new kind of behavior.

People returning things has gone through the roof.

It is one thing to walk into a physical showroom, try out anything from dresses or shoes and walk out with what you want.

But online shopping had to allow some version of this in order to succeed. If people had to take the risk of buying things without knowing they could return them, they would probably have held back.

Now, things have moved in the opposite direction.

Few think twice about returning stuff they don't want.

And that's a massive logistics headache.

The systems are built for dispatch to multiple locations from hubs. But this involves getting things back and the same system can't be used. It’s called reverse logistics and the companies involved dread the complexity in handling this.

The returned items can't be sold back through normal channels, since they won't be in the original packaging, or could be damaged or soiled.

Below a certain value, ecommerce companies are deciding it isn't worth it and simply refund the amount so that customers keep buying. Unless they make it a habit, in which case they are blacklisted.

One of the unexpected fallouts of the ecommerce boom. No one could have seen this coming.

Cash on delivery was one of the prime reasons why ecommerce flourished in India in the early stages.

But this is a new problem that has no easy solutions because the returns are random, the path back to the company is not fixed and what needs to be done with the returned goods is also not fixed.

Thanks. But no thanks!

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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You're not supposed to know about them either.

But it shows that after all the trouble you take to secure your phone, your messages can be easily read.

What exactly does Syniverse do?

It routes the billions of messages sent out every day between the telecom companies.

Practically every telecom company in the world is a customer.

And here's the enormity of the problem.

The company was hacked back in 2016. The hackers made inroads deep into the company's network and watched without their presence being detected.

For nearly 5 years.

That puts a completely different spin on things because it means that it's not enough for the phone or even the telecom network to put all security protocols in place because a trusted source in the middle has been hacked.

From the point of view of the hackers, it's a genius move.

They found the soft underbelly they could crawl into and keep tabs on just about anything they wanted to.

This is a major issue because it means that security issues are cropping up in a chain where neither the telecom provider or its customers had no clue that the messages are exposed.

It's a bit like a showroom having all kinds of security in place but the vendor delivering the goods makes off with the money.

And frankly, one wonders how far this whole chain can be protected. And whether there's any point at all.

Like hospital gowns that provide a modest cover in front. But the backend is another story!

What to look for in earphones

Before the pandemic, there was a small set of people who were hooked to music and podcasts on headphones and earphones.

But ever since video calls and online classes became the norm, the numbers floating around the house exploded.

In India, brands like Boat and Noise have experienced a sudden surge in popularity - to the extent that they're now signing up celebrities to endorse them.

Always a sign that people aren't interested so much in the technical details as much as the people who promote them.

The Sound Guys are coming at it from another angle and the arguments are persuasive.

Apart from the sound quality, they suggest that you pay particular attention to the way the in-ear earphones fit your ears.

Why is this important?

The better the fit, the less leakage and you don't need to raise the volume beyond safe limits.

And when you're listening to conversations or music or podcasts, the volume level is insanely important. Especially when it amounts to several hours of listening every day.

It's like a direct feed right into your ears and if you can hear perfectly with a snug fit at low volumes, your ears should be protected for a lot longer.

They suggest that you experiment with a good seal that fits your ears perfectly. It may have to do with brand or with the in-ear options you have to try to find what works best for you.

Next time, don't look for the bass quality alone - the snug fit will matter a lot more in the long run.

Is it easier to motivate educated people?

Or is it easier to educate doers?

That's the question asked in a tweet, and it got a lot of people fired up.

Let's accept that there are people who simply get out there and do things.

Tanya Elizabeth Ken is a doer. She worked with a group of girls from a slum when she was 10 years old. Later, the group created an app, Baton, to keep track of volunteer projects that had moved ahead but were stuck in limbo.

Most volunteers stayed with a project for 3-6 months. Then, a couple of years later, another set of volunteers start work on the same problem because there is no way for them to know that another group had already made progress. Baton connected similar projects.

Like a relay race, the app enabled successive NGO teams to advance projects to the next level. Take the learnings from one and add them for the next team to advance solutions.

Simple idea but it had not occurred to anyone until then.

In 2019, it won the Technovation prize in a global competition.

And coming back to where this post started, doers don't wait for motivation or the right time or even the right set of circumstances.

There are several educated, well-qualified people who dream of doing things. But getting down to doing is another thing altogether.

Tanya Ken did not need any prodding. She started off early. The education helped but she was more interested in converting her idea into a project that would help her and all the teams that followed.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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They came to the Santa Monica pier from different directions.

One of them is a guitarist who has been playing for over 20 years and has a sizeable subscriber base on YouTube - nearly 250,000.

He sets up a mic and invites people to sing while he plays the guitar.

Most beach goers have nothing more on their minds than to snack, chit-chat and while away a lazy afternoon.

Then, a cautious Indian girl strolls by with a friend, and he invites her to sing.

They go back and forth on the songs she knows and what he can accompany her on.

Finally, they settle on a Daniel Ceasar song, and she begins hesitantly at first, and then gets into the flow.

And it turns out that she's effortlessly good.

The collaboration works even though they don't know each other at all and come from different worlds. But that doesn't stop them from connecting and creating some great music together.

She's learned classical Indian music for over 10 years. And he, of course is great on the guitar.

They'll go their own ways, and it is clear that the young singer, Monica, is not a career musician, even though she's a natural.

Her Instagram handle, which she doesn't immediately recall still has attracted over 9000 followers.

And we'll leave it there, just like the video, which now has over 1.5 million views and growing. A moment in time when two talented people came together and created a ripple on the beach one weekend evening.

And most other visitors remained blissfully unaware of the viral video taking shape.

AI and ML are old hat. Welcome to the Metaverse

(Update: This post was written 2 years ago. Obviously, things change, and I got it gloriously wrong. Zuckerberg lost billions. I lost face)

There's a change of guard every few years.

The old chestnuts don't work as well anymore because everyone's using the same jargon.

Then you begin to hear the whispers of something new. Which becomes a flood and in time, what everyone is building into their product!

Not so long ago, AI was the gate that opened venture capital in every business. Loads of big data churned into some marvelous new insights and products that could build the next billion-dollar business.

In practically every global software business, there is an AI component. If you ask the promoters, they will whip out one nugget after another to tell you how they identified a key need, churned data and then put in place a process that simply made it incredibly easy to take the business to whole new level.

So, what exactly is the Metaverse? Facebook describes it one way, but Epic games has another approach.

At this stage Facebook has had to play on the backfoot because they are weathering several storms of agitated legal and social scrutiny from lawmakers and other pressure groups.

The basic description of the Metaverse is the next stage of the internet where it moves from screens to objects of everyday use and the interactions that will result.

There's a long set of essays written about the Metaverse, if you are interested in trying to understand where this is going - or whether you want to go the way Epic believes is the right one.

Reminds me of the time the web moved from 1.0 to 2.0. But that was gone before you knew it.

What your location data is worth

Remember how Google Maps emails you a nice little infographic about the places you visit every month?

This was before the pandemic, of course and it was interesting to the extent that you looked at it and said - 'Oh ok', and probably forgot all about it.

But once the data is online, it is never forgotten.

And there are companies who harvest data, not from the phone alone but the apps you have installed.

There was a company called Foursquare who allowed 'check-ins' to restaurants, cinemas or other locations and conferred titles like 'Mayor of X Starbucks' for example.

It seemed like a harmless but essentially weird thing.

But all that data of movements to places adds up to a profile of your life.

If you visit religious places regularly, the fact that religion is important to you will come through clearly.

Or if a person is in the habit of having a drink every evening at a favorite restaurant, the location data will show the regularity of visits to the place. That data is of interest to companies targeting drinkers.

Extend these examples and you see how easy it is to build profiles of people's interests without them filling a single form, or even posting anything in social media.

Most people have nothing to hide. But when their preferences can be extracted in tangential ways, marketing to them is just the tip of the iceberg.

The location industry is apparently worth $12 billion. That could be a conservative estimate.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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James Gleick gave a great example of why efficiency should not be optimised beyond a point in his book, Chaos.

The example he used was of major airports, where flights took off and landed every 15 seconds or so. Alternating between a landing and a takeoff, efficiency parameters were pushed to the limit.

But if an airplane developed a snag on the ground while taxiing towards take off, it threw everything out of gear.

Finding another crew to replace the existing one, transferring passengers to a different flight and managing the schedules of all the other flight affected leads to chaos - and major losses for each of the affected airlines.

We're hearing of similar issues with supply chains across the world. Unloading at ports is taking weeks. Containers are in short supply. Drivers aren't available at refineries in Britain to refuel petrol stations, leading to major shortages.

Covid is one of the culprits, for sure. With people stuck at home during lockdowns, it isn't clear what will go down and when.

We got so obsessed with productivity, everything was pushed to the breaking point.

Christmas shopping in the US is under threat and all the big chains are scrambling to ensure supplies in the critical phase.

But the fact is, new unknowns suddenly make an appearance, creating ripples right across the chain and affecting end points.

Millions of cars could not be manufactured because of a shortage of chips.

We thought Covid only affects people, but it has also made economies sick.

And for that, there's no vaccine in the works.

Does automation cut quality while cutting costs?

Mass production leads to lower prices, for sure.

It also makes products affordable for a large set of people.

At the same time, it is evident that something is lost in the process.

The average mass-produced scissors are good enough.

But for people who want the finesse of perfectly matched and balanced scissors, it costs a lot more.

Earnest Wright in Sheffield makes scissors that cost around 350 pounds. Seems like an enormous price to pay but they have a set of customers who won't use anything else.

Watch a video of the process to see how much goes into the making.

Everything boils down to the final 'putting-together' of the two blades. It's painstakingly worked to the point where the scissor slices through cloth like a surgeon's scalpel.

There are just two people at the factory who can hone the final process and both of them are in their 70s.

They make only a few pairs every day and that craftsmanship is what people swear by.

But the level of detail and the apprenticeship demands years of experience. It isn't easy or even particularly interesting work.

Automation, on the other hand, removes people from the process altogether. But it also removes all elements of individual craft.

Most people would not even realise what they're missing. But for those who know the difference and can afford it, it becomes a treasured possession.

Long-lasting quality is a part of the mystique. What's even rarer is the human element of dedication, pushing each piece to a pinnacle while automation spits out passable new pieces every second.

The MacArthur prize recognises that change is hard

It does not have the glamour of the Nobel.

People don't work towards getting a MacArthur prize because they can't.

No one can nominate a potential prize winner.

Since 1978, the foundation has handed over $6.8 billion in grants to winners.

They include people doing pioneering work to remove racial discrimination. Or writing about cultural themes not part of the mainstream. Artists and activists as well.

The objective is to find people doing things to improve lives in communities in their own special way without looking for financial reward.

John MacArthur, the man in whose name the prize is instituted made his fortune in the insurance business. In life, he was the hard-charging businessman who was ruthless and hard to deal with.

But the foundation he left behind focuses on the pockets of change that add up to the larger picture.

It's one of those riddles of human nature where the legacy of the man is at odds with the person he was in real life.

There is no fixed number of awards to be given out every year. But the people responsible go into the field after reading or hearing of the work that potential prize winners do.

It comes as a shock to every one of them. $625,000 is paid out over a period of five years.

The idea is that they should get on with what they do best without having to worry about money for their personal needs.

Out of personal selfishness came the award that rewards selflessness!

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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Why did a tire company become the world's standard for haute cuisine?

Michelin assumed, correctly, that if more people traveled to eat out, they would replace their tires more often and increase the company's business over time.

They started out by awarding stars to restaurants back in 1900 and that became so popular, they had to appoint a series of 'inspectors' to assess food quality and see if standards were being maintained.

One would assume that gorging on great food all day long would be one of the most sought-after jobs in the world.

But most inspectors don't last beyond 5 years. The punishing schedule, the inevitable weight gain and the constant stress of assessing restaurants is not for the faint-hearted.

There are several articles about the Michelin star chefs, but practically none about the inspectors. That is probably by design.

The company did not want inspectors to be treated differently by the management, so as to get favourable reviews.

Michelin inspectors are solidly grounded in the science and the art of food. They have to pass rigorous tests to qualify.

And the initial assessments are done along with a senior inspector. But they aren't rich and could not afford to eat at these restaurants regularly, if they weren't on the job.

Their capacity to eat and distinguish between the balance of flavours, presentations and consistency is key.

A tire company setting the standards that chefs worldwide aspire to is an aberration. The recognition can make and break restaurants but another thought comes to mind.

We need to be told what our taste buds should feel!

Should business reporting be serious?

Every business has conventions.

To a large extent, they are also an extension of tried and tested ways of the category.

If you met a banker who cracked jokes every couple of minutes, you may enjoy the banter but somewhere at the back of your mind, a question arises. Does this guy take things seriously and should I be parking my money here?

In a recent post, I had touched upon how the news readers from a few generations ago were the strong silent types, who would only crack smiles with a greeting at the beginning and while signing off.

But with hundreds of news and business channels fighting for attention, how do channels differentiate?

Good analysis and articulation are essential but then, you switch channels because you're looking for more than just presentation skills.

And programs from John Oliver - This Week Tonight as well as John Stewart's The Daily Show now presented by Trevor Noah may be slotted as comedic takes on news but the viewership is massive.

That's probably promoting a rethink at business channels, apart from taking a stand on certain issues and leaning to the right or the left.

It does not bode well for the 'neutral' mode that business reporting is supposed to stay in.

Take a look at this Australian business reporter talking about the recent GameStop controversy.

It is by no means all charts and graphs but actually has elements of drama and innuendo.

Looks like the ratings game is forcing the hand of business channels and transforming the way business is reported.

Walk down a street from 1914

You'll experience the joy of a visual stroll down memory lane.

What's amazing about this set of black and white photographs is how the photographer captured them.

In Brooklyn, he shot a series to depict the street the way a person walking down the street would see it.

It's as if he knew that it would be a permanent record for posterity.

Back then, street photography had not been invented.

These photographs have been captured 50 meters apart. And the work involved in getting them would certainly have been stupendous.

Nothing was in auto mode.

He would have had to set up the tripod and expose the frame for the right amount of time to get it right.

And while some people would have been curious, most would not bother.

The shop signs, the clothes, the merchandising and the atmosphere make an unforgettable impression.

There is already a billboard up at a vantage point for Mobiloils.

In every era, advertising makes an appearance and establishes a beachhead.

Plastic had not been invented, so all the street signs are in metal and clamped to lamp posts or erected outside buildings.

Horse drawn carriages are parked along with some of the early automobiles - the transition phase.

Apart from shops selling cutlery, there's even an elevated train track.

But traffic jams were still a few decades away, thankfully.

It's a series where you can spend a lot of time poring over the little details.

Take a walk with your mouse!

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There are great books available on the internet.

But it's like the difference between reading a recipe and getting down to cooking.

Unless you make a speech in front of a real audience, you'll never know what it actually means.

What the authors tell you will all ring true, but only after you make the actual attempt.

And no, speaking to your reflection in the mirror does not count.

Does everyone need to learn to speak in public?

I would say yes.

It's about learning to put across your point of view in public on a subject or a field you are familiar with.

And when I faced an audience for the first time back in college, I understood the terror.

The extreme nervousness that comes washes across you when there's a sea of faces looking up at you expectantly.

You're torn between two extreme emotions - wanting to be somewhere else altogether and savoring the attention.

One of the first exercises we had was not to speak at all but simply establish eye-contact with the audience. Look directly at people.

It sounds simple but if you've seen the number of speakers who look straight ahead or up at the ceiling, you'll know that they're not connecting to the audience at all.

Good speakers are like actors - they know how to emphasise a point, tell a joke, vary the pitch and the pace of the talk.

Vinay Pushapakaran teaches solo entrepreneurs to do business and is an accomplished public speaker as well.

And he knows how these two tracks are connected at the hip.

You can read a book but there's nothing like practical experience to build capabilities.

Will you feel safe flying without security checks?

We grumble about it all the time.

In the 70s and 80s, flying was a breeze. You could land up at airports about 45 minutes before the flight took off, walk up to counters, check in baggage and be sitting in your seat a few minutes later.

Then, the security protocols became the norm, with hijacking and terrorism strikes in some countries.

Now, no one bats an eyelid having to report 3 hours in advance for an international flight.

We've factored it in and the chances are, we'll feel unsafe if we don't go through those checks.

Wearing masks, at least in public in places where it is not politically charged has again become common practice.

The world looked strangely at Japan before the pandemic where masks were fairly common.

Now, there's a study from MIT which claims that people driving autonomous cars slack off.

Driving demands complete concentration and we know that even at low speeds, we have to watch out for unpredictable idiots.

So, it is strange that people are willing to hand over their safety to an algorithm, even though they're told that they need to override the system in an emergency.

Question is, will we be qualified to do so in future?

As the tech gets better, our driving skills will deteriorate. A whole class of people will treat private vehicles like public transport!

And that isn't a comforting thought.

The reality TV experiment that fizzled

It's make-believe and like WWF. Where people know the fights are staged but like the format anyway.

But Reddit has real-life TV RPAN (Reddit Public Access Network) and users stream directly from their mobile phones (Update - the experiment has shut down) It was the closest thing to real-life TV that any channel or social medium has attempted.

Streams varied from people playing the guitar or the piano, and the top feed got as many as 20-25000 viewers watching live.

A young girl, a prodigy sat at the piano and effortlessly played for over an hour. She had legions of fans who tune in regularly to watch.

These sessions had the feel of sitting around a living room and enjoying the music.

The comments and awards floated up all the time from viewers who are impressed but she took a break only occasionally and flexed her fingers which had been flying over the keyboard minutes earlier.

There were sessions by blacksmiths making hammers in their foundry. Or 'Jhenga' players who stack up the pieces expertly. And potters demonstrating their skill.

Wonderful walks through city neighborhoods. I've watched a couple of them where the camera went into small residential localities, and you could soak in the atmosphere simply by watching.

And cats. How could there not be cats on the internet, effortlessly being cute?

Nothing is scripted. This is life as it happens. Without artful lighting and sometimes, one can even see cardboard boxes in the background or untidy shelves.

Think about it as TV where little happens - but it has a ready audience that laps it up.

Sadly, not anymore, since the network has been discontinued.

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During serial binge watches, we hit it all the time.

Titles set the foundations of motion graphics, but we're impatient to dive into the movie and we ignore the artistry.

They come in the way and no matter how exquisite, they're the appetizers to be dispensed with.

In the darkness of a movie theater, they set the mood for the film.

Early on film makers knew that apart from providing information about the film plot and the production crew, title design helped to ease audiences into the flow.

The example of West Side Story with the titles scrawled in chalk on a wooden texture make the point perfectly.

There's a rough-hewn beauty to the way the camera zooms into each of the credits. Unusually, it starts off with the film director's name and the stars come at the end of the sequence.

It is set in a lower middle-class neighborhood and the world of gang warfare that seems to have sliced through every single generation.

In today's world of layered combinations, the sequence may seem absurdly simple.

But watch the title sequence of the film 'The Untouchables'. A percussion track plays with extended shadows across lines of light.

It's only when the final reveal happens that we see the light was coming from a 3D projection of the letters in the title.

On a big screen, it was riveting.

Today's audience sees the titles on everything from mobile screen to laptops and TVs. And that dilutes the thought. Another defining aspect of the early movies is now gone.

Open Sesame - when a stock value went ballistic

Back in 1978, a distributor bought 3500 shares in Mewar Oil and General Mills Ltd which amounted to 2.8% of the value of the company at the time.

And then, it went into safekeeping or wherever it is that people keep shares.

This was the 'material' phase where every share document had to be physically maintained.

The demat phase was a major transition and several people have made fortunes from long-forgotten share certificates.

But this one was tricky.

Decades later, Mewar Oil Company changed its name to PI Industries, became a listed company and was doing brilliantly, financially.

The original shareholder, checking on the documents he had forgotten, unearthed these shares in 2015.

He applied to convert the shares into a demat form but the agency handling the account asked him to contact the company directly.

It turned out that these shares had been sold and transferred without their knowledge and they no longer owned shares in the new entity.

According to the original shareholders, their share based on the transfer would work out to Rs. 1448 crores, a stupendous return on investment.

But there's many a slip between the cup and the lip.

Everything stays in a state of suspended animation as the company tries to negotiate, the shareholder does not budge, and the statutory entities ponder the question.

Now, it remains to be seen who will blink first and who has the most to lose.

Tailgate the fast movers in stock markets

What options do small investors have?

Read up on articles about investing, create a portfolio that builds up a tidy nest egg over decades?

Or follow what movers and shakers in the market do? Take a look at how the major mutual funds invest and do that same thing at one-millionth of the scale.

The risks you take in investing are entirely up to you.

No one is going to stand in your way. But no one is going to come to your rescue either when things go wrong.

There was complete chaos in the stock market because a new set of players from Robinhood swung into action and upset the calculations of investors who had made a bet on Game Stop. They collectively took the price to stratospheric heights and left some large firms badly bruised.

Now, TikTokers are following another strategy.

They are betting on the investment strategy of the US Members of Congress. Tailgating them and buying into everything that they invest in.

It's smart because the reasoning is that the guys in government know what's happening and may even be early to the market.

The logic is sound but is it simply another 'strategy' for those who go by what the whales do?

Possibly. The small investors have no way of doing the research or understanding complex balance sheets. So they do the next best thing.

Invest like those who can.

Who thought outsiders who swipe to watch videos will upset the applecart of cozy arrangements and agreements?

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Cameras everywhere.

From traffic lights to apartment complexes to warehouses.

Recording movement 24/7. The eyes in the sky as well as on the ground.

Kids being monitored remotely, and exams conducted with cameras vigilantly recording every move and click of the mouse. Or surgeries monitored for insurance purposes.

It wasn't meant to be this way.

There are several origin stories about how it began.

Apparently, a group of scientists at Stanford grew tired of walking to the coffee machine and finding it empty.

One of them hooked up a camera and the other wrote a script to transmit the image to other members of the team periodically to check the level of coffee available.

From these humble origins, we've expanded what cameras can see, record and transmit anywhere in the world.

There are an estimated billion cameras now in use and that could be conservative. In addition, the cabling, the recording equipment and the motion detection cameras have slowly made their way up the value chain.

These markets barely existed about 2 decades ago.

The most surveilled cities in the world present an interesting picture.

Has it led to cities becoming safer? Or do people think they will eternally be watched and put it at the back of their minds and get on with life?

Right now, we don't know.

But the world's longest running webcam experiment goes back to 1927. One drop of bitumen drops every 8-9 years.

Talk about slow TV!

The foot soldiers of ecommerce

They hang around restaurants waiting to pick up food orders.

The red and orange t-shirts of the companies stand out.

Weaving through traffic, going the wrong way through roads, they land up at homes in double quick time.

The home delivery army has grown exponentially. For two of the largest players in India, Zomato and Swiggy, there are nearly 500,000 delivery personnel in the field.

A decade ago, the market didn't exist.

New processes have been put in place for recruitment, training and handling difficult customers.

At Amazon, work pace is set by algorithms. By calculating the distance workers can travel every minute, the number of things that have to be picked by machines and the tasks to be done by workers - it has been optimised down to the second.

The same thing has happened to ride sharing. The business model has to go against the tide. When there is heavy demand, there is heavy traffic as well. And that's exactly the time people turn to the apps.

To make things easy for customers, ecommerce, ride share and home delivery companies have to handle the complexity that stems from rising demand.

One of the hardest things to handle is the reducing time frame between orders and delivery.

As people get used to faster delivery in one category, they get impatient with delays in others.

That's impacting traffic on roads and driving up warehouse rents around cities. The hubs are here to ease distribution pressures.

And we'll have to watch how far the ripples spread as more orders roll in.

The evolution of the cloud messenger

Back in the 5th Century CE, when one of the greatest Indian authors Kalidasa composed the brilliant Meghaduta, or 'Cloud messenger', he meant the fluffy, white, shape-changing formations spreading lazily across the sky.

Pining for his beloved who lives far, far away, he asks a cloud to deliver a message of longing.

Today, he can compose a lyrical email. Or create a meme. Or even an emoji. Press 'send'. And messengers residing in 'clouds' will instantly swing into action.

Then, Kalidasa could not have estimated how long the message would take to travel the distance. Days or weeks. Or even if anything was lost in translation.

Today, he will instantly get a 'delivery report', a 'read report' and probably expect a response within the hour.

And if a reply isn't forthcoming, he will seriously worry about the state of the relationship.

The analogies of the past mean completely different things in a new age.

There's nothing poetic about what clouds mean today.

A search engine will fetch the latest offerings from Google, Microsoft and Amazon.

Poets waxing lyrical about the same subject would be consigned to page 100, or even lower down the pecking order.

The canopies in the sky, the unfurling of the seasons, or even the wonderful skyscapes are no longer relevant.

Yes, life has got much faster, streamlined and efficient.

The clouds in the sky aren't zipping by in a perpetual hurry. But the ones that dominate our existence are in a state of frenzy.

The poem Kalidasa wrote centuries ago is still revered. Unlike the billions of messages today that are forgotten just as soon as they are read.

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Did the movie's theme song play in your mind when you read the first line?

It should have because it's one of the most recalled tracks from movies.

Ennio Morricone had collaborated with Sergio Leone on several films. He came up with the title's opening to capture the coyote's high-pitched wail and then blended it into a track that goes in unpredictable directions.

In most themes, there is a set of opening bars that set the trend for the rest of the tune. But this one breaks the mould.

Even if you knew nothing about music, you would still be captivated by the way it plays out.

The album was on the top of charts for more than a year and it defined the genre of the 'Spaghetti Western' because it was films made about cowboys by Italians.

Here's some interesting trivia about the genre from Wikipedia:

The majority of the films in the Spaghetti Western genre were actually international co-productions between Italy and Spain, and sometimes France, West Germany, Britain, Portugal, Greece, Israel, Yugoslavia, or the United States. Over six hundred European Westerns were made between 1960 and 1978.

These movies were originally released in Italian or with Italian dubbing, but as most of the films featured multilingual casts and sound was post-synched, most "western all 'italiana" do not have an official dominant language.

But this theme music defined the genre.

And built a brand that has endured for decades

Digital is lousy at preserving history.

No one mourns the passing of the 1.4 MB floppy disk.

It stored a small amount of data and was quite complex to use.

But it contained a good slice of early software explorations - and all of that has disappeared.

Papyrus scrolls from over 5000 years ago still survive.

And here we are, just a few decades into the digital and internet revolution and the early phase is a dim memory.

In massive data centers, magnetic tape, not optical disks are the preferred storage option because they have a life of around 30 years.

So, in a hundred years from now, everything we're using today will probably be extinct.

Flash was the first to bring 2D animation and film into mainstream digital.

And Apple imperiously shut the door on it. When it dismissed Flash from its platform, all the other tech companies followed suit - and so did the later versions of browsers.

A recent article in CNBC mentions how the internet archive can no longer play the news around 9/11 that was stored in Flash. Practically none of the modern browsers allow Flash, even with a plug-in.

Granted, there may have been security issues. But it was one of the building blocks - and that is no longer accessible.

We're too busy with our latest shiny obsessions to notice.

And somewhere in the future, even the glass slabs we use 24/7 now may become a distant memory.

Truckers are today's Marlboro men

It's a hard life and someone's got to do it.

Truckers have it tough. They can be away from home for weeks.

Their steeds have 8-12 wheels, not legs.

Even with power steering and GPS, it's a life that grates and grinds along the unending rides.

Truck De India, A Hitchhiker's Guide to Hindustan is a great read.

The young author snags rides along with several truckers and gets to know them up close.

They are surprisingly open about the twists and turns that define their existence.

And generous to a city slicker whose entire life has been completely different from their own.

He just talks to them as they drive across highways, forests, ghat sections, naxal territories and corrupt officials.

There's an informal information exchange between drivers relying on each other to navigate certain stretches, apart from the instruments.

But it seems to be the same story across the world. In developed countries, the trucks are swankier and better equipped.

The long and lonely drives, however, don't change. And it's one of those professions with two completely different headlines.

How autonomous vehicles will dispense with the need for drivers.

The other headline - a perennial shortage of qualified drivers.

In India, there are thousands of drivers getting trained to drive in countries like Japan and Canada.

It's a job the locals don't want. And it provides immigrants a foothold into another life.

But it isn't easy. There's a reason the West was called wild!

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We've travelled on trains so often, we hardly think of the conceptual leap it took to make it a transportation option worldwide.

Car and cycle wheels are round and we don't think much of the turning radius required to make turns.

But wheels on a train run on parallel tracks.

So, how do they handle turns?

Cars and bikes can sweep across the road but trains are restricted

Won't one of the wheels move off-track? That would be disastrous.

Pay attention to the inner extension of the wheels on both sides.

Train and track engineers have made the wheels more like cones spinning on tracks.

As the train takes a turn, the inner wheel travels less and the outer wheel moves through a larger arc.

Held by the axle in the middle which allows flexibility when the train goes around a curve.

It can't be a right angle curve - but you've seen how tracks curve through a distance of a few hundred meters to accommodate the turns.

The other marvel would have been working out how the wheels switch tracks. It would have to rise above and then slip into the junction as every set of wheels right along the train shifts effortlessly but there is a grinding noise.

And we hear it every time we travel. It's so much a part of the 'normal' train sounds, we barely register it.

The romance of train travel is legendary.

But it was created by some innovative engineers who solved the problem so well, we've never had to rethink it.

What does 100% digital transformation look like?

No paper for any process?

All work done online? These percentages are highly confusing.

And some of the reports push this even further - where CEOs say that they've transformed about 30-40% and others claim that it is 70-80%.

How do these companies look? How do they function and how are the people who manage these companies so sure about the percentages?

Is there a way to break this down into a set of processes at a company and then see how far along the line they've travelled?

Even then, the parameters would be hard to nail down. At what stage is a manufacturing company digitally transformed? When it's billing is completely online?

Or when its manufacturing process is driven by robotics? Or when the sales and marketing are only done through digital media?

You see where this is going? There is a digital component to what we do but how much of it is a transformation is hard to measure. Or even hazard a guess.

In a sense, it's like the other favorite these days - smart cities! Talk to 100 people and you'll get 120 definitions.

We've all been digitally transforming since the mainframes arrived in the 60s. Back then, it touched far fewer people and organizations.

Now, it's as if we're permanently in some kind of digital environment for a large part of our waking hours.

Is individual transformation different from the sum total of transformation at a company?

We invent these glib phrases and then fail to define it is simple and clear terms.

Why is memorabilia valuable?

The smashed cars from Mad Max Fury Road are being auctioned off shortly.

They may not look anything like the pictures shown.

But people who found the film resonated with them may want a part of the action if they can afford it.

They're great conversation pieces, for sure.

All the vehicles in the film were the products of fevered imagination - none of them very safe or even road-worthy.

But you can re-live the film sequences and show off a piece of movie history.

There's something about success that seems to spawn this feeling.

People want to be a part of grand projects that have made an impact. The costume from a blockbuster. The light saber from Star Wars.

That is when the merchandising masters realised the infinite potential for films to make money far beyond the screen. And that began a wave of everything from lines of toys, video games to all kinds of knick-knacks that generated f or decades after box office receipts.

We have this love for anything touched by greatness.

And this sense about long-lost glory as well. The ruins of the Colosseum in Rome. Or walking next to the Sphinx and the pyramids in Egypt.

Or our own Taj Mahal. A mausoleum as a labor of love. Two ironies in the same breath.

It doesn't matter if the memories are our own or something we can identify with.

Otherwise, what explains the interest in the ruins of vehicles which we can see every time we drive past automobile scrapyards?

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Plot points in the popular serials are quite instructive.

You realise everyone has to balance books, including criminals.

The difference is that taxmen go after legitimate businesses to collect their dues while police dig into criminal enterprises.

In the series Animal Kingdom on Netflix, the lady running the show has an elaborate set of businesses through which money is 'washed.'

And from the detailing, it's highly complex.

Taking over businesses where cash is king - like laundromats, car washes and bowling alleys. Then slipping the illegal proceeds into the chain and making sure the accounting is perfectly legal and above board - because they shouldn't come on the radar of the regular tax authorities in addition to the police.

Buying up properties with cash, keeping low-cost renters and getting higher receipts from them.

While crime films are the craze, the accounts are the carpet under which the cash is swept. There's no drama in drawing 20 money transfer receipts a day, collecting rent and then entering a higher receipt in the books and so on.

This was explored in the series Breaking Bad as well, when the flow of money gets too large to be hidden away in vaults and there's no way it can be legally spent without attracting attention.

Drawing up legal agreements to cover illegal ownership. Which involves the setting up of shell companies that cannot be traced.

The way tax havens get around scrutiny is that all the paperwork remains as paperwork. There's no online repository and the conversion is eternally 'in progress.'

Laundered money should tell no tales - because the handcuffs are just a wrong move away.

The tapeworm queues at airports

Like Nokia's famous 'snake' game that grew progressively longer on the small black and white screens, the queues at the security check-ins have grown.

Web check-in now makes it easy to get a boarding card but now, every little additional convenience has transformed into a revenue generation point.

And airline bookings are getting to be like telecom bills - complex and hard to decipher.

At the Bangalore airport, getting past the security is a marathon. Stripping down every little metal bit, from belts to purses.

The security guy insists that you put in only one article per tray for automatic scanning, so even if you only have one laptop bag and a small suitcase, you have to put them into three or four trays.

Add another one for shoes and belts.

The X-rays seem to be automated, and any suspicious objects are flagged and sent down another line.

And the humans there have become the bottleneck.

In the space of ten minutes of waiting for the suitcase, passengers had to surrender batteries, some unknown metal parts that looked vaguely threatening, shampoos and open up jewelry boxes - anything metallic was immediately suspicious.

Maybe the systems have improved but what we're seeing is the degradation of the travel experience.

Booking tickets has become easier. Travel times to airports has mushroomed. You can check-in faster at the automated counters. And then slow down at security.

Then, when flights get delayed, the chairs in the post check-in area are packed.

Touch. No touch. Scans and beeps. Hostesses wearing PPE.

And with passengers masked and sanitised, it's a long time before air travel will feel anything like normal again.

Site visitor analytics is more fragmented than you'd expect.

Google Analytics is right up there going by the data.

But a couple of guys trying to build an alternative are finding holes in coverage.

Tech savvy audiences aren't granting Google the access it requires. And on some sites, its over 50%

The tension between providing access and being compensated for it is a flash point.

While Google builds up huge troves of data on usage, most of it is hidden behind the company's walls.

This one-way traffic is not an advantage for those who rely on the data to make important decisions, or even use it to determine their own ranking.

There are some surprising statistics on the blocks - 68% of laptop and desktop users, 88% of Firefox users and 82% of Linux users.

Now, the universe of Firefox and Linux users in comparison to Chrome may be small but this is a significant chunk. And it could be skewing the drift of the data.

So, a competitor to Google Analytics is long overdue but it isn't going to be easy to execute or stay in the race.

Google has a lead built over decades of watching entire categories and sectors grow. It knows what people are searching for.

But a pure play analytics company won't have access to search data.

Fragmentation is good and bad. Good because it dilutes the power of the major player and bad because a lot more work is involved in determining what the visitor count is.

What's your take?

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Never? Or when you've decided the effort is not worth it?

Can both be true?

The sunk cost fallacy is about persisting with something simply because you're invested in it. Either in terms of time or money.

The sunk cost fallacy becomes perseverance when it succeeds. Two concepts that are the polar opposite of each other transition perfectly from one to the other.

Evidence can be produced to support both concepts. And those arguing for and against will be right as well. It depends entirely on what you believe and how your motivational levels operate.

mRNA vaccines were a sunk cost fallacy until the pandemic hit. Then, it became a story of perseverance.

Neeraj Chopra as a kid in Punjab throwing a javelin for years with some success along the way could have been a sunk cost fallacy story. Until Gold at the Tokyo Olympics made that the perseverance story.

Nassim Taleb's Black Swan concept for years was the perfect example of sunk cost fallacy. He kept losing money in the stock market in the strong belief that a crash was certain.

And in a single day, when the markets crashed, he made an insane amount of money. That changed everything.

He became a celebrated author, analyst and his words took on an Oracle-like status.

In a sense, it's like proverbs contradicting themselves. An Idle mind is the Devil's workshop is completely at odds with 'Invest a few moments in thinking. It will pay good interest'.

Which side are you leaning towards?

Oil companies want to change their stripes

If the world moves to renewable energy, what happens to the oil giants?

You don't need to worry about them.

They're already making investments in renewables quietly, away from the spotlight.

There's a revealing fact in the article.

OPEC projected that electrical vehicles would be 1% of the world's sales by 2040. But that projection came to pass in 2016.

Now GM and Ford have said they will have an all-electric vehicle lineup by 2035.

That gives the oil companies slightly over a decade to get their act right and prepare for a dip in the overall oil market.

Not much is going to change right away. Coal companies still run a lot of the power plants in the world.

Change is not easy - especially at this scale. So, the changes will be apparent in a few decades from now.

Petrol and diesel vehicles will not go away. In fact, the ones that survive will be far more efficient and the network of fuel stations may reduce over time.

But people are slow to change. If you did a poll of people looking at electric vehicles as their next purchase, the figure would be bigger than it was a decade ago.

So, oil companies may simply swap some of their fuel stations and change them into electric charging stations.

How soon that happens remains to be seen.

Will online video game restrictions work?

China has mandated that children below the age of 18 can only play online games for a total of 3 hours on weekends - one hour a day.

The platforms have to identify logins, ensure that the directives are followed and maintain records.

Will it work?

What prevents children from persuading their parents to login and get over the restriction?

Or use it as a bargaining chip for spending more time studying?

Question is whether this will result in better behavior or reduce the time spent playing games.

Both seem remote.

Children who already spend large amounts of time will not change tracks. Instead, they may switch to offline options.

Services to prevent tracking will find a fresh market. It won't be obvious but like India's alcohol advertising, no one is fooled with brands selling glasses and CD covers.

The problem is real. There are too many children caught in the web and the addictive pursuit of online gaming.

The games themselves have been designed to keep the gamers hooked.

So, a forced separation will result in unpredictable effects.

When children have too much time on their hands and little to do, the hope is that they will take to outdoor sports and make new friends.

That won't happen overnight.

And parents having to deal with a rebellious child at home because the gaming tap has been turned off may find parenting gets tricky.

Was it better to have them hooked to games rather than stalk around the house in a surly mood?

That may be the inspiration for a whole new game!

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There's a slice of life permanently devoted to paying back.

For the car, the house, the TV, the fridge and more.

And rents are the ones that drill big holes in monthly budgets.

Sweden has one of the biggest government rent control programs running since World War 2.

The objective was that the middle class and people earning less should not be priced out of the best neighborhoods. And with all the sincerity in implementation, there's a 9 year waiting list to get into a government contract that lasts for life.

Rent or buy is the eternal question and there are no easy answers.

Desirable housing close to city centers and schools, offices and entertainment gets lapped up by people who can afford to invest in multiple properties and choose exactly which part of the world they want to be in at a particular time.

For the rest, which probably is 90% of the world's population, it's a toss-up between getting a decent house in a livable neighborhood.

The EMI life allowed a larger set of people to advance their dreams - but it came at a price. It took away flexibility and freedom of choice.

Especially with big-ticket purchases like homes, a 15-to-20-year lock-in is guaranteed.

Even a couple of decades ago, education was nowhere near as expensive as it is today. And students are well into middle age by the time they pay back loans. And then embark on the housing loan EMI!

The Equated Monthly Instalment has become Eternally Maddening Indebtedness!

Is the burger falling out of favour?

According to the Wall Street Journal, millennials may have had their fill.

There seems to be a drop in the number of burgers they consume.

McDonald's is still growing overall but they shut down nearly 150 outlets in the US last year.

This can be sliced and examined in several ways but some fast food brands are running in the slow lane.

Millennials have grown up with the healthy food movement ringing in their ears and it was bound to have an effect.

McDonalds is experimenting with getting more people in for breakfasts and the $36 billion they make every year still allows ample elbow room for experiment.

It's a good time to consider how longstanding brands stay in 'cruise mode'

At some point all of us tire of a food item we have too much of.

It's a simple matter to make less of something at home but when entire supply chains are configured down to the smallest spice ingredient, it may lead to earthquakes.

We change brands at times simply because we want a 'change'. Not because we're unhappy with the existing experience but we want a new one.

Even if it means smelling a little different.

And with the hundreds of D2C brands now available, customers are moving out of their loyalty lock-ins.

This may be a small shift in the scheme of things, but it can splinter quickly if a generation decides that burgers are no longer 'comfort food.'

No escaping the Antakshri in India

It's a family activity that makes young people roll their eyes.

And the older ones bring out their singing voices from the deep freeze.

Songs sung off key, off lyrics, off the beat but with gusto.

At marriages and family gatherings, impromptu teams are assembled in seconds.

The ones with an encyclopedic knowledge of old Hindi film songs are in great demand.

They are the ones who come to the rescue when tricky ending of songs with the hard 'Th' and hard "Dh' are the starting point for the next song.

Wikipedia states the the Anatakshri has been around since the days of Ramayana. It comes from Anth (last) and Akshar (Alphabet) and at the time, it was uses to create a chain of narration of slokhas.

This activity has transcended time.

Today, it's only about film songs and several group trips have survived bad singing and raucous voices.

The songs are quite easy to come up with in the early stages of the game. As the teams exhaust all the popular ones, it gets progressively tougher.

There is a timer for the rival team to respond, but this is often like street cricket rules. The elders in the family could be impervious to time and consult each other - they don't like losing to the younger ones.

At one point, this was one of the most-watched programs on TV as well. But while it survives at family functions, it may be losing its charm

But that's debatable, especially for an activity that has survived thousands of years.

Do you have a cringy Antakshri story from your family?

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And to top it off, the company he stole from offered him a job.

As head of security, no less.

It was a heist like no other. Crypto valued at over $600 million was siphoned from one of the exchanges.

This is where things get interesting.

Unlike robberies in the real world, where there are 'fences' to help launder the ill-gotten riches, crypto is harder to launder.

When the money is transferred out, the exchange can see where it's gone. Much harder to make the money vanish.

The next day after the money went missing, the exchange put out a request for the person involved to return the money.

Strangely enough, he did. Turns out that he was angry that the exchange had not patched the security holes he had pointed out.

It was one of those obscure things that hackers seem to specialise in - find ways to enter virtual entry points few people have a clue about.

The transfer created an avalanche of media attention because of the sum involved and that made the hacker nervous.

He got in touch with the crypto exchange and in series of tranches, returned most of the money.

Then, they offered him a reward of $500,000 for being a nice guy. That's of course a far cry from $600 million. But this was legit money.

And to top it all off they've made a job offer, since they think that he's probably the best one to guard the crown jewels.

How's that for unusual job applications? These crypto stories get weirder all the time.

Locking customers in

How often do you empty your Promotions tab on Gmail?

Once a week? Or a month? Whenever you remember?

Companies are looking to lock in customers through passive means.

I used to glance at the Promotions tab to see if the emails were piling up and every week or so, select all emails and delete.

Then, I found that even when I selected all the emails about 50 would not be deleted unless I did it again.

Another glitch was that the promotions tab notification would show only 50 emails but when you opened the tab, there were more than 300 unread emails.

Yahoo Mail doesn't like you downloading emails to a desktop client.

I found that the sync was blocked and I had to login to the site.

And that meant showing ads as long as I stayed logged in.

Though Yahoo now gives you 1 TB and you probably will take decades, if not years to fill it all up.

And Gmail suggests you archive emails, instead of deleting them altogether.

Playing on your fear of deleting some important email that's gone forever.

Somehow, that works.

Occasionally, driven by a burst of spring-cleaning enthusiasm, I would go and look for old emails with large attachments and then delete them one by one.

But its tedious and Gmail knows it.

Laziness is the best way to get compliant customers to cough up money year after year.

So far, however, I've kept it down to less than 50% below the limit. One of life's satisfying cheap thrills.

What's yours?

Looted Samsung TVs don't work.

It happened in South Africa

During the recent riots, there were break-ins at major showrooms and TVs were looted.

Samsung has built an anti-theft module into the TVs, so they are disabled remotely.

The technology now comes pre-loaded on all Samsung products.

It's one way the company supports its retail network because if the TVs don't work, the motivation to steal them drops dramatically.

Another line has been drawn by compulsion between buying a product and having control over it.

In this case, it works in the customer's favor. But there could be a situation where programs and channels can be blocked off based on the commercial arrangements between the TV manufacturer and broadcasters.

Remember the infamous Blu-Ray DVDs that were region specific and would not play on normal DVD players?

All of this starts with good intentions and requirements. But then, the connections create new opportunities as well.

Samsung's Smart TVs are probably the biggest TV ad network service providers in the world. But that fact is not given too much prominence because it could have negative effects.

This is promoted only through business channels and generates good revenues for Samsung.

Smart TVs were only supposed to make viewing smarter for consumers and not become an information collection point or used for customer targeting.

The moment there's 2-way traffic and a network, the game changes. IoT will not be a boon just for customers. As usual, other market dynamics will come into play.

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Before Windows 95 was launched, the earlier versions - Windows 2 & 3 already had a base of over 50 million users.

Back in the early 90s, that was huge.

And the worry was that a complete change would help some users but make it worse for millions.

Finding what people would wrestle with was the problem.

Today, we look at files and folders and they seem so basic, it's hard to believe that people needed to be told how to navigate to one or the other.

The two pane view confused people because they could not understand how folders could exist within other folders.

That's where the difference between files and cabinets in the real world breaks down.

Hierarchy was unknown. So, the concept of drilling down to the level of the file took several iterations for people to understand.

The 'drag and drop' which we use almost without thinking today was hard to teach.

People had to click, hold and drag one icon into another one.

Today, it looks laughably simple.

But the first ever interaction of holding the mouse and controlling the cursor took a couple of sessions.

Hand-eye co-ordination and discovering the speed at which the cursor would move was comical to begin with.

Today, we think nothing of swiping between screens, zipping up files and attaching them to emails.

But back then, it was like UX 101

The Start Button, the Find icon and the Help Icon had callouts when the mouse moved over them.

It was that basic!

Cracks in the brand image

The ads ooze luxury.

The showrooms look futuristic.

But the salespeople fall short. It's the nightmare of brand managers.

Several aspects of the brand experience cannot be controlled beyond a point.

The more expensive a product, the higher the expectations are.

In a sense, the online experience is confined to what customers see on the website. How smoothly the transaction proceeds from payment to delivery defines the brand experience for most customers.

None of know what 'Amazon' looks like. It's confined to the website and the package that arrives on the doorstep.

But Bose is different. They retail high end audio speakers and have built an image of exclusivity.

This is an actual experience from a customer, someone I know who has a taste for good music and is particular about what he plays it on.

A few years ago, he said, the salespeople were approachable, knowledgeable and knew the product line down to the subtle differences. Which recreates the aura around the brand and keeps it on a pedestal.

Recently, he walked in to buy another product from Bose he had checked out online. The salespeople had only a cursory interest and practically no knowledge about the differences between one speaker lineup and the other one.

Worse, one of them tried to foist what he thought would be the best one.

This is how brand images are destroyed - at the last point in the chain where conversion should happen.

Instead, a lack of product training and uninterested salespeople dealing with customers completely devalues brand perceptions.

Mealtime special effects

It's roasted over a flame directly and ready to eat in a few seconds.

Or swells when deep-fried in oil.

But the varieties and the recipes of this simple, dried in the sun lunch and dinner accompaniment are culinary art.

It is still a small-scale industry because it has not yielded to mechanization. The 'dried in the sun' papad retains some moisture, and that is essential.

The sun does its magic when each papad is put out to dry in hot sunlight and returned each day a little drier than the previous day.

Since the market for papads in India is huge, it provides employment to millions of women who are engaged in making the dough, flattening it, drying it and packaging it.

The large papad brands are essentially aggregators who have built a deep distribution chain.

But the varieties of Indian papad and their consumption varies by states which are a few hundred kilometers apart.

The Kerala pappadum swells when deep fried and is light and flaky. The Tamil Nadu appalam from the neighboring state stays flat and usually comes in much larger sizes.

The dough that goes into making papads is also according to the spices and the food influences of the region.

Lijjat, made by a co-operative organisation of women is one of the biggest brands in the country - and they make 14 varieties for the different regions they cater to.

The collective crunch of papads cracking is the sound effect you will hear at mealtimes in homes across the country every day.

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Be careful about what you listen to first thing in the morning

We all experience this from time to time

You hear a tune playing and then, it loops in your head all day.

It may even be something you don't particularly like.

But you're stuck with it.

Certain riffs that have an ability to burrow deep. And that's the focus of a new commercial from Spotify.

Two guys walk down a college classroom corridor.

One asks the other guy's opinion about a song from the playlist. He plays the song.

They walk past a classroom where the professor is teaching complex physics or maths - the blackboard is full of formulas.

And the professor, in a completely natural burst of enthusiasm, sings the next two lines of the song out loud. Then stops, realising he's facing a group of stony-faced youngsters.

Perfect timing and casting.

We do this all the time. When a song we know plays and we listen to a few bars, we have to complete the next few lines in our head. Or, if we lose ourselves in the moment, sing it out loud.

Its one thing getting stuck with a repetitive track early in the morning. They are harmless to begin with but the 'repeat' mode is jarring.

It's a bit like beating hiccups. Have your alternative addictive playlist handy. And hope your mind smoothly switches tracks.

How far TV has come in 50 years

In the 70s in India, it was barely available, except to Indians in Delhi.

Even that was for a few hours a day in the evening. One channel and the so-called 'popular' programs formed an even tinier slice of the schedule.

Once a week, for half an hour, there were film songs played. It had the kind of viewership channels today can't replicate. The scarcity economy at work.

Newsreaders were stiff and formal, especially the ones reading the English news. They barely cracked a smile and every headline was pronounced in grave tones, as if the fate of the country hung in the balance.

They would be horrified at what TV news has become - debates and shouting matches on every channel.

The media story that changed TV in India was the staging of the Asian Games in 1982 and the state broadcaster Doordarshan transmitting for 8 hours a day in colour.

People rushed out to buy TVs because there was something to watch. Since then, the satellite revolution in the 90s and the internet have permanently changed the medium.

Today, homes have hundreds of channels and multiple remotes strewn casually on the sofas. As people switch between the satellite channels and OTT streams.

But the feeling lingers. That the packaging of TV programs has got much better than the programs themselves.

The optics of politics, stardom and projections have eclipsed the main show.

And that's where change needs to happen.

But no one really cares as long as the TRPs keep delivering hits to skyrocket media company valuations.

Ola is betting the world will want one

It's being touted as a 2-wheeler revolution starting in India.

It comes from an outsider who first locked horns with another global ride sharing giant.

Who came off better there is debatable, but Ola has managed to pull off something big in another avatar.

The launch film starts off like an eco-commercial.

Then, like all films do these days through a wide drone shot, it zooms to the roof of the factory set up in a pristine, scenic location.

On the roof is the founder, Bhavish Aggarwal.

And he goes on to list the multiple features that the bike has built, from the ground up.

Apart from the mechanical ones, the 7-inch display facing the rider is definitely a first.

And it provides everything from maps to music. With speakers built in.

The bike can sound exactly as you want it to, so personalization is much like your mobile phone themes.

And no keys. It senses the owner as he or she walks up to the vehicle and calls you by name. When you get off the scooter and walk away, the vehicle locks itself.

One of the biggest problems with electric scooters was the perception that they cannot be compared to their mechanical cousins. Not in terms of power or styling.

Maybe that's still some years away but the OLA S1 is certainly a contender in the future two-wheeler sweepstakes.

Bhavish has his eyes on the world market - and gigantic plans.

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MacKenzie Scott was married to Jeff Bezos.

And her divorce gave her a windfall of billions of dollars.

She's handing it out liberally to charities and organisations doing stellar public work.

Most of the time, they struggle to raise funds. So, this is clearly a gift of gigantic proportions.

An article in Bloomberg analysed the sectors to which she has provided money.

Years from now, we'll see the long-term effects.

It's like an experiment to determine if money will make a difference to lesser privileged sections and sectors that struggled to survive.

There has never been a charity spike quite like this one.

This charitable handout is breathtaking because nothing on this scale has ever been attempted. By providing money to organisations that work towards racial equality, and those that create the infrastructure for philanthropy, change is foretold.

The speed with which the money has been doled out and that they were given to organisations who had not pleaded for it is remarkable.

There are reports of the emails from her organisation lying unopened or not acted upon because the recipients thought it was spam.

In about a decade from now, this should make for an interesting case study. The effect the money had will percolate through society and hopefully, some differences should show up.

No one would have believed that a divorce would become the fulcrum around which charity would be redefined.

The social media Olympics

The Tokyo Olympics almost didn't happen.

And athletes would have found it strange to walk into massive empty stadiums after slogging for years to get to the pinnacle.

The feedback from social media was their lifeline.

Social media accounts of the Olympians registered steep increases because they documented life within the village - not normally accessible to outsiders.

And athletes got just as good at it as some of the 'influencers' have.

Most mainline media reports are about records broken and the medals tally.

But it's always the human interest stories that hold interest and get shared.

Like that of Hansle Parchment from Jamaica, who almost didn't get to compete in the 110 meters hurdles final because he boarded the wrong bus to the stadium.

Lost in the music playing on his headphones, he didn't register the instructions.

When he reached the wrong stadium, he had little hope of making it on time. Not knowing the local language or the geography.

Luckily for him, a resourceful Olympics games volunteer arranged a taxi and gave him money to get to the right one and he made it on time.

He went on to win the Gold, but the story did not end there.

He located the volunteer, paid her back and shot a selfie with her that went up on his Instagram account.

And that got picked up by mainline media - sort of a reverse flip from old times.

When journalists find stories and break them.

The 'Lilliputization' of National Geographic

The famed yellow frame has been imprinted into our minds.

We grew up flipping through its hallowed pages.

Most of the issues we picked up were on street shops and they were months or years old.

It didn't matter.

We were instantly transported to exotic lands, strange people and wildlife we could almost touch.

It was the magazine devoured in libraries and placed out of reach unless you knew librarians well.

The glossy paper and the lustre of the photos was missing in the other magazines that existed then.

It was as if Natgeo was printed and published on another planet.

A photographer who got a commission from Natgeo could talk about it for decades.

It was the ultimate professional pinnacle.

On Instagram, the main Natgeo account has over 178 million followers.

It's one of the accounts that Instagram recommends as soon as you sign up and the photos appear in your feed almost immediately.

But this is where its power gets diluted and flattened.

Shorn of the exclusive environment of the magazine that kept it on a pedestal for years, it competes with talented amateurs and product ads that cut into the feed.

Unfortunately, the days of the double spread and glossy posters mounted in living rooms are over.

It must bug the editors that a century old magazine with a treasure trove of historical material has to compete with trigger happy influencers for attention.

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It's not a trick question.

Or maybe it should be phrased another way.

Smiles can be an integral part of power play.

But they're rarely, if ever, spoken about in that context

It's hard to wear a tough expression in response to a smile.

And they're often the preamble to conversations. Setting up the stage, as it were for a dialogue.

In social situations, from networking to parties, the ones willing to talk convey 'approachability' quite easily, signaled by a smile. Breaking the barrier of resistance.

The ones whose faces seem to have the sign 'Forbidden Zone' imprinted on their expressions have a tough time getting through.

It may work as a tactic, when power hierarchies have to be established. But others in the room can play the same game as well, leading to deadlock.

People who smile easily aren't pushovers. That's a misconception and they have understood that smiles dissolve walls. That helps them exercise power without showing it at all.

Observe power dynamics at play. The ones who extract concessions may hold on to their positions, but they manage to be relatable and accommodative as well. And that includes toning down tensions, getting people to talk to each other and diffusing the atmosphere with a well-timed joke or observation.

We tend to think of smiles as pleasantries, used for polite conversations. But negotiating with smiles is a power tactic where far more is extracted than people are willing to give.

Does that sound like a contradiction?

Growing in the pandemic

A couple bought two acres of farmland to grow food without any pesticides or chemicals.

In a few years, they grew more than they could consume and looked to market the produce.

And the pandemic helped them get a toe into households who wanted vegetables home delivered.

My Harvest has been a step-by-step process, like several other companies responding to the disruption caused by the pandemic

The trial by fire is managing supplies and logistics against companies having deeper pockets and better distribution.

So, they worked on the personalised service route.

Ordering is through Google forms and the vegetables and fruits change from week to week.

They added grain and millets with more farmers cultivating their lands the same way.

There's 'Mappilai' rice, a rich dark grain that's perfect for 'congee' along with a tangy chutney or pickle. Remarkably nutritious and light on the stomach.

And the young founder posts everything from news about farmers on the network to a celebration in the village to the experiments they are conducting with the crops to improve yields and quality.

Now, they've started a recycling project and removed plastic almost completely from the chain. Vegetables are packed in a cloth bag and exchanged every week with a fresh order.

The bags have a personalised pin that identifies customers, and the shopping bags act as both branding and symbolise how they're being sustainable.

They have a core of less than 1000 customers a week now. But wait for a few years and they could be a significant force for good.

Make yourself useful

It starts early in childhood.

At some point or the other, everyone has heard it.

Maybe when sitting idly at home.

Or in class looking out of the window.

Even during a coffee break at work.

The problem is that usefulness is a single dimension - and refers to just one thing. Are you doing something to score more marks or make money for the company?

Anything outside of that is seen as useless.

Yet, the profound changes and the world we live in today has come about as a result of 'useless' work done decades or centuries ago.

By people who never looked for riches but were inquisitive and curious.

About mathematics, physics, chemistry or even experimenting with the unknown.

There are fewer places doing this today.

When there's no visible chance of 'returns' on the horizon, most people melt away.

Einstein knew exactly how he was able to work things out - by standing on the shoulders of giants.

But the giants are lost in the mists of history.

Marconi is credited with inventing radio. But he was simply applying the 'useless' knowledge Professor Clerk Maxwell carried out remote calculations in the fields of magnetism and electricity.

That work lay unheralded for over a decade. Until Heinrich Hertz, working in a lab in Berlin, demonstrated how electromagnetic waves carried wireless signals. Marconi simply put 2 and 2 together and got both - fame and an everlasting credit in history.

Hard to believe?

Check out the article published in Harper's Bazaar - in 1939!

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Fuji film was a distant second to Kodak in the consumer market.

But then, the market flipped. Smartphones took over from cameras and removed the need for film altogether. And it went downhill for market leaders from there.

Kodak slipped away into bankruptcy and the theory was that the company lost market share when people stopped buying cameras and film which led to the decline.

However, the real story is far more nuanced.

Fuji has stayed out of trouble and done exceedingly well

How?

Here are the broad reasons. Kodak originally sold cameras on the Gillette razor model. They lost money on the cameras but made profits when people came back to develop films and photos.

They made an early entry into digital cameras but continued losing money on every sale. And for a while, it looked as if customers would shift to ordering albums and photos online.

The prediction was that people would still want to retain hard copies of their photos and remote ordering would become the norm.

Kodak made all the investments there after selling off their healthcare film division for $2. 3 billion. When the market lost steam with a fundamental change in customer behavior, that proved to be a costly mistake.

Fuji did exactly the opposite and scaled the healthcare film products. Along with cosmetics.

It's a fascinating story of two competitors in the same business making different business decisions.

Kodak sank. Fuji soared.

How well stocked is your Kindle library?

Even if it has more books than bookshelves at home (and not those Zoom backgrounds), there's no way for people to gauge your interests.

Since it was launched in 2007, ebooks have become part of the reading landscape.

However, it will be interesting to see how things play out over the next few decades.

As home libraries fade and most people are content to show off their multi-monitor displays, or the game and movie rooms

Sad that the Kindle library is out of bounds. Unless you set up a family link and loan out books to other members of your family, or friends circle.

When the book is lent out, it disappears from your library. And the person you've lent it to has 2 weeks to finish reading it.

It's a pale version of happenstance in real life.

In bookstores, finding a person who liked the same obscure author was a great opportunity to strike up a conversation. And things would flow from there.

If you were reading a book on a train, or a flight, the book was a conversation starter. But the Kindle holds its secrets close.

I'm not sure if reading habits have changed. Navigating the Kindle reader on a phone is a little easier for short dives into a book.

But the same problems with staying on track and piling up unread books on the shelf continue.

Somehow, you don't want to miss out.

It's like ordering more than necessary at restaurants.

However, when it comes to reading, nothing is wasted.

Even the trucks at Glenfiddich 'drink' the whiskey

Talk about factories that let nothing go waste.

The factory distilling Glenfiddich makes biogas from the alcohol waste. And that powers the trucks.

Sounds like a great idea.

For one thing, they cut down on the costs of fuel because they produce it from their own waste.

And any money saved goes to the bottom line.

Apparently, it's great for the environment as well, with a 95% cut in the CO2 generated.

What has started at Glenfiddich could easily be implemented at other factories producing alcohol - in India, the government plans to mix 20% ethanol with petrol to reduce emissions and costs by 2025.

The previous target was to make this happen by 2030, so they are stepping on the accelerator.

But the ripple effects will be felt in the sugar markets worldwide. India will cut down on the export of sugar to reach this goal and that is likely to increase the cost of sugar for many countries.

The diversion to making ethanol will take 6 million tons of sugar out of the market.

It demonstrates how closely the supply chains across countries are interlocked and any major changes have a completely unpredictable outcome.

All things considered, this is the time when the phrase 'One for the road' makes complete sense!

And in a good way.

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The theory, for sure. Not the practice.

Time and again, we've seen people take outsize risks without a second thought.

And others who wait for the perfect opportunity to come along and it never does.

There are those who take on physical risks - speeding, climbing mountains, dropping off bridges in a bungee jump. Or the affluent ones by skydiving.

Mental risk-taking is another thing altogether.

Entrepreneurs are drawn to the idea of bringing about big changes - and the lure is so strong, they almost can't help themselves. They'll conceive and execute plans in school and college, even when they turn out to be disastrous. But they're learning from every botched experiment.

They'll max out their credit cards, hit up friends and family for funds and do everything required to float their dream company.

But the vast majority of us can't conceive of such behavior.

When we build up a corpus, we'll strive to make it bigger, not bet it on something unpredictable. That's what separates the money makers from the savers.

The way they define risk.

And no matter how favorable the odds, you'll never be able to sway the minds of people who already have a fixed idea. And even they may not be aware of it.

The careful ones stick to the mutual funds and post office debentures. Because that's the level of risk most of us can tolerate.

But there are also the ones who become prey. Taking risks with investing in dubious financial schemes in the hope of getting high returns - and ending up with huge losses.

The appetite for risk is hard to determine. And it shapes the entrepreneurial gene.

The painful job of social media writers

Good memes are easy to read but hard to write.

Basically, it's variations on the same theme.

We respond to the same stimulus much like the doctor testing reflexes with a hammer.

Hit the right spot on the knee lightly and the leg swings out involuntarily.

Writers managing prominent social media profiles have to be regular, interesting and come up with new ways to say the same old things.

If it is a vacation, there are a set of headlines to fall back on - 'So-and-so's Mauritius vacation gives couple goals for...' or

Nothing negative or even slightly controversial. Unless that's the intention.

The monthly gossip film mag or 'lifestyle' magazines had time to file stories and dig up interesting bits. Or more often than not, make things up. Stars and celebs have the same lives everyone else does.

They're just in front of a lens more often.

The daily treadmill makes it hard to keep up the pretense.

A few hundred likes can be scored with an announcement of a new diet plan - or fitness video.

But how can it be sustained it for days, weeks and months?

Tanned and toned bodies are good to go. When it becomes a procession on a social media feed, even the smallest deviation provides room for sly digs and comments.

Which sets off a thousandwala of jibes.

In the celebrity PR machine, staying the course has become fraught with uncertainty.

The inaccessible ones using mystique and appearing only a couple of times a year may have a better chance of standing out.

And writers won't have to reheat decade old recipes.

Liquid gold grows in forests

It's not used to make any furniture, of course.

The economics don't make sense, even for the rich.

Every kilo of agarwood costs over $100,000 - and its already on an endangered list.

What comes from it is a heavenly fragrance - which is the base for some of the world's exotic high-priced perfume brands.

Nothing about the wood is simple.

It comes from the Aquilaria tree, which is not intrinsically valuable. But that's just the beginning. Grazing animals and insects can bruise the tree and some, but not all trees are invaded by a type of fungus. To fight off the fungus, the tree secretes a liquid and over years, this creates the wonderful aroma.

Finding these trees is an art in itself because they don't look different on the outside. Unless they are chopped and the tell-tale stains are found inside, the tree is not valuable.

The story of how the oud oil is extracted makes for fascinating viewing. One liter of the aged oil costs over $80,000.

Even the leftover wood chips are sold as incense and the aroma lingers in rooms, 2-3 hours later.

The tragedy is that less than 2% of it is now available in the wild and involves several expeditions that last for several days to find the trees.

And nature is in no hurry to replenish the stocks.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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At Ivy league universities and global company workplaces, they're the golden wall.

And access means crossing over to a higher level of existence.

At least, that's the myth.

The Atlantic magazine feature describes how the meritocracy we have built leads to an endless competitive cycle.

The day a child is born, the hunt for a school starts in India. It's probably several times the pressure that parents in the US have to deal with.

The school tag, the activity tag, the extra-curricular tag, the college tag are all progressively aspirational to cross over to a club with limited capacity.

The old boys 'network built defines the career trajectory.

And over the years, even these envied spaces are reaching the limits of admission.

The Chicago University admitted nearly 75% of applicants in 1995. Right now, it's down to 6%.

In India, there was massive media and parental outrage when the 'cutoff', meaning the marks required for admission to some of the top colleges in Delhi was 100%

That means thousands of young adults who made just one little mistake were penalised.

Merit as defined by marks and the multiple parameters including a resume of social service and voluntary activity have become boxes to be checked for applying, not entry.

The margin between success and failure has become a knife edge.

And it cuts through society like a scalpel.

The drizzle of design progress

Small improvements in design happen all the time.

But we barely notice.

The benefits are minimal - a drizzle, but someone thought it needed to be solved

The first one. A white cap under the lid of most oil bottles prevents leakage. Getting that out used to be a problem, unless you slid your nail beneath the edge and popped it out. But recently, I found it was now cut halfway around and pulling it out has become much easier. Like a tab on a can.

In the second one, the lid itself has transformed into an easy to pour point, with a pop-out tab that can be locked back into place.

In the third, the white ring with strands pointing inwards inside the oil bottle regulates the irregular flow of oil when pouring.

Fourth - the way we snip off milk and oil packets cutting off a triangular piece at the edge creates tiny bits of plastic waste that clogs up drains.

Instead, if you were to cut into the packet at an acute angle, it's much easier to pour things out because a natural funnel is created internally for pouring anything from grains to liquids.

And finally, the wireless mouse USB tab. It's tiny and you can lose or misplace it anywhere. So, the design has a storage slot inside the mouse when it's not being used.

What are the design odds and ends improvements you have noticed?

9 to 5 or 996?

And WFH is 24 x 6

Work is worship and the paycheck is salvation.

Doled out in monthly instalments

And instantly paid out to other instalment seekers, either by auto debit or repeated reminders.

What's the alternative?

The way things are going, there isn't one. Unless 996 becomes the new 9 to 5 and things get even worse.

The 12-hour workday, 6 days a week. And then one day to recover before the treadmill begins again. Even bees aren't as busy.

Before you know it, a couple of decades have gone by and there's a sense of having missed out on things - and it's hard to determine what exactly was lost.

Or is it because the gains didn't seem to be worth the trouble? The objectives set with pride and passion didn't seem important once they were achieved.

Somewhere down the line, even Chinese tech companies that pioneered 996 as the model workplace formula seem to be admitting that things have gone too far.

The government has cracked down and slashed the education, gaming and the tech sector as a whole.

Perhaps the 4-day week is what the world needs to move towards.

And expand diverse work options just as much as diverse workplaces. Perhaps look for lesser-known careers that don't grow like Jack's beanstalks' in the fairy tale.

We've maxed out working hours. And there's no way to increase the hours on a clock!

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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There has been more flooding in several parts of the world this year.

Shots of cars being stranded or carried away in terrifying surges have been shared across social media.

When a driver comes across a patch of flooded road, the natural inclination is to turn back.

There's no saying what will happen if the car stalls.

Even a thin film of water can reduce the grip and make navigation through water difficult.

Now, Tesla does not have 'Boat mode'. At least not yet.

A clip shot from inside the car is either testament to the car's ability - or the driver's foolhardiness.

Literally like wading into a pool of gushing water and expecting to get through.

There's a point at which they come across another car parked on the left-hand side of the road.

It was abandoned for sure, since the owner would not have been able to proceed.

The Tesla, however, breezes through.

Making it to the dry stretch of road again. This is certainly not for the faint-hearted.

Elon Musk even tweeted about it saying 'Thrust via wheel rotation' is what gets the cars through.

But he doesn't recommend it either.

Maybe speedboats and automobile companies should collaborate and come up with amphibious design solutions for the times when roads become rivers.

A 'beard tax' probably seeded the shaving market

Shaving every day or every other day is now the accepted norm.

Starting off with cavemen who used clamshells to tweeze out individual hairs.

Must have taken them hours without the soapy lather or gel - not to speak of the sharp twinge of pain with each hair pulled out!

But beards through human history have waxed and waned depending on the style of the time.

Imagine a profusion of males walking around with bushy long beards and morose looks. Hard to make out when they're smiling.

Peter the Great, a Russian Czar played a starring role in driving the change. After a two-year tour of Europe, he was so impressed with the clean-shaven looks of the Europeans, he made it the law in Russia.

He introduced a beard tax to ensure that people were clean-shaven and imposed fashion by diktat. This was back in the early 1700s.

Like passports and driving licenses today, every bearded male had to procure a token at a price. It looked like a small medallion and had to be shown to the 'Fashion police' who roamed the streets.

Peasants only had to pay a few kopecks, but nobles and military officers had to pay large sums as fines if they did not show 'proof of tax paid'.

This must have been one of the world's first tax avoidance schemes. Shave every day, to escape the tax.

And over the decades it became a daily habit.

We're still paying the tax. Except that it's now to the companies who enable smooth shaves, day after day!

Is there a bigger game behind Skater Girl on Netflix?

It ticks all the boxes for popular cinema.

The rags to riches story of a poverty-stricken girl.

Along with the run-ins with patriarchy and the small horizons children from remote villages can aspire to.

It's packaged with warmth and nostalgia.

Of a successful Creative Director returning to her roots in an Indian village from where her father migrated to the US.

Her boyfriend, an ace skater follows her into the village. And they're on a mission to introduce children to the wonders of skating.

He goes ahead and buys skates for all of them and soon, the kids are creating havoc.

They disrupt the peace and quiet in the village with their boisterous exploits and are promptly sanctioned by the local authorities.

The compromise is to define where the children will skate and the land for the rink is donated by local royalty.

The building of the rink becomes a community affair and they're taught the 'moves' that will earn them fame and fortune.

The conflict is built around the girl's father who does not want her to spend time on frivolous pursuits.

But it all turns out well in the end.

So far, so good. But look at it from a marketing angle now. How do you introduce a sport that has no local fan following?

How do you build a new generation of stars?

How do you make it about something larger than the person and equate it to a victory for womanhood?

Now, keep watching as skating tournaments and rinks sprout up across the country.

This was just the trailer.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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That's the premise Magic is working on.

It's not a password or a passphrase generator.

But aims to make life easy for both developers and users.

If remembering passwords is difficult for users, imagine the overload for developers who may have to login to hundreds of sites, over time. There's no way to memorise this, so the fallback is to go in for authentication through a trusted source.

Either locally through the browser or rely on massive entities like Google and Facebook.

The problem is not inconvenience alone. Password lock-in is a great way to ensure that users don't leave.

And migrating to another provider presents the same issues.

So, what is Magic doing differently?

First of all, it's decentralising the whole stack. And logins happen via 'magic' email links. No passwords required.

The user has a public key, which is the identifier. That is paired with a private key, stored in a blockchain, without which access is impossible.

This will probably be adopted by developers first because they understand technology better as well as the risks of getting hacked.

But there are sites like Medium, Slack and The Browser, which only ask for user emails and then send the login link.

If more sites begin to enable this kind of login, it could create a domino effect.

And the ties that bind us can finally be broken for good.

Should traffic lights remain simple?

They serve a clear purpose. Everyone who drives knows what they mean.

Can they be improved upon?

Of course they can. It's just three lights one below the other - and the only innovation has been to add some animation within the light or install countdowns.

The countdowns have been effective in getting people to be more compliant. And they'll watch it go down to zero and step on the accelerator the moment it turns green.

A Russian company has conceived of a new way to approach the design of the lights.

It's a single rectangular panel and the whole panel can change colour, so the visibility increases.

The panel can be divided into sections with a countdown meter at the bottom and programmed to show diversions, pedestrian crossings etc.

The real question is, how much more effective will it be? And are we trying to solve the wrong problem with design?

We know that coordinated signals between stretches to speed up traffic have not been successful beyond a point.

The new design conceptualizations introduce an element of novelty, for sure. And they look great. But it does nothing to drive compliance.

Designers see old and established ways of functioning as boring. They want to bring about change, for no other reason than the lights 'looking' predictable.

Maybe that's the point. Because right now, no one can hack a traffic light.

And that's a blessing.

Or do you feel differently?

A post-omelet story

What happens to all the eggshells after the eggs are eaten?

Well, they're coming back to decorate walls.

Around 250,000 tons of eggshells are discarded worldwide every year.

There are experiments being done with the waste to create dental implants because nature's materials are far more versatile but we're simply throwing it away.

Nature Squared, a company based in the Philippines is transforming it, as well as other bio waste from grass, seeds, bark, nuts, seashells, and feathers into useful building products like wall tiles.

They're hardy, easy to maintain and have a unique look and feel.

The project began with using waste from local bakeries to create the first set of tiles and when that worked out, they've expanded the horizon.

Collaborating with some of the leading luxury brands in the world to create finishes that withstand wear and tear as well as striking looks.

On the website are tiles that look like peacock feathers moulded into a tile, or the shine of seashells reflected on walls.

Some of the interiors of rooms on yachts look as if giant tapestries of dried leaves have been baked into the walls.

This is definitely a welcome trend.

When nature becomes fashionable, people will probably give it the respect it deserves.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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Quills made from bird feathers were some of the earliest writing instruments.

We graduated to fountain pens, which then gave way to disposable ball points.

A project on Kickstarter has raised way more money that requested.

And the strange thing is that it replicates the ancient way of writing with modern day machining techniques.

The instruments of inspiration go beyond the simple act of transferring thoughts to paper.

We've gone all the way from tactile to virtual keyboards and then, some of us have hit the pause button.

It's as if we did not want a world in which everything was done within an environment you couldn't touch and feel.

It's not just writing. Vinyl records may not be the best reproductions of music. But they have a sound quality missing from the audio streams and the sales have been rising again.

In spite of E readers being so convenient, book lovers still want the tactile feel of books.

And back to pens. Here, artists can wield control again. The tip is available in 2 sizes and the choice of the body holding the modern 'quill' represents experiments with finishes and textures that give it a tactile quality suited to the artist's own sense of touch.

And that's the point - we should switch between the virtual and the real.

Keep that divide alive because it keeps us in touch with the real world - and that's essential.

This fertiliser factory has millions of workers

But you can't see any of them

Some of the world's most essential crops - rice, and wheat require huge amounts of synthetic fertilisers.

Which is essentially nitrogen.

And over decades, farmers have had to steadily increase the number of fertilisers used to get the same yield.

The process of making nitrogen artificially is an energy-intensive process creating massive amounts of carbon dioxide.

The search for a natural alternative has been underway for decades.

When nitrogen is made by natural microbes, plants absorb it better. And there's simply no waste to dispose of.

The technology to create this at scale has been elusive.

But a company called Pivot Bio has found a way to get natural microbes to make nitrogen in the quantities that farmers require.

They had to isolate the microbes from the millions that are found in a single teaspoon of soil and determine if they were up to the task. Then create the conditions for them to replicate it in the lab.

The results have been impressive. The company has just raised $430 million in another funding round. And investors don't make such bets unless the technology is proven to work.

This may signal the move towards several bio-generated manufacturing processes, rather than the complex chemistry we've had to deploy.

It's as if we traveled a long way away from nature and are slowly finding our way back.

This could work far better than several carbon sequestration projects on the anvil.

How do you make it rain on stage, on cue?

We are in awe of amazing movie special effects but it's much harder to create real illusions on stage.

If you haven't heard of Es Devlin, here's an introduction.

She's a stage designer and the portfolio of work as well as the events she has conceived are almost unbelievable.

Watch Episode 3 from the series Abstract on Netflix (Season 1) and you'll understand how much goes into making things happen behind the scenes.

The amount of planning and split second execution required is surreal.

And the rain on stage did happen on cue - it wasn't even for a big name play. Just a small theater with an audience capacity of less than 100 people.

But she has also created spectacles for the big music stars.

She distils it beautifully when she explains how every minute has to be scripted but the audience will never know.

To paraphrase - The challenge is to focus the attention of an audience numbering tens of thousands of people on a single point - the performer. And the only way to do it is to play with light.

In the late 90s, I had watched a play on the Broadway stage - Miss Saigon. In the climax of the play, a helicopter descends on stage to rescue people on the ground.

The feeling was incredible - something no movie special effect has ever had.

I never Googled to find out how it was done. Some things are best left as mysteries.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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There's a point at which a game becomes a golden goose.

Then, the transformation happens because there's just too much at stake.

Everything from keeping audiences involved and TV rights that seem to touch stratospheres in every cycle.

The sheer passion with which cricket is still played in street corners and hot dusty grounds seems a whole world away from the global spectacle.

But money has a way of getting in the way.

What happened to baseball is now happening in cricket - as the article puts it, the Moneyball moment is here.

The old stats were about matches played, runs scored and centuries that added up.

Now, there are several layers folded into the mix.

The connections between the kind of balls bowled and the runs scored by hitting the ball to various parts of the ground.

And the fielding positions that either staunched the flow of runs or aided them - everything is studied by the computer's cold eye.

Hawk Eye and Virtual Eyes have had their eyes on matches since the early 2000s.

Marrying these points of data to predict possible outcomes is the next big thing.

It helped, of course, that cricket moved from the incredibly long 5 day tests, to the 50 overs match to the insanely popular T20.

That makes it more in line with football matches and being able to assess the flow of a game with batsmen, bowlers and fielders moving within fixed points creates patterns to map.

When data dominates the game, passion may have to take a back seat.

Do money troubles affect early child development?

There's a provocative research paper that relates how low-income households are at a disadvantage.

It’s related to a concept called the 'word gap'

Apparently, parents worried about regular incomes spoke far less to their children, especially towards the end of the month.

About three decades ago, researchers determined that children from these households hear tens of millions of less words spoken, compared to children from affluent households by the time they are admitted in school.

Does it matter?

Adults having financial problems tend to speak less to children - at least that's the pattern the research claims to have identified.

There's not enough detail on the sample size or the time period over which the research was conducted.

At an early age, children don't understand why money is important or the effects that it could have. What children from well-to-do households can take for granted, they cannot.

Some parents may be the strong, silent type. But they aren't contributing to their children's psyche.

The distress creates dissonance in homes.

What seems to come through is that children are acutely aware that something is wrong, even while parents hide it from them.

They see themselves as different from the others and may develop coping mechanisms in response - cutting back on something they like. Or even by not asking for money.

It's as if they are forced to navigate a world and situations they aren't ready for.

A word handicap makes it even harder.

Subtitles are simple. Correct?

Wrong.

Let go through what comes into play when subtitles appear on screen - without going into the formats or the tech deployed.

First, some thoughtful UX moves. On Netflix and Amazon as well as the better OTT apps, the subtitles drop to the bottom of the frame when the progress bar disappears.

That ensures it does not cut into the action in the movie beyond a point.

For streaming platforms, the combinations can be overwhelming.

An English movie has subtitle options in 5-6 languages.

Now each of those languages have to be translated, encoded and available from the selection panel.

The size of the typefaces have to adjust to the device they are played on.

The subtitles on TV are among the ugliest because there are too many other factors to consider, and the viewer has less flexibility when operating the remote.

As streaming platforms attract viewers of films from multiple countries, the choice of subtitles gets even crazier.

And if you've watched YouTube's AI generated subtitles, you can see that real time display is still work in progress.

Imagine you're watching a Bengali film on OTT in Bangalore. Which languages should be available as subtitles? Local language plus English? And how many others?

The permutations and combinations required quickly add up when you introduce films from world cinema.

There are now dubbed options available but hearing the native language has an authenticity dubbed tracks can't match. Try it sometime and you'll hear the difference.

As to whether the subtitles are accurate translations, well, I'll leave that for a later post!

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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When UX is done well, we barely notice.

When it is horrible, we not only notice - but we also get angry, frustrated and rant about it on social media.

What if you could experiment with bad UX?

Think of the worst ways to design an interface, so people have trouble getting anything done.

That's the experiment some programmers in Reddit tried out.

They asked for people to think of terrible ways in which the volume slider could be designed.

It started a firestorm of entries, and some are truly inventive.

Like the 'wobbling' slider. Every time you try moving the slider the entire panel tilts crazily like a seesaw. So, you can go from 80 to 0 and back to 100 in no time at all.

Or hilarious ones like the dice UX. You never know what you're going to get.

May be there is a lesson in all this.

Instead of trying to create great UX, you first do the most outlandish things.

And then, down the line, a great option will break through.

When we look at designs of great UX for inspiration, it's limiting. And people mostly imitate it.

When you ask them to intentionally do bad stuff, it's liberating.

And that's the point.

Unless you wade through a sea of mediocrity and terrible design, there's no way you'll arrive at something remarkable.

Try it on your next UX assignment.

What if happiness is anticipation?

Think about it.

When you have something to look forward to, there's a spring in your step.

And a gleam in your eye.

It could be a life-altering experience of a baby on the way.

And it's full of imagined future experiences, memories and how you plan to be a great parent.

Or a much smaller scale, take a trip you're planning with friends, months from now.

The anticipation builds with each of the exchanges you have in conversations, messages, the logistics and as the date approaches, the excitement builds.

The trip itself is great fun.

But then, you're worrying about how soon it will be over, and you need another bout of excitement in your life.

Or take career progression.

Entrepreneurs are driven by the anticipation of what they can achieve. It's how they become workaholics driven by impossible goals without pausing to see how it affects the rest of their life.

Or dial down to something as simple as anticipating a live concert from a favourite musician or tickets to a stand-up show.

In the days leading up to the performance, it's at the back of your mind, periodically pinging small rushes of dopamine.

You rarely question if the performances lived up to expectations because you're on to the next thing.

Apply this to all the things, big and small that you want to do and see if it fits.

Anticipation is that warm feeling of a build-up to something we are going to enjoy.

And maybe that's that the closest thing to being happy.

That was some sneeze!

A guy sits at a table.

He feels a sneeze coming on. A big one.

Then, there's a spurt of flame and all that's left is some clothes and a cap on the chair.

You may not have heard of Kevin Parry.

But he's doing some great editing and special effects work on YouTube.

Found the channel through Kottke. But this work will earn him serious cred.

It's inventive and he's put in the work required on getting the details right.

He wears a yellow jumpsuit with a hoodie.

And falls forward towards the table, transforming at the last possible moment into a rocking banana.

What's surprising is how smoothly the transitions are executed

Like standing in the backyard with some melons around.

He jumps into the air and swivels.

As he lands, he transforms into a melon that shatters into pieces on the ground.

There's no jump cut in between. Or at least, it isn't evident.

There are several videos on TikTok that basically change the scale and size of objects. But this one is way above them in production values and humour - doesn't miss a beat.

They're homemade, given the setting. But this guy has what it takes.

And he goes on to share exactly how he achieves the effects - which gets lots of views as well. Let's see how far he goes.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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What if you could combine your current self with one from your childhood?

Or teen years.

Would it look like a father-son or a mother daughter picture?

Ard Gelinck does interesting things with celebrity portraits.

He merges their current look with a time difference of decades.

The effect is mesmerising.

While we see ourselves in the mirror each and every day, the gradual aging is never perceived - like a morph that happens in extreme slow motion.

Anyone with access to Photoshop or any image editing software could do it.

Take two pictures of the same person 20-30 years apart and combine them.

There's a sense of freezing time into a frame.

The celebrities that Ard Gelinck photoshopped were so happy with the effect, they shared it on their own Instagram stream.

The innovation is the natural interaction worked into two separate images.

Barack Obama jabs the cheek of the child he was ages ago

The adult Macaulay Culkin is almost unrecognisable as the young star of Home Alone.

Emma Watson from the Harry Potter films has grown into an assured and striking young woman.

This could be used to create a 'group' photo with the same person at various points in time in their life.

For once, time waits for man. Or women.

Maybe it's time to get back to handwriting

It seems regressive.

With teaching moving to smart boards and interactive lessons, handwriting has moved way down in the preferred list of teaching methods.

It probably needs to be prioritized.

In a study comparing students who learned a new language in 3 different ways - one set by handwriting, another set using typewriters and the third through video instructions, the students who wrote by hand outperformed the others.

Remember the time schools made students write copious notes of class lessons? On certain days, it would lead to cramps and stiff elbows.

But students were probably absorbing lessons better.

Thankfully writing is still an integral part of learning - and that should probably remain the norm.

But try getting children today to spend time practicing their handwriting and there will be huge resistance.

Typing, or even using voice to 'type' is so much easier.

One of the things we need to hardwire is that 'Easy come, easy go' applies to learning as well.

The work involved in learning a new subject or skill involves effort - and that should be underlined.

We're trying too hard to make learning 'easy' removing all the friction points in the fond hope that children will learn more if the process is made easier.

That's still a grey area. Because it's still not clear if interest alone will drive understanding.

How new concepts are absorbed and retained is still not understood. And that's where the focus should be.

The new game at Netflix

Netflix has got into gaming.

It’s another major move for the company that moved from CDs and DVDs to streaming to stay ahead of the market, not just the competition.

They started with video subscriptions in a market that made money out of late fees and destroyed the business of one of the most established players - Blockbuster.

Even after making a success of it, they moved into streaming technology and outgrew their existing model of mailing DVDs.

Within a few years, they scaled this across the world and built an entertainment colossus with over 200 million subscribers.

They spend billions on creating new content every year because the assets will continue to attract audiences far into the future.

As Reed Hastings once famously remarked - Sleep is their biggest competition.

So, this move should have been in the works for some years now.

Netflix has spent the past half-decade building a collection of exclusive TV series based on video game licenses, including animated series based on Castlevania, Dota 2 and a critically acclaimed, live-action version of The Witcher

The app to watch movies is already on millions of smartphones - all that's required is to give people the choice to play games as well.

And Netflix has confirmed the hire of an ex-EA and Oculus executive. Now, it remains to be seen if they can replicate or seamlessly move into a highly competitive category.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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It's as if they're made for each other.

Driving and music.

I find it monotonous to gaze out of windows in complete silence.

The music needs to be there. Its presence adding seasoning to the waxing and waning conversations within.

Back in college, we used to drive to a friend's estate which was over a couple of hours away.

The lush greenery on the route was dramatic with variations of green and patches of bright vivid colours breaking through the canopies overhead.

But the music comes rushing back as well.

It's like life needs background music - which is why it sounds natural in movies.

Back then, cars had to be fitted with 'cassette' and 'CD' players. It wasn't part of the standard features. You went to a mechanic who took a few hours to thread the wires, cut through the dashboard and fabric in car doors to install speakers.

All the controls were manual - from fast forwards to popping out the cassettes and flipping them over to hear songs on the other side.

Interior spaces in cars were strewn with cassettes and CDs stuffed into all available pockets.

There's something ethereal about the world slipping away and the twists and turns in the road being set to music.

Hours of driving didn't seem to matter.

When some of those songs play on TV, they bring back a completely different set of memories.

The soundtrack of life being set by a choice of lilting or wistful melodies.

India joins the Silk rail route

These are long journeys

However, for cargo, it makes no difference

Paper products are now being shipped from Finland to India by rail

Earlier, I had written a LinkedIn post about Europe and China being connected by rail through Mongolia.

Various rail networks within countries are slowly snaking their way outwards.

Bringing a new dynamism to trade links that have existed for centuries.

New alternatives to shipping that are being built and extended throughout the world.

The surprising aspect is the time it saves.

What used to take 40 days to ship can now arrive at destinations in a couple of weeks - the Finland to Mumbai train is an example.

The possibilities of new trade links being forged also increases exponentially when goods only need to be shipped to the closest railway station, not a port.

The processes and paperwork need to evolve, of course.

But we've seen that trade is the great motivator.

Getting countries to sit down, negotiate and work out methods by which this can be managed.

We're seeing trade infrastructure evolve in new ways.

Some of it may threaten established shipping routes. But that is a long story and decades away.

It could even open up the romance of month-long train journeys for leisure passengers on holidays for which there may be possible demand.

Think of cruise ships and watching horizons of water as far as the eye can see in every direction.

On train journeys, the landscapes that unfold can be breathtaking.

The formula is fraying around the edges

How many crime shows and murder mysteries can you watch?

Especially the ones where the setup happens in the first five minutes and then the detective/police/lawyer has another 40 odd minutes to investigate, come up with twists and then grandly tie things up with a flourish?

The crime genre as well as the rom-coms and the dramedies are showing their age.

As well as the neatly packaged hospital dramas with their mysterious patients, doctor conflicts and nurses who flit in and out of the hospital rooms with clinical efficiency.

50-60 years ago, in the age when television first became popular, they ruled the airwaves.

There were exciting possibilities, and all kinds of combinations were explored.

A great set of actors and directors with a talented crew can still sustain interest but that's becoming the outlier, not the norm.

As production values scale, the plot points are finding it hard to break through the tried and tested, or even work around what audiences want and then deliver it time and again.

And while the storytelling and nuances have evolved, they still have to stick to the conventions of the formula

When you are binge watching to kingdom come, it's as if there's no shortage of brilliant films and serials to watch and enjoy.

The real question is whether there is a way out.

Maybe it is the human condition - we want variety but only within a certain range.

Whether it is food or entertainment.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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We've heard the tales about simple scams

About millions to be routed through banks with minimal effort.

But scamming has evolved

And here's one that shows you how deeply scammers think through their craft.

There's a fair amount of technical detail involved.

And I'm simplifying it as I understand - you're welcome to read the blog post link below to enjoy it at a programming level. Because turning the tables on scammers is always fun to read.

So, a guy is moving house and puts up his bed for sale on the Danish version of Craigslist. In the first few days, he gets hardly any responses.

Then, a WhatsApp message arrives. An offer to buy the bed and a link to Post Nord (the Danish equivalent of India Post) to receive the payment.

He is told they will pick up the bed and ship it as well - which makes things very convenient.

But when he is about to click on the link, he finds it's a decoy - a perfect copy of the site.

Now that he's understood the game, he adds a sneaky script to the form details - and scrambles the scammer's database by generating thousands of false combinations, wrecking his carefully built scam and making the database practically unusable.

The scammer may not have bargained for a tech guy to disrupt his scheme.

All those hours of careful plotting down the drain - and all because the techie detected the false notes.

In today's world, you can't afford to be careless. You have been warned.

Caution - plane crossing

We've seen traffic held up for trains to pass.

But there's an airport where the runway is right across one of the arterial roads.

Sounds impossible but it exists.

Gibraltar is too small to have enough space for a luxurious airport.

So, every time a plane comes in to take off or land, the roads have to be cordoned off.

Thankfully, there are only about 30 flights a week and mostly from Britain.

So, it's manageable at the moment.

This is a major constraint - and the airport obviously has no room to expand beyond a point.

However, this is no chicken and egg story.

It was constructed in the late 1930s as an emergency airport for Britain's Royal Navy during the second World war.

And that replaced the existing race course!

So, there was a shortage of space even back then and priorities had to be decided.

And the city grew around it.

Are film courses worth the money?

They are among the most expensive.

And teach students all aspects of the craft.

Unfortunately, the costs of doing the courses can be huge, especially from private colleges.

Columbia's graduate program costs nearly $200,000 - that's probably the budget of several small Indian short films!

This is an eternal debate. Can film making be taught or is apprenticeship a better option?

In India, successful directors attract hordes of 'assistants'

They'll flash by in the end credits of the film but life can be really hard.

Doing everything from hard labour on the sets to putting up with the whims and fancies of stars.

But over time, they build a network with the crew across all disciplines and get to build relationships in the industry.

It's not a fixed course schedule - and to a large extent, they have to hitch their wagon to a director and hope that they will continue to make films and succeed.

And eke out a hard life while having starry dreams.

The clichés abound about stars having to struggle for success. But every department in the film world has to find ways to survive while improving their craft. Right from set design to sound engineering to location hunting and casting.

That's possibly the reason why the high-priced courses at universities don't get graduates too far.

Unless they have made films on their own, they've acquired theoretical knowledge - but not the experience.

And that cannot be taught.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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Camouflage has moved to the next level.

Israel has developed material that looks like the rest of the landscape - a collection of unevenly distributed rocks, for example.

In the photograph, they had to indicate there were soldiers below those 'rocks' waiting in complete readiness.

Camouflage patterns have taken over as fashion statements - with the mottled and distinctive designs that signify 'military' gear.

The actual requirement goes much deeper - because heat-seeking devices could pick out hidden soldiers.

That had to be masked.

The light sheets are made from a combination of polymers and other materials.

Heat signals are damped down, so there's no warning of soldiers lying in wait.

However, armies still have to use combinations of other devices when they are watching an area - everything from binoculars to radio equipment.

So, expect tracking to happen when radio bursts and the glint of light from a rock face hints at other activity.

It's a constant cat and mouse game

Except that the consequences are serious. Blending with the scenery in a natural environment is easier - but in an urban setting, they may not be feasible.

War games are an oxymoron - the play is deadly.

Not all calories are created equal

We're fixated on easy-to-understand things

2000 calories a day. 10,000 steps. 8 hours of sleep.

The assumption is that the body is a machine and what works for one person works perfectly for all of us.

Giles Yeo has written a book that explains everything in the title

Calories don't count.

He makes a simple assertion. Not all calories can be treated the same because the way the body metabolizes them is different.

Proteins are harder to digest than fats.

So, what the body gets out of it is different.

Institutions and guidelines simplify things to the point where they become prescriptions for everyone.

Nuance is lost completely.

And using devices to measure body rhythms and conditions lulls us into the belief that we're being taken care of as long as we follow what our devices instruct us to do.

Try this simple experiment.

Eat only when you feel hungry.

Sleep when you feel sleepy. Not at a time when you're supposed to 'go to bed'

The body has its own rhythms.

A million things are going on inside at the same time.

And when we start listening to it, we'll hear more.

The frequency to tune into to is what you own body clock is telling you.

None of us is primed to eat breakfast at 8 am, lunch at 1.00 pm and dinner at 7.30.

That may be more out of habit than health.

Listen to what your body tries so hard to tell you. But you have to learn how to.

A page is not what you think it is

When you're reading a real book or magazine, you know.

But on a Kindle, what is a page?

Try finding out. Especially if you have the Kindle app on your smartphone and the desktop cloud reader.

It will smartly bring you to the point at which you were on each of the devices but there's no way to determine the page you're on.

That's because of several fluid points. The size of the screen.

The preferred gap you have set between lines for your reading comfort.

Even the size of the type makes a difference to the number of words that can be displayed on a 'page'.

So, Kindle now shows different measurement points to help you understand - by telling you how long the chapter will take to read, depending on the speed at which you read.

Or the percentage of the chapter covered.

We talk of web pages as if they were exact equivalents of real sheets.

But that's nowhere close.

The way the web 'page' is assembled is different for websites, for smartphones and for iPads.

And in apps. That's another ball game altogether.

We've imported several terms from the world we knew.

However, it is obvious that many of these may not be relevant going forward.

The 'page' may soon be another relic among several other terms that have fallen into disuse.

Or mean something else altogether.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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Here's a sense of how beauty defines every aspect of our lives.

Nature is not out to win any contests.

But our notion of beauty, even with respect to vegetables, creates unnecessary waste in food chains.

Blemish-free extends to vegetables as well in the US. So potatoes, tomatoes, onions and all types of vegetables are picked out of wholesale piles and only the ones that meet display standards are put up for sale.

What happens to the rest? They are labeled as 'ugly' vegetables and even though they are perfectly fine to consume, their market value plummets.

They are sold at prices far lower than the ones closest to 'perfection'

Apart from waste, this skews the market price as well because the cost of vegetables being thrown away has to be factored in.

And this was the opportunity Abhi Ramesh came across after having pursued a series of ventures, successful and not-so-successful.

He launched a brand called Misfits Market.

They experimented to find out if customers would buy - and found buyers were more than willing

Demand skyrocketed when the vegetables were sold online at prices far lower than what supermarkets charge.

In just a couple of years, they employ over 1000 employees and are valued at over $1 billion

Who thought such a makeover was possible? It required some talent to make misfits stand out.

Ugly vegetables are looking positively delectable now.

Email is the millstone round our necks

If one of the world's largest companies struggles with an email migration project, what does it tell you?

It's become too big. And it does fail. Spectacularly.

IBM had sold some of its products to HCL Technologies in India and wanted to move the entire email system to its own servers.

Now that's a tricky move.

We've accumulated thousands of emails and attachments and organizing or managing the load varies wildly

Some of us delete all emails every month.

Some never delete anything. Add multiple updates and versions coexisting.

This huge variance sets up all kinds of minefields.

IBM developed its own version of email on the cloud called Verse and it's gone from bad to Worse. Sorry, couldn't resist that one.

The project was supposed to be completed in 18 months but shows no signs of being close to completion.

Website migration has better protocols and processes in place, but email is like transporting jelly in an open cart over potholed roads and expecting the consignment to arrive perfectly intact.

Not going to happen.

So, thousands of IBMers are now stuck with a combination of their messaging systems, phones and laptops refusing to play ball.

It's the kind of thing that makes CIOs sweat.

Forty odd years after email was invented, it's become something we can’t live without.

Or live with.

Billionaires and their space sagas

Jeff Bezos announced that he would be flying into space as one of the first private citizens in the world.

The combination of billionaire dreams and space travel attracted swarms of media chatter.

Bezos announced his brother would be joining him on the trip.

Coverage of brotherly love and close embraces followed.

As well as details of the casual $20 million plus dollar tab for the trip. What's a few millions for an out of the world experience?

The countdown began.

Blue Origin was all set to launch on 20th July.

The sidelight was an 82-year-old who was also supposed to fly with Bezos - one of the lucky ones chosen.

As the rest of the world watched and waited, other billionaires seethed.

This is space travel in the sense that the spacecraft goes 60 miles into space and then returns, not a destination like the moon or Mars.

Now, Richard Branson, the Virgin brand billionaire has stolen the thunder.

He's announced that he'll be flying into space on 11th July - a week before Bezos.

That gives him bragging rights Bezos can't refute.

Suddenly, the richest man on earth has been relegated to second place.

It looks like having billions in the bank makes no difference - it goes all the way from flaunting cars to mansions to space travel.

Meanwhile other notable billionaires must be tending to bruised aspirations.

Unfortunately, there's no magic potion for disappointments.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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Life's come full circle.

Henson's, a Canadian brand, is advertising a set of razors with the smoothest shave ever.

And they look exactly like the ones that went out of style generations ago.

They work with old-fashioned double-sided blades.

But how do you sell them in a world where Gillette lines up four and six blades in a row for smoother shaves?

You go back to the basics.

Open up the top layer. Slip in the blades that have almost disappeared from stores today.

And apparently, they've worked on the design, so that it no longer nicks and slices skin like it did, back in the day.

Shaving was a ritual. A shaving round of soap, a brush for spreading and working up the lather, and then making careful, smooth moves.

One wrong jerk and the blade would draw blood.

Band-aids on the face were common.

That's why it is surprising to see the model reinvigorated.

And here's the kicker. No blades included. Use any of the regular old-fashioned cheap blades.

Henson claims the razor has been machined to expose only a small sliver of the blade - and that removes practically all chances of getting cut.

For all you know, it may beat all those fancy engineering acrobatics that the newer razors promise

Want to go retro for a close shave?

Honda plans a map for feet

Cars and 2 wheelers have maps.

But Honda's taking a step to help the visually impaired navigate.

Shoes or other footwear are equipped with special add-ons.

The person programs a route before they step out of home.

Then, the sensors take over.

The left shoe vibrates when a left turn has to be taken and both vibrate when the route is straight ahead - the system is being worked on.

The natural question that arises is - why wouldn't a mobile phone app be enough?

And of course, what happens in inclement weather like rain or snow?

The kinks have to be worked out for sure.

The product is set for a launch only by 2023 but it has already aroused interest.

Blind people possibly believe they will be more sure-footed with feedback right from the ground as they're walking.

It may be small innovations at first but if this works, it can scale to build in other signals to warn, orient or even new kinds of notifications users themselves can come up with.

The market is estimated at around 1.6 million people in Japan alone.

If it becomes a must-have, the possibilities and the potential to evolve are immense.

Honda may be known for its cars but if it starts at people's feet, there's no telling how far they could go.

The 'news' today is a world away from newspapers

The generational shift has happened.

A couple of decades ago, newspapers reigned supreme as the reputable sources.

But that has undergone an upheaval, not a change, as the report from Reutershighlights.

Print has been one of the worst affected, especially after the Covid crisis.

News Corp Australia suspended the print editions of 112 suburban and regional mastheads, axing almost 1,000 jobs.

In India too, there has been turmoil, but newspapers have kept a lid on the teams who were let go.

A Medium article link provides details as a personal project and the number of layoffs has been high.

Most of it is due to the drop in circulation owing to Covid but it is clear digital competition and dramatic changes in the underlying business model are altering the media landscape beyond recognition.

73% of the respondents in India accessed news through their smartphones last year.

What's troubling is that 53% use WhatsApp and YouTube as their sources.

The distinction between editing a story and publishing it has been lost in the bargain.

While there are reporters schooled the old way in verifying and checking sources, the 'news' as we know it is no longer the same.

And that has led to a drop in trust and belief.

There's no point in yearning for the times gone by but the need to bring back truth is a goal to aim for.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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Why would the internet need zipping?

Well, let’s take documents, images, music and movies.

Each of them is encoded in different formats. And the higher the file resolution, the bigger the file size.

To send them across the net, especially when bandwidth was nowhere near the capacities we have today, there was only one way to do it.

Lossless compression.

Thank Jacob Ziv. Born in 1931 in what would become a part of Israel.

His Ph.D. research at Cambridge University in 1960 involved finding a method to encode and decode messages sent through a noisy channel.

At that point, no one had a clue on how it could be done.

The principle was the same as the way Morse code was developed. Since 'e' is the most used letter, it was depicted by a single dot.

He and Abraham Lempel developed an algorithm to scan data and the moment it found matching bits; it would simply point to the location where the previous one was. No repeats.

It didn't matter what was being transmitted - the data was compressed to a fraction of the original making it much easier to send on those rickety channels of the early internet.

That's how WinZip and GZip became the preferred 'zipping' software to send large files in the 90s.

Or else, we would still be couriering disks!

Why don't Indian wives call their husbands by name?

Tch. Tch. Ketto? (In Malayalam, it means 'Listen')

Raju ke Pappa in North India. (substitute appropriate child's name instead of Raju here)

The mysterious ways in which husbands are addressed in Indian households is one on which PhD's in psychology can be obtained.

It's ok to use rude sounds, taps and clearing of throats but the name must never be uttered.

Much like Voldemort - he who must remain nameless.

Does not work in reverse, though. Husbands are free to address their wives any way they choose. By nicknames. Affectionate turns of phrase. Or sarcasm.

Apparently, calling husbands by their proper names is disrespectful. The reasons are never explained because there isn't any logic to apply.

Thankfully, the current generation has thrown caution to the winds, but it remains a potential mother-in-law daughter-in-law flash point.

If I can't call my husband by his name, how can you take that liberty?

Even today, some wives in Kerala address their husbands as 'Chetta' (brother)

How does one mix and merge familial relationships which are polar opposites?

The origins should be interesting.

Human behavior and customs evolve in ways that aren't predictable or rational.

And reading between the lines throws up nuances not visible on the surface.

Paternity is the easy answer.

Will robot pizza deliveries intrude into our spaces?

First you had to teach robots to navigate.

Then, they were instructed to stick to lanes, not mess up traffic.

Now, cyclists in Austin have expressed unhappiness at an experiment, having to share bike lanes with pizza delivery robots.

The questions a technical team may not have factored in.

The robots look like ice cream carts and travel at about 10-15 kms per hour.

So far so good.

Now, what happens when cyclists come up behind the robots?

How do you deal with them in day-to-day traffic?

What happens when several robots crowd lanes during peak demand?

Will cyclists have to grin and bear it?

The problem with a test is that it simulates rush hour but not the ripple effects among humans and the takeover of lanes.

Or else this is glossed over because no one has any real answers.

Robots were supposed to solve efficiency problems, but they are creating fresh ones.

They can't take over sidewalks because pedestrians will protest encroachment on 'their' space.

And adding to regular traffic is going to complicate matters further.

There's going to be an uneasy jockeying to find the right mix. Or else, it may never happen.

Robots took over factories without deep resistance, but daily push and shove will be another matter altogether.

Expect fireworks.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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It's the stuff of legends and one man seemed to make it work.

Charles Kellogg (no relation to the cereal brand) made music of a different sort.

He held public performances that riveted audiences in the early 20th century.

They were largely imitations of nature and bird calls, which Kellogg had learned during his childhood, spending long stretches of time in the forest.

He claimed he could even attract bears to concerts in the wild with his abilities.

One of the highlights of his shows was to put out fires using a series of high-strung musical notes.

With the help of General Electric, this was put to the test in a public performance over radio.

Forty miles away, in San Jose, a gas burner with the flame going up to 2 feet high was extinguished with Kellogg's music.

Apparently, people living in homes held up lighted candles to the receiver and they were extinguished as well.

Strange that the technology was never developed further because using sound to put out fires would certainly be more eco-friendly than using water.

Kellogg documented his life in a book called 'The Nature Singer'

Only a thousand copies were printed.

The reality between myth and the truth will never be bridged.

The Economics professor wowing her online class

She's not another stamp-sized square in the classroom.

Emily Nix realized that the connect with her students was not coming through.

From the time the pandemic forced everyone to attend classes online, she scoured the internet for solutions.

Unhappy with the high costs of some of the standard ones, she built one herself.

When she explains concepts in economics, she seems to be writing directly on screen.

Her students love it and her classes have become a lot more engaging.

But things went way beyond her expectations she made a recording of her method and put it up on Twitter.

Within days, when she got over 50,000 views and solid appreciation from different sections of viewers, she knew she was on to something special.

The curious part is that lightboards have been around for years but the twist of projecting it on camera brings the teacher up close to students - much like the real classroom.

The lesson from this is that we need to step back and figure out new ways for digital classrooms to evolve.

And the solutions come from one-off experiments like this one.

From determined teachers who find new ways to teach and interact.

A marbles tournament, anyone?

Remember how passionately kids played with marbles a few decades ago?

The rules and distances were flexible.

You took aim with a big marble and scattered a pile.

Or launched them using the thumb as the anchor on the ground and the index finger as the propeller from the tip of the finger.

The games would go on for hours and rules were made up on the spot according to who had the most marbles or was the creative one.

Turns out that niche sports are a lot more popular than we realize.

Heard of frolf? No? That's golf played with a frisbee.

The objective is to arc the flight of the frisbee into a tapering basket broken into sections. The photos are in the article link.

These tournaments are broadcast, followed and enthusiastically discussed on social media.

The mainstream TV channels would probably look down on such pedestrian activities but if they manage to build a following, things will change.

The scent of money cannot be hidden for very long and once the business model is established; they will emerge from the shadows.

It's time we encouraged new communities around niches that become popular in future.

Marbles may even make a comeback in style.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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To change the world, you first have to go up against it.

Even today, nothing has changed.

Marie Curie discovered radioactivity along with her husband.

Her remains are still radioactive almost a century later, after her death in 1934.

So is the lab where she worked.

She may be feted by academia and industry on the unique path she blazed.

But there were no crowds to cheer her on and encourage her to keep working.

Athletes and sportspersons are probably the only ones who make history in public.

But the years of practice that lead to the moment are lonely, grueling years where they have to believe that things will finally change.

Have you heard of Katlin Kariko?

Not many had until 2020

She believed in the power of mRNA to fight disease. It was unproven and the entire scientific establishment dismissed her theories.

She found it hard to get grants, funding and even acceptance from her colleagues.

And this went on right from the 1990s

Until a couple of companies understood that this was a revolutionary way to create vaccines to beat Covid.

Katlin's work helped to create Moderna's vaccine.

And that's when a lonely road became a historical one.

When the ad break becomes the show

The memes around ad breaks focus on one thing.

People taking bathroom breaks from watching TV

Streaming platforms have cut them out of the picture.

YouTube has intrusive ads cutting right into the content.

So brands are now experimenting with crossing over.

Becoming the content instead of the break.

L'Oréal has created its first season of shows and premiered it on YouTube.

It's aimed at hair professionals and the format is three experts discussing hair treatments, looks and styles.

It all looks very slick, and the post-production gloss would never come through in the home videos that popular YouTubers have.

But the conversations are stilted and filled with artificial bonhomie.

There's also a lot less of the actual treatment and the styling in progress.

The looks are all still photographs instead of video.

That tends to make it look more like a digital magazine than a show for audiences.

Wattpad, a crowdsourced content site makes a great point - that brands have to learn to create content all over again as opposed to the 1- and 2-minute commercials.

The rules are different.

And agencies have to reinvent their game as well.

The wall between ads and content are crumbling.

The bees join the rat race

Apart from the proverb, "As busy as a bee", we've relegated them to the background buzz of our life.

Turns out that bees are far more essential to nature than humans are.

In Germany, they found wild bee populations disappearing at an alarming rate.

Our obsession with 'useful' is doublespeak for 'commercial'

If something has no commercial value, it will be safely ignored, and no one wants to talk or do anything about it.

That's precisely why this government initiative is so heartening.

Urban wilderness patches have been created in orderly Berlin.

Initially, there was massive resistance from people because they believed 'nature' meant manicured lawns!

However, the planting continued and in 3 years, the benefits are obvious.

There's a riot of colourful flowers and shrubs adjoining streamlined highways.

And the bees are back.

Buzzing around happily in their own favourite wild patches, helping to reverse a decline of 75% in wild bee populations.

Over 100 wildflower meadows have now been planted in Berlin - they don't follow the rules of gardens as defined by humans. It's the untidy and unbelievable diversity that springs to life.

Citizens have seen the light, asking for more of them to be grown.

Urban rat races may just get the boost they need from bees.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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It's not part of a common skill set.

But cops have to restrain unruly people as part of their job.

In India, cops rely on their ability to surprise and their ingenuity. Or strength in numbers.

In the US, the favored weapon is a taser to immobilise people temporarily.

However, it is highly painful and a traumatic experience for the victim.

Medical workers or those trying to secure violent patients have few other options.

There's an interesting device that shoots out a rope.

And it binds itself around the person in a flash.

It's called a Bola Wrap.

Before the person can react, they're all trussed up like a gift package.

And apart from being embarrassed, there's no pain involved.

It can be fired from a 10-25 metre range and will cause no physical harm.

Police get the vital time to move in and subdue offenders in tense situations.

The product is not sold to civilians and with good reason.

Too many pranksters would revel in the options that suddenly open up for them.

From an enforcement standpoint, this is a humane way to dial down a situation.

And it offers a non-violent solution with a unique advantage.

Not all solutions have to be sensible

This may seem pointless.

What do you do when a pencil you use gets too small to hold?

You throw it away, of course.

But trust the Japanese to find another way.

A company known for its pencil sharpeners came up with an idea.

In the land of Manga artists, pencils are still bought in large numbers and initial illustrations are painstakingly drawn on paper before scanning and coloring them on computers.

So, here's the essence of the concept.

You glue the small stub of the pencil on to another one. Like fitting a train compartment to another.

Nothing is wasted.

You may have the most unusual pencil on earth with 4-5 stubs stuck together.

In this day and age, finding new ways to use pencils is not exactly a priority.

But for those who still use them regularly to draw and make notes, this is an interesting twist.

And since no stub is wasted but flows into the lead of the next pencil, it extends the life of an unusable pencil without wasting it.

Even in businesses that are well past their prime, innovation does not have to falter.

As long as there are dogged designers who chip away.

VR Advertising is here

Facebook just made a public admission.

For VR to succeed, it needs advertising.

The current cost of an Oculus headset is around $300 or more.

And it leads to the typical chicken and egg situation. How low will the price have to drop for people to start buying and using the headsets?

The answer is that advertising will probably be the route to a mass VR revolution.

Back in the 50s, P&G got on to television and attracted a whole generation of housewives with serials.

That led to more TVs being sold and more serials being made, and stars being created. Which then led to more products advertising on TV.

That continues to this day, as people across the world tune in at around 7 pm and watch everything from sports to singing contests to family sagas and politics.

It's a relationship that has worked everywhere, literally.

No matter how much advertising is trashed, and people talk of how little they believe in it, the simple equation of an advertising subsidy paying for mass reach is now etched in stone.

Facebook may be a social medium - but its engine is driven by the fuel of advertising.

That won't change, ever.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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In breathless prose, we're told what to expect at next year's fashion ramps.

The device that will dominate world markets

Or what the world has just discovered.

That's why this video is puzzling.

It appears on BBC, so you think it's gone through some standard checks.

The headline says "Why a Dutch wellness trend is taking over the world'

We're treated to a scenic view of cows ruminating in a idyllic landscape.

Close up shots of the cow's nose almost touching the camera.

And then, the great reveal about 20 seconds into the video.

Cow cuddling. Huh?

What does it involve?

Exactly what the phrase promises. You cuddle a cow.

Apparently, it's the ultimate stress buster for urban dwellers looking to find some pastoral peace.

Hug a cow.

The farmers who speak with a straight face that they first found their daughter cuddling cows 14 years ago and it helped.

As if kids over centuries haven't ever rubbed cow's noses or held them close

Then the medical justification. That cows have slightly warmer bodies and a lower heart rate.

So that makes the experience of resting against them comforting and stress busting.

Wow.

The Emperor's new clothes of the 21st century.

Plastic - from wonder material to nightmare

How did the best solution to the world's problems turn lethal?

Go back to headlines from the 60s about plastic.

It was touted as a brilliant breakthrough.

Packaging gurus hailed it. "It's lightweight, it's tough, transparent, waterproof"

One of the early switches was milk delivery. Glass bottles were cumbersome and expensive.

The cheap and easy availability of plastic became the game-changer across industries.

Packaging thrived and expanded, making logistics across the world a breeze.

And then, the very thing that made plastic amazing became the bottleneck.

The fact that it was indestructible.

How do you create a material that takes pressure, doesn't react easily with food and withstands a fair amount of temperature fluctuations disappear once it has served its purpose?

Over decades, development work done with plastic created a packaging revolution and durable, attractive and colorful packs became the norm for everything from edible oil to toys.

Those colours have proved to be the other problem. They're toxic and add to plastic pollution.

So how do we wean the world off plastic? We're addicted to it.

Besides, the entire world's supply chain will collapse.

But there is a solution on the horizon which I will touch upon tomorrow.

Rethinking plastic

Activists can highlight problems and build awareness.

Which is essential because solutions arise from exerting pressure where it matters - on governments, policy makers consumers and companies.

The actual solutions, however, have to come from scientists.

Earlier, I highlighted the core issue - plastic is indestructible.

And that's precisely where Xampla operates.

First, it is a 'plastic' made from plant material, not petroleum.

So, it decays harmlessly over time.

Xampla has moved beyond the lab into commercial production.

And they're tackling the biggest polluting segment within plastics - single use.

Food packaging, grocery bags, oil, liquids - all of these combines to create over 50% of the plastics discarded every year.

The other major applications are where most of us don't even see it.

In microplastics used for fabric softeners, shampoos and cosmetics, agricultural and industrial products.

All of this finally flows into the oceans and microplastics have been found at depths of up to 3000 metres, hundreds of kilometres off coastal areas.

The worst part? They affect marine life negatively in ways we're only beginning to understand.

Hopefully, Xampla and other companies will stem the tide.

As they make the plastic we need.

Without the pollution problems we have to worry about.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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Ford said all its cars would go electric by 2035.

They've already launched an all-electric version of their largest selling truck, the F-150 recently.

And in weeks, it got orders of over 50,000.

If all manufacturers decide to switch to electric vehicles, lithium will be the next oil.

Current estimates are that supplies will last until 2080.

But that doesn't mean that the price of lithium will not climb steeply in the years to come.

Chile, Australia, Argentina, China, US - these are the countries with the largest lithium reserves currently.

And it's inevitable that news about lithium developments will begin to dominate media cycles.

It has already begun.

Scientists at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology have reportedly developed an economically viable system to extract high-purity lithium from seawater.

The biggest benefit is not just the cost - the process apparently acts to desalinate the water as well.

But this is a research project, years away from commercial readiness.

Expect more and more stories around lithium to make the headlines.

The actual progress will be slow and erratic.

But there will be breathless reports from time to time.

The oil headlines will shift to the tides of lithium.

The tribute that cuts deep

Arijit Singh is a crooner.

His melodious rendering of romantic songs have blasted off the charts.

But his Covid saga 'Jaanein Bachayenge' (we will save lives) tugs at the heartstrings in completely different ways.

Raw emotions that go deep into the lives of people affected.

The video isn't pretty. There are no soft focus sequences.

Chests heave and patients struggle to breathe.

And the lyrics, written by Neelesh Misha capture the essence of what is being robbed everyday.

Chehra hamara ab hum, kam kam hi dekhte hain (we're seeing our own selves far lesser these days)

Kamron mein bebasi ke, bas gham hi dekhte hain (In rooms full of angst, it's grief that lives)

And Arijit is almost plaintive in his rendition of the song. It works because we've all gone through it in different ways. There was no escape.

There is a high note of hope, of course and the music does soar and bring up smiles.

But they're tired. The ones that mask sadness.

A nurse slumps on a chair in exhausted sleep

Ham ghar ke bistaron par, kab se nahin hain soye (when did we last sleep on our bed at home)

How long will tears flow?

The workhorses who create stars

There are people stars don't mess with.

Apart from directors and producers.

Makeup professionals and cinematographers.

They can make and break stars with a simple change of angle.

The ethereal looks are dependent on good makeup and lighting.

Over time, stars understand this dynamic perfectly.

They are mortal beings with secret weapons.

Dress designers. They understand what makes them look good and create looks that last far beyond the film.

The Cannes look or even the characters in a film stay in your mind because dress designers imprint the characters on people's minds even without making it obvious.

It's not even in the looks department. Famous singers will only record at a certain studio and with the same recordist.

It's not because they have a special liking for them.

They understand that the person has the ability to draw out something deep. The magic is created there, even if it already exists in the voice.

Stars have retinues because the process of retaining the gloss takes a team with multiple talents.

The business is unpredictable and everyone's looking for anchors to weather storms of public opinion and taste.

Some stories will never be told

The chinks in the glamour armour.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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The site advertises itself as the 4 am friend.

And during the pandemic that stretched on for more than two years, managing mental health has become a challenge.

There are taboos around seeking professional help.

And for counseling to work, a bond of trust has to be built.

Wysa is an Indian startup looking to solve truly difficult problems.

But loneliness and depression tackled by talking to a program?

In some ways, it's dystopian. Have we come to this that people have to seek out a chatbot?

Don't they have friends or family to turn to?

The issues are complex and layered.

The fact that they have signed up over 3 million users from 65 countries is telling.

Maybe people think they will be judged and seen differently when they speak to who they know.

On the other hand, the founder says there's research to show that people open up to bots 3 times faster than they would to humans.

They knew they were on the right track when a 13-year-old wrote in to say that the program had saved her life.

That's both reassuring and scary.

We thought that the human-to-human connection was supreme.

What if it isn't?

We'll never learn

We got hooked to AirbnB and Uber.

Now, are we ready to pay the price?

To switch people from existing habits, deep discounting of current market prices seems the only sure-fire formula.

In the initial years, Airbnb offered a subsidized alternative to hotels that cost twice or thrice as much.

Uber cost a fraction of cab travel.

All that is set to change with rates going through the roof and not just because of surge pricing.

Now that valuations have been built, existing market dynamics are forcing companies to set charges compared to what cabs and hotels cost anyway.

Pay Pal had to do the same to get people to move to digital payments. They paid people to do transactions to begin with.

And as they got comfortable with the convenience, the prices inched steadily higher.

Google let us upload tons of photographs for a whole decade. Now, there's a monthly or yearly charge going forward once the storage limit is crossed.

Take a look at any new entrant into a business and it's the same story over and over again.

We can't resist the lure of free or low prices.

As we mint a steady stream of billionaires.

Paul and Mike make edible sin

The brand name is far from exciting.

It's as if they decided that people's names are far easier to remember than concocted brand exotica.

The unusual part is that the chocolate is made in Kerala.

Yes, God's own country produces a highly delectable version of edible sin.

It's not assembled from imported cocoa but grown in local plantations.

Wet cocoa beans are sourced from farmers in Kerala and Andhra Pradesh.

Farm-to-bar, as they call it is all managed locally. And backed by Synthite – a USD 200 million natural food ingredients company.

So, why is a Made in India chocolate news?

They won a silver for the 64% Dark Sichuan Pepper and Orange Peel Vegan chocolate at the International Chocolate awards.

That's winning over true competition from Swiss and Belgian chocolatiers who have decades of experience.

As always, Indians wait for international validation.

Now that it has arrived, the surge of orders on the site has led to delays in delivery.

Expect Paul and Mike to suddenly ascend the status sweepstakes.

They've beaten the biggies on their home turf. What if it was a Silver?

Next time, it could be Gold.

Honeycomb Toffee or Gin Cocktail Bee's Knees, anyone?

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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Conversations between people meeting for the first time rarely gets off to a smooth start.

There is no formula.

Sometimes, you laugh too loudly at feeble jokes.

And search desperately for the next topic to bring up.

The use of the word 'awkward' by either one, in some ways, heightens the tension.

As if an acknowledgement makes escape harder.

If we accept there will be gaps in the conversation, the spikes of anxiety could be modulated.

The context literally defines what happens next.

The Indian 'arranged marriage' conversation foisted on couples is a classic case.

In just about 10-15 minutes, by playing 20 questions, judgements have to be made.

In most cases, this leads to completely artificial conversations.

Having to define sensitive points of view that would hardly ever be raised in a normal setting.

Both are acutely aware that the adults in the next room are awaiting a response.

And they also know that being truthful can be a deal breaker.

How does one answer a loaded question - Do you like kids?

If you say yes, does it mean you want to have many of them?

Sometimes, the awkward silences mean a lot more than the words exchanged.

Now, 7-11s will serve electricity as well

There are over 70,000 7-11 stores in the US

And they've moved into the EV charging game early on.

These stations don't require huge amounts of real estate.

As the popularity of EVs explode, people will be looking for more places to charge their vehicles when traveling far from home.

This works in two ways. Customers have to spend at least 10-15 minutes, if not more to recharge their vehicles. And they'll end up purchasing stuff from the stores as well.

They become traffic and business generators.

A fresh source of revenue.

In the initial phase, they're looking to add 500 chargers at 250 stores and ramp it up over time.

Hopefully, the chargers from multiple brands will be compatible.

Unlike mobile phone chargers where you had to find a suitable point at airports to get a quick charge.

It looks like we won't have to wait for petrol stations to convert.

Several other networks of fast-food chains and restaurants will probably be roped in over time.

No one's going to refuse new revenue opportunities.

They will jockey for an advantage, of course but cars slurping up electricity may be quite profitable in the long run.

No puns intended.

Since when did repairs get controversial?

A couple of generations ago, we repaired everything.

Shoes, watches, bags, pens...

There was no question of buying something new until every last ounce of value was extracted.

Somewhere along the way, things changed.

Things like LTV (Lifetime value of Customers) and CAC (Customer Acquisition Costs) began to play a role in Planned Obsolescence.

In other words, people were strategically shifted to the replacement treadmill.

Spare parts morphed into sub-assemblies that had to be replaced fully, not in parts.

It began in a small way with Authorised Service Centres managed by brands themselves.

The friendly neighborhood mechanic would have replaced a broken tail lamp on your car. But in the company service centre, you had to get the whole set replaced.

Even if there was basically nothing wrong with the other light.

Of course, that was a lot more expensive than just one tail lamp.

Remember the time you could replace batteries on the mobile phone?

Now, it's been sealed shut and you have to buy it only from the authorised centres.

It's not that our behavior changed.

It was nudged in the other direction.

But the resistance from customers is now kicking into a higher gear.

The game is afoot.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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It had to happen.

From the automated Roomba that cleans floors and sold like vada pau during the pandemic, robots are chipping away at tasks one at a time.

At the high end, they're assembling cars and managing warehouses.

So, what's a robot doing painting nails?

It's quite a clever repurposing of the ink-jet printer.

Or at least that's the way it looks.

You place your fingers, one at a time and the jet sprays the preferred shade of nail polish in a matter of minutes.

The way they describe it is - No slip ups. No slowdowns. No small talk.

Another leisure activity, the one that women do in company or as a community has now become a 'task' to be automated.

Clinical efficiency needs to come into nail polishing. Too much time wasted is the admonition.

Couldn't they have focused on the fact that you can get patterns which can't be done by hand, for example?

Or trying out colours that you wouldn't do normally.

Why talk about saving time, when it's something women do happily?

I guess it's because robots don't have feelings.

And it's all about getting a job done - a man must have thought this up!

The long running fascination with bank robberies

It looks like banks have always been prized targets whether they were remote or centrally located.

The earliest film on the theme is 'The Asphalt Jungle' and it was made back in 1950. The success led to a new genre.

Dog Day Afternoon and the recent series Money Heist continue to make money by telling tales about robbing cash.

Now, which was the earliest known online bank break in?

You probably think it was in the early 2000s, but it went back to 1994.

Large companies and banks were on a global network run by X.25 protocol.

This was nowhere as friendly as the current internet and finding companies was a task in itself.

The dominoes started tumbling with a magazine called Phrack publishing the addresses of companies.

And hackers started surveying the systems to understand how it worked.

They got through to the money transfer messaging that banks used and managed to get some usernames and logins.

The first hack transferred $400,000 to an account in Finland by a Russian hacker named Vladimir.

But then, the affected bank struck back. They ensured that he was never able to siphon money out again.

A great episode from the Darknet Diaries podcast.

From the sun to Singapore via Australia

It's a cool idea.

Singapore wants to rid itself of its reliance on natural gas and switch to renewable energy.

But space is at a premium in this country.

So, it's struck a deal with Australia to supply power generated from a solar farm set up in the outback.

Through a cable running underwater, the power will be transmitted to Singapore to meet 20% of its needs.

Think of the sheer scale of the idea. Setting up a solar plant over 4000 kilometers away.

For Australia, it's a chance to make use of land that has no commercial value.

The solar farm will cover an area of 120 square kms and generate over 14 gigawatts of energy per year, making it the world's largest, by far.

On the Australian outback, this is among the most arid stretches of land and sparsely populated, making it the ideal location.

It's being built by a company called Sun Cable, which can then supply the power to several countries in South East Asia.

So, it's not the broadband internet industry alone that will thrive underwater.

Power generation and transmission are set to be transformed with this project.

Solar power is evolving in unpredictable ways.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ideascape.substack.com

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The first flat screen televisions were invented as far back as 1964.

Remember those huge boxy TVs that took up spaces in living rooms? They are now history.

It took decades before they were available at rates that everyone could afford.

But air-conditioners are another matter altogether.

They've moved from window to 'split'. And stayed there for ages.

Progress has been slow. The prices have stayed high even while power consumption dropped.

But if air-conditioners have to become as common as fans, they will have to be re-designed from the ground up.

Starting with the installation that makes huge unsightly holes in the wall. And precariously balances the outdoor unit outside on a clamped stand.

For high-rise buildings, it's like having stuntmen come in and do repairs whenever necessary.

I'm sure it's not due to a lack of effort or imagination. It's probably an engineering issue that does not have a solution at this point in time.

Look at the advances being made. Easing up the installation.

Or reducing the size so that it blends into the wall and looks slightly better.

TV manufacturers proved they could accommodate colour, size and clarity into a slim sheet.

When will air-conditioners follow?

Google made a big move. Quietly.

Google has started where customers are unlikely to notice the change.

The Nest Hub of products is being updated to the new OS, Fuschia.

And nothing will change, except the OS.

Why is that a big deal?

An analogy would be changing the foundation of a house without the owner noticing.

So, why is Google proceeding with caution?

Well, they got away by being the dominant OS on smartphones with Android.

Windows was late to the party and never managed to catch up.

So, Apple and Google have a complete lock on the global smartphone market.

But nothing stays constant.

As multiple devices get hooked up to the net, the underlying technologies are competing to come out on top. Lighting systems in homes. Smart buildings.

For most people, updates are a notification on the desktop or mobile.

And Google would like to ensure that the same happens with TVs, appliances or any future 'smart' devices.

An OS for everything. Keeping it quiet is smart.

Let the competition sleep on it.

Pipe dreams

We need pipes for much more than water and electricity in homes today.

But they remain largely unattainable!

Have you seen the size of the pipes that run electrical wires across your house?

There was a time when slim ones were enough.

But today, we need them to deliver substantially more.

Satellite cables snake through several floors and emerge on terraces with the dish pointed in the right direction to ensure you can watch Indian Idols sing or newscasters snarl at loud guests.

The broadband providers need to thread them to install last mile fiber for high speed Wi-Fi.

They have to be placed at the right point midway in the house or you'll have several 'dead' Wi-Fi zones within.

The pipes of a decade ago are no longer broad enough to accommodate our ever-bulging needs

We had a landline and the technician who came from BSNL told us he couldn't draw the cable through the pipe because there was no room to add the cable.

That's when land lines became the first sacrificial lambs of advancing technology.

You don't want to be tethered within the house if you can help it.

But real freedom is a pipe dream as of now!

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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In India, you're so used to asking for directions from people, Maps seemed unnecessary.

And in all the years I've driven to places, there was always the auto stand, the corner store or helpful pedestrians.

It's hard to find roads without people in India. There's someone to show you the way and sometimes, they'll go out of their way to help.

The directions may be confusing and imprecise but well-intentioned.

People want to be helpful even when they don't have a clue.

My first experience of using Maps was to find the entrance exam centre for my son in Pondicherry, a city we were not familiar with.

I was highly skeptical that it would actually show the correct way in the glorious mess of India's road names and roundabouts.

Now, an Indian voice guides you but at the time, it was obviously American. And the voice had a tough time with the street names, and it was amusing to hear the stumbles.

But we got the gist of the directions.

When we were guided through a narrow left and then led to the correct centre well in time, I became a fan.

What's better than being told 'You have arrived...'?

The significance of Blue ticks

Does your Twitter account have a Blue tick next to your name?

It doesn't? Tch. Tch.

Amazing how it's taken on several meanings and status connotations within the last few years.

Verified profiles have become sought after

Facebook also has the blue tick to verify your profile. But it does not have the same Twitter swagger for unknown reasons.

Why is a simple sign like this open to interpretation and misinterpretation?

The moment a differentiator is created, people want to get it for themselves.

Works in practically every category.

Double Blue ticks are another signal on WhatsApp.

Tells the sender you've seen a message.

A simple notification becomes increasingly complex through interpretation.

Some people don't want to admit they have seen the message, so they block off the signal. Allows for deniability later.

The other signal people block is 'Last seen'. It's a frequent flash point between parents and kids.

Kids don't like to be tracked. But parents want to know. And that sets up points of conflict.

Status, subterfuge, conflict. Any signal is open to layered interpretation.

It does not matter what the feature or the notification is. Once it can be interpreted, it changes.

Non-verbal cues take over and dominate.

There are singers. And there's Karaoke.

One of the great things about Karaoke is its inclusivity.

It doesn't matter of you don't know the difference between C Sharp and B Flat.

Or if the composition is based on Raag Yaman or Kalyani.

It allows you to sing off key, off pitch and still have a great time.

Karaoke literally means 'empty orchestra'

And what started off in bars and clubs has now grown to include reunions, weddings and anniversaries.

It originated in Japan and grown to have a market value of over $5700 million globally.

Not bad for the rest of us who can't hold a note beyond a point.

This includes the song systems, equipment and tracks that have steadily made inroads and probably stolen some market share from that evergreen Indian activity - Antakshris

You can buy entire sets of the background music of popular numbers and keep expanding the collection.

It has birthed apps like Smule which cater to the breed of talented 'bathroom singers'

May be they aren't pros but they can still dazzle their own class of Boomers or Millennials.

For a brief while, bask in the stardom that great singers take for granted.

And build a captivating acquaintance with soulful melodies.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ideascape.substack.com

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No one has to remember phone numbers anymore.

But retaining memories is a good way to build associations and ideas in the mind.

Apart from purely practical uses.

Passwords, for instance. Or where the important papers in the house are.

It's also a good indication of mental acuity. A tendency to forget common things is a sign of both age and slowing faculties.

We're also discovering that the ancients had much better memory techniques than what we have today.

One of the popular methods is the 'memory palace' where people are told to store items in certain 'rooms' in the mind.

Medical students have to remember a lot of obscure terms - and that leads to high stress, not just before examinations.

So, one group was taught the 'memory palace' method.

And the other was schooled in the aboriginal technique.

Which worked much better.

Makes sense. Much before writing originated, oral cultures had to rely on memory to retain knowledge for generations.

Naturally they found the best ways to pass it to their children.

For all of us who rely on the memory in our devices, it's an important lesson.

The critical backups should be in our own heads!

Ready? Let's begin

Happy Birthday to you...

How many times have you heard the song?

Over the decades, it's probably been a few hundred times.

It has mass appeal and the whole routine around cakes, candles and slicing up the cake has become standard fare.

It's probably the best known 'English' song

The lyrics are so simple and repeatable, they've been locked and loaded.

Apart from being associated with several pleasant memories, it's one of the clichés and markers of age.

Loved by children and not so much by adults, especially the ones who can no longer hide it with dye and dashing flair.

But a composer has done the unthinkable.

He has solid reasons for saying that 'Happy Birthday' is badly composed.

You wouldn't give it a second thought, but he makes persuasive arguments.

And once he points them out, you're forced to concede that the tune could do with a few modifications.

It's not going to change anytime soon.

We know how people hold on to everything dear to them.

Especially memories. And when associated with birthdays, its a sacrilege to change the soundtrack.

Listen to it without a bias - and then, may be your next birthday could sound a little different.

A TV sized Kindle

That's a stretch.

Kindle is available only in the regular book size

But a Chinese company Dasung is releasing a 25 inch monitor based on the tech that Kindle has been using all these years.

So, why release a B&W monitor so large? Does it have any potential at all?

For one thing, all LED monitors are unnaturally bright.

It's like looking into a light all day and that affects the vision of people who are glued to their screens long term.

If most of your work is on Word and Excel, or you're typing out code, imagine doing it on a monitor so easy on the eye, it's like looking at a sheet of paper.

The power consumed is also way below what traditional monitors require.

It won't work for the entertainment industry or for graphic design, of course. The e-ink technology does not have colour capabilities anywhere close to OLED.

However, that isn't the goal.

It is to provide a monitor that people can work on for any length of time with minimal eye strain

It's expensive right now and the main targets are companies where data processing or finance are part of the daily workflow.

The potential is massive.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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It's no bull. They're bison.

They don't need expensive firefighting equipment or gear.

And they possibly provide the best protection against natural wildfires.

As long as they are allowed to roam the land and eat.

Not exactly social animals.

But they have appetites that seriously threaten some 'eating contest' winners.

Up to 35 kilos of vegetation in a single day.

Anyone who says vegetarians are weaklings hasn't looked a bison in the eye.

These animals are messy eaters, so they trample grasses and create open patches of land.

In the process, they ensure that fires can't spread easily.

They crash through thick undergrowth in their hunt for food.

And that's really the most effective part.

Imagine having to set up large firefighting operations with trained firemen.

Not to mention the number of helicopters required to dump large loads of water.

Humans have got it backwards.

We remove the safeguards that nature installed and then devise expensive planning and infrastructure to do the job that nature manages effortlessly.

Will we ever learn?

Bison populations thrive in these conditions. The only problem could be too many of them over time.

But that's better than the expense of re-growing forests and resettling residents, right?

Hotter than hot cakes

Miners vs gamers.

In an earlier post, I had written about crypto miners competing with gamers to buy powerful GPUs amidst stock sellouts.

Bots are being used to buy up stock as soon as it hits the online market

The contest has escalated with companies taking preemptive action.

They have created high priced product bundles to deter miners from purchasing all available stock.

At stake here is a battle between customers who could disappear overnight and those who have helped companies grow - the gamers

Now, that's creating a fresh set of problems.

Miners are still aggressively stocking up because these processors have the power to guarantee profits in bitcoin mining operations.

And to recover the inflated costs they're paying, they are likely to dump the rest of the bundle components like processors, motherboards and SSDs on Ebay and similar auction platforms over the next few months.

Creating more headaches for manufacturers with prices for the components being higher in the online markets.

There's real demand. And there's unreal demand.

Nvidia is planning differential premium pricing to make miners pay more.

There's no timeout for games in the real world.

The company that grows forests

Not planting trees. Growing dense forests.

Terraformation is going against the grain.

And conventional thinking by attempting the impossible.

It's headed by a former Reddit CEO who tired of the promises made by technology.

He saw the light after spending decades inventing the next new thing.

Realized it wasn't worth it and went back to the basics.

Using low-tech but proven components to work at scale.

There's a short window available to counteract the effects of climate change

And that must be used to deploy solutions that work in a short time frame.

The first project was to validate two things - whether it was possible and whether it was economical and self-sustaining.

This is in Hawaii where the water required for the project was sourced from a desalination plant that required less than half an acre to set up.

It supplied all the water necessary by transforming brackish water into water available for irrigation.

They are proving multiple projects like this can be started across the world in parallel.

Once more countries and entrepreneurs come on board, growing forests across millions of acres is not a pipedream.

Planting trees is good. But growing forests is an even better idea.

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Cold chains in India have many gaps.

It's not easy to store things at a constant temperature, given how erratic electric supply is in certain parts of the country.

Especially in places where infrastructure is still basic.

If it's ice cream, the worst that can happen is that a batch will melt and go bad.

For vaccines, the tolerance is far lower - and they are no longer effective if they have been kept out longer than the recommended period.

While ice and insulated packs have been the norm, an Indian company is building a robust solution.

It's based on phase changing materials and they absorb or release heat depending on the outside temperature.

This helps to keep vaccines at a constant recommended temperature all through the transportation phase without having to be hooked up to a power supply.

A box can keep the vaccines safe for as long as 4 days or 96 hours and tracked all through the journey.

And ensuring that the contents are safe at the point where they have to be administered - at a hospital, for example.

Pluss has been around since 1994. Thankfully they've scaled to meet demand.

In the nick of time.

A showroom in every customer's home

The outdoor furniture business in the US is worth over $18 billion.

But it's quite different from indoor furniture which is about style and atmosphere.

It's more to do with weathering the elements and being durable.

And the target is the upper middle class who have sprawling backyards for family time.

The best place to experience the product is in the right setting.

So, Outer came up with an idea that simply sold itself.

They converted the backyards of willing customers into retail showrooms.

When visitors to the website want to check the furniture in its natural environment, they can visit the nearest 'showroom' in the customer's backyard and see for themselves

It serves two purposes - talking to audiences who were most likely to convert

And providing them with a product experience as close to owning it.

Durability is established because the products retain their looks over time in the open, not air-conditioned showrooms.

It's a great example of growing a product category by getting customers to be your best salespeople.

Economising on showrooms while demonstrating the products.

Outer is now one of the fastest growing companies in outdoor furniture.

Doesn't seem so surprising now, does it?

How many 'lists' do you actually use?

Amazon has a wish list for books - or any product you'd like to buy.

I go back to them a few weeks or months later and don't even know why they're on the list.

Is it just me because it defies logic?

When we add products or books to lists, the implication is that we consider them valuable enough to buy.

When conditions change a few months later, the book or the product seem to drop off the radar altogether.

What's happening here?

There are hundreds of apps promising help to get things done.

First you forget to download them.

Later, they end up in the sinkhole of mobile apps on your phone.

I suspect the way these things are developed is that one person discovers what works for them.

They assume the whole world, or at least a large part of the market thinks the same way.

But our approach to problem solving or even list management is so random, that it is hard to put down as a formula for success.

We all save up on bookmarks and articles to 'read later'

How many of them do we go back to?

What's your logical method of madness?

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Smart cities are all the rage.

For good reason. They are supposed to be the next big thing.

Driving higher efficiencies and generating large amounts of data for analysis.

We've seen that traffic, health and infrastructure planning helps to map out the ways in which cities should be developed.

Tech companies have also been advocates for the establishment of smart cities.

But cyber security experts are now lining up against making cities 'smart' in all respects.

They fear the risks of a cyber-attack increase exponentially when infrastructure controls get 'smart'

The current 'dumb' power stations are much harder to hack.

Data generated about the functioning of a city can also become a primary target for command and control.

A contract for a 'smart city' in UK was objected to for several reasons.

The National Cyber Security Centre pointed out that as more and more services were added to the 'smart grid', security provisions needed to scale exponentially to avoid determined hackers.

We're seeing ransomware attacks grow in size and complexity by the year.

So the kind of 'smart infrastructure' that needs to be built has to be examined in greater detail.

Smart or dumb cities? Tough choice.

The Facebook - Signal spat

Signal, the messaging platform wanted to run ads on Instagram.

But they weren't the regular creative executions. They told people why the ads were being shown to them.

Demonstrating how Facebook data drilled deep into people's interests.

And the keywords were highlighted in the ads.

It picked up interests and profiles of people to generate the ads based on their interests, their status, their circle of friends and may be things they weren't too comfortable about.

It's one thing to read an article about it. It's another to find out how much Facebook knows about you.

The deep drilling into the lives of people was on display

There's no mention of Signal in the ads.

It's like using an advertising platform to show people how targeting works and not to promote the product.

Facebook was not amused.

The ads were banned, and Signal immediately launched into a PR offensive to highlight the ban

Facebook struck back, saying that Signal never intended to run the ads but were only using them to seek publicity.

Signal claimed that the ads were never approved, and Facebook said that they had blocked it due to an unrelated 'payments' issue earlier.

You decide who's right.

We're shattering data record limits

From gigabytes to tera and petabytes

It's as if there is no limit to storage. But there is.

The NASDAQ in the US is close to reaching the edge of displaying a share record data value.

Class A shares for Berkshire Hathaway Inc. are flying close to the outer limit the exchange can handle - $429,496.7295.

And the share price is at over $421,000 per share

An upgrade will fix it, but you see where this is going.

We think computers can scale endlessly and data will magically organise itself.

Every system has to operate within a maximum and a minimum. In most cases, the maximums are projected for the several decades and there is enough room for growth.

That limit is so distant in the beginning as to be inconsequential.

In a matter of years, some property values could touch billions.

It's not just computing.

In 1976, at the Montreal Olympics Nadia Comaneci became the first gymnast to score a perfect 10. All the judges awarded her full marks. And the system crashed.

Perfection is out of reach in the real world!

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When banks have them, it means they've lost a substantial amount of money.

When a family sports the tonsured head, they've gifted hair to the lord.

Actors and actresses have 'looks' in hit films that define trends for years.

The 'Sadhana' cut, with an even set of strands covering the forehead was the rage in the 60s' in Hindi movies. Now, social media makes the rules.

The 'Bob Cut' invented by Vidal Sassoon gave women not just short hair but a look that defined a generation.

Yul Brynner was the first to make bald look sexy

Hair styles have been not just about conforming but non-conforming as well.

Dreadlocks or 'jatas' are the Indian sadhu's stereotypical image. Needs no maintenance as opposed to the dreadlocks of American footballers. Two completely different worlds.

The frizzy hair or the Afro look is a complete contrast to the straight, flowing hair or the ones with salon styled curls and waves.

But when women cut their hair short in India, it's still a way to signal rebellion - and they're referred to as 'parkatis'. Literally translates as 'snipped wings'

Through the ages, scissors have created enduring symbolic value.

And defined movements or alignments with causes.

Don't let the enemy know that you know

As war strategy, it was one of the most effective counters.

When the Enigma code was broken in World War 2, the team that cracked it drove home the point that the Germans should not realise their encrypted messages were no longer a secret.

If they reworked the system, the allies would be at a complete disadvantage again.

So tactically, they acted only when there was enough confusion about how the message was decrypted. Or created another diversion for attribution.

Turns out the strategy is just as useful in sport!

Andre Agassi and Boris Becker were at the top of their game.

But Agassi had figured out where Boris was going to serve.

All he had to do was look at his mouth.

Boris had this peculiar habit.

As he tossed the ball up, his tongue would be thrust out for a moment.

Either at the middle or towards the side.

And then, Agassi would know exactly which serve would be used.

But he never let on that he knew.

It would only be deployed to get the maximum advantage in a game.

And Agassi told Boris about it only years later.

Champions don't just play well - they are great tacticians!

The grass isn't greener on Mars

Mars sucks.

That's the title of a new campaign.

And it outlines all the problems that humans are going to face out there.

It's a searing way to let earth dwellers focus on the planet we already have.

A dot in the galaxy that we call home.

We don't want it looking anything like Mars.

That's for sure.

What you don't see in all those dreams of extra-terrestrial voyages is the huge difference between Earth and Mars.

You complain about -20 degrees weather? How about -117?

The dust storms on Mars don't last for a few days.

They last for months

And a year on Mars is roughly twice the number of days on earth.

So, you can grow old slower.

And celebrate your birthday once every two earth years.

But then, you'd have to survive and count the days, right?

No oceans or forests or mountains to explore.

Think of looking at Earth from Mars and wondering why you ever left.

Gives 'Buyer's remorse' a whole new dimension.

Earth is the most happening planet in the galaxy.

And we dream of barren landscapes?

We've all hit the galactic lottery in the universe.

And it still isn't enough.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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It was a simple launch from Apple.

But there are several theories circulating around it already.

Air tags currently have one function. To locate missing things.

Attach them to any object and you won't lose them

It's a beacon that radiates and lets you know exactly where they are.

So, if it's under a cushion, left on the backseat of a car or well just about anywhere, it's supposed to help you find everything from car keys to purses.

The theory is that Air Tags will be the essential point for AR applications in future.

Wired writes about how tying digital information to physical objects is an important step for how AR will be deployed by future iPhones.

And Apple is building the ecosystem.

AR is not going to happen in one step but a series of mini-steps and each one of those will have to provide customers with additional value.

Otherwise, it won't be purchased.

The darker theory is that it will be used to track spouses.

By dropping them into purses

Apple, however, says that users will get warnings when they're being tracked by other iPhones.

Use and misuse seems to move in lockstep.

Close your eyes and hear the world

As I write, I'm listening to the sounds around me.

Paying closer attention to the layers

Birdsong erupts from trees.

A whipsaw grates from a construction site close by.

The whoosh of the spinning fan in the room. The background accompaniment of everyday living.

A wheelbarrow rumbles across interlocked tiles.

Snatches of words drift upwards as evening walkers go on their rounds.

The distant traffic sounds on the road mesh into one.

The intensity varies by direction and volume.

The staccato hammering of a drill mixed with birdsong.

The leaves whispering as hundreds of them sway in the gentle breeze.

The TV plays out in another room. A smattering of applause from crowds and the jingle during an ad break.

Canned laughter slips in like punctuation.

The wheelbarrow returns, this time moving in the opposite direction.

An autorickshaw without a silencer is on the main road hundreds of meters away and I can still hear it.

The click of a switch as a light is turned on.

And while I tune in and out, the keyboard keys play their own understated rhythm.

Soundscapes are less explored than landscapes.

Amplify it and you'll be amazed at how much more awareness you develop.

How do you handle annoyances?

One of the early viral protests against a brand was by a musician named Dave Carrol in 2008

His $3500 guitar was broken by careless baggage handling

When he tried to get compensation from the airline, their response was a shrug

He should have carried it along with him on the flight

So Dave Carroll got back at the brand in the best way possible

He made a music video titled 'United breaks guitars'

And it went viral, naturally. Everyone loves a rant that's smartly done. Sung as a breezy 'country music' number, it has over 20 million views now

United had no choice but to compensate him. The guitar brand also jumped in and gave him a replacement.

Recently, saw 'Hathway? No way!

A Twitter rant about getting spammed by the call center.

It seems to be garnering sympathy. And people are coming up with their own Hathway stories.

Plus, the effort involved in stopping daily calls.

One of them went as far as to dial a senior executive everyday

How far would you go?

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It's one of the prizes of fame.

People swarming to get an autograph - and now a selfie.

Fame by association.

The selfie with a celebrity seems to be the in-thing now.

Adoring fans with smartphones held high, pleading for the celebrity to walk into the frame.

Followed by frenzied postings on social media with a flurry of likes and emojis.

Was the signature mania any different?

What happened to those endless coming-of-age signatures with a flourish?

Were they retained and kept as encounters to be preserved for posterity?

Or forgotten just like the temporary touch of fame and fortune.

I find it hard to understand because this frenzy never took hold, even in my teenage years.

The only time I got an autograph was eminently forgettable.

I was in the airport lounge catching a flight to Mumbai.

And in one of the seats was Lata Mangeshkar.

The nightingale of India.

She looked bored.

I walked up to her with a smile and hesitantly held out the back of the boarding pass and a pen.

She signed, and her expression didn't waver one bit.

By then, she could have done it in her sleep.

What's more tragic than fame being a routine?

Google Glass did not disappear

In its first avatar, Google Glass acquired a bad rep.

It was seen as a Frankenstein version of spectacles - the one that allowed people to do things that were not socially acceptable.

Priced at $1500 at launch, it looked as if the market for it would be miniscule.

Except that it wasn't.

Google found that there was a massive market available but they would have to rework it altogether.

So, you'll now see Google Glass on manufacturing lines where workers can figure out complex routines guided by it.

Doctors are using it to get stored patient data streamed while they examine them and decide the next course of action.

It's being used in outdoor situations where service engineers are guided by the stream when they have to fix equipment.

Google went back to the drawing board and did a lot more listening than designing. Seems to have worked.

It's being used to speed up training routines and do the 'show while telling' way to train.

Possibly more useful than being instructed in classrooms and figuring things out in practice later.

Google Glass has had a makeover away from the limelight.

And changed character along the way.

Is there a business model in idling airplanes?

We board a flight.

And the engines are switched on as the aircraft pulls out of the bay and taxies to the runway.

Depending on the congestion (before the pandemic) it would take about 20-30 minutes before the aircraft was airborne.

During that time, the plane has already burned through hundreds of litres of expensive aviation fuel on the ground

A Boeing 747 guzzles 1 tonne of fuel every 17 minutes.

That's where Israel Aerospace Industries saw an opportunity. They invented a passenger jet-towing vehicle that could be remotely operated.

It was called the TaxiBot.

And planes had to switch on their engines only 5 minutes before takeoff.

There was another tangential problem the TaxiBot solved.

The jet engines could suck in things on the ground while taxiing leading to engine damage - solving another major problem.

The TaxiBot operates at New Delhi international airport and was the first airport globally to reach over 1000 TaxiBot movements.

In the process, the estimate is that it saved airlines nearly 2.1 lakh litres of aviation fuel in the last couple of years.

Multiply that by airports around the world.

And you have a business model built around idling airplanes.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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There's no plot.

No character arc from bad to good.

It starts in a beautiful section of the woods.

Sunlight filters through the trees.

The natural forest sounds of a river flowing and birds chirping fill the soundtrack.

So what do you think happens next?

Nothing.

It's like someone walked into the forest, set up the camera to run for a few hours and then uploaded it on to YouTube.

You would expect a film like this to get about 10-20 views?

After all, how long does it take to actually get to a real forest from where you're living?

But there's something deeper operating here.

This is just one of a series of films.

The only difference between them is the setting.

So, the deduction would be that city dwellers do miss out on the natural wonders of nature.

And they're trying to compensate by soaking it in HD glory on their laptops or large TV screens.

The video I'm referring to was uploaded in 2017.

It has over 8 million views.

There are several others

The Eiffel Tower from a Paris apartment balcony.

These movies are playing on individual screens.

Meditative states of being in an escape from stressful lives.

Stories without morals

It was the inevitable tail that wagged the body.

Teachers telling us stories in primary school and in the end, asking what the 'moral' was.

Our early introduction to the concept of 'good' and 'bad' people.

As if they belonged to two distinct camps and lived different lives. Separated on the same planet.

Indian movies perpetuated the myth with no layers whatsoever.

Heroes were all good, villains all bad.

Like two ends of a battery, perfectly divided between extremes.

We were fed the awe-inspiring tales from Amar Chitra Katha.

As if a constant drip of 'good' values would seep into our beings and help us form a strong sense of 'values'

And the niggles we observed with a child's limited understanding were meant to be ignored.

But we loved Archie comics even though we didn't have a clue where 'Riverdale' was

The girls were so beautiful, it was breathtaking.

The characters seemed to have great fun.

And they were concerned about the same things we were.

Friends, school, college, food, parents and infatuations - though not necessarily in that order.

We related to them far better than all those moral tales.

But we were too guilty to admit it.

The road not taken

It was a joke.

The poem by Robert Frost.

A bit like discovering that the background of one of life's revelations was less than stellar.

Frost and his friend Edward Thomas went on frequent hikes through the woods.

Edward took his time over deciding which route to follow.

So, Frost wrote 'The Road Not Taken' as a joke, poking fun at his friend's indecision

Over the years, the poem became a lodestar

Audiences related deeply to the message as a metaphor about life's choices.

Like the Mona Lisa, it became one of the widely recognized poems.

And better known as 'The Road Less Traveled'.

Which connects to the last line about making difficult choices.

A sense of not knowing what the destinations in life were.

The way the poem ends - those two lines are both encouraging and inconclusive.

'I took the one less traveled by

And that has made all the difference'

It does not say anything about success but greater awareness and learning.

And it leaves the interpretation to the reader.

We make decisions not knowing how they will turn out.

What happens, simple or profound is not up to us.

Even Frost had no idea.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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In the early days of the pandemic last year, there was a run on toilet paper in the US

It was quite mystifying to Indians who have no such needs in bathroom emergencies.

But how a product evolves is fascinating, even hilarious.

In India, facial and other tissues still constitute a small market of about Rs 1500 crores.

For a nation of over a billion, that's a drop in a thunderstorm

Handkerchiefs have been the all-purpose, go to solution for the middle class - used for everything from wiping sweat to snot.

The backup for gargantuan colds, protection from collar grime or wrapped around the pinky in qawwalis.

And of course, the way the hero and heroine met each other in films - the fragrant rumaal dropped carelessly on the road.

But some of the habits from the West are creeping in.

Tissues are now a part of the monthly purchase cycle

Still used carefully and skimped upon - a single pack of disposable tissue costs as much as a handkerchief.

From a hygiene standpoint, it's no contest

But given that in India, 'disposable' means anywhere, it can quickly become an eyesore as well as a health hazard.

Ah, well.

The Ferrari ramp walk

An intrepid digital product designer from Berlin has created a showstopper.

Car design through the decades starting from the 1940s

He assembles them all in little bubbles you can click into and view in greater detail for the models you are keen about.

For anyone interested in seeing how car design has evolved, it's a great place to spend time.

He's looking to get more information about cars designed from the mid-70s to the 80s

Right now, the graph looks like the most fertile period was when studios designed cars - from the 50s to the 70s

The bubbles overlap profusely and the year is barely visible.

It's also a vivid example of how to fit design progress on timelines, especially when trying to depict creative streaks of the entire automobile industry.

There are 97 Ferrari models and over 60 Alfa Romeo designs on the site.

Right now, it's static.

But you can visualise how this could become a lot more interactive if each brand is captured at the same angle through the years.

Then you can see how the passage of time impacted car design and what changed.

Looks like a project that will go places.

And in exciting directions

A pause

This particular post was written at the time when the Delta wave was sweeping India.

And it was the way the world felt during those days

There's just too much to process.

If you open up any social media feed, it's full of doom and pain.

There's a widespread shortage of oxygen in hospitals.

In retrospect, it seems completely predictable, because ICUs have to care for Covid patients battling breathlessness.

The last time around, in the first wave, this didn't happen.

There were reports of ICUs being full but oxygen availability was never in doubt.

There's anecdotal evidence of people who've had two doses of the vaccine still being infected.

Then, you read about the statistic that reinfections for people who have been vaccinated being 0.003%

We're seeing the downsides of too much information being dispensed.

And there's no way to verify what the truth is.

Even on mainstream media, there are conflicting reports.

It is probably best to navigate by instinct.

And assume that isolation is the best way forward.

Pause all social contact - interact through video like we have been doing all through last year.

And stay away from people who spread gloom.

Maybe it is being escapist.

The eye of the storm is a dark place to be in.

This too shall pass.

When noise overwhelms, find peace in the power of silence.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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We still go to work every day. Online.

We track our steps, our heartbeats, our calories and our social capital. With tiny rushes of adrenalin and fear.

We snap pictures but not on old-fashioned cameras anymore.

Headphones have become essential.

We move through the day from one screen to another, even when we say we aren't addicted.

Conversations are hard. Texting is preferred.

Our concept of money has become way more ephemeral.

We dislike unpredictability even while saying we welcome it.

We're watching movies about people and countries to expand our minds.

We prefer simulations of the world compared to the real thing.

We think there's nothing unusual about meeting people on screens and maintaining relationships that way.

We've got tens of thousands of emails in our inboxes which we may never read. But we still don't delete the old ones on the off chance that something important will be deleted.

We've got into micro likes and dislikes and don't know why we defend these positions.

Emojis have become our nuanced expressions instead of words.

Swipe, browse, submit and attach mean completely different things online compared to what they meant in the real world.

The worst part? We believe little has changed.

Does satellite broadband work?

Update: Starlink has played a key role in the Russia Ukraine war. But at the time this post was written, its real-life impact was still unknown.

Elon Musk is building Starlink.

The man seems to announce a project a day to change the world.

If he's not blasting spaceships off to Mars, he's tunneling underground.

Or creating a transport system for cities.

There was an announcement as well in India for those who wanted to be on board with Starlink.

Inviting you to pay about Rs, 7000 and then wait for the kit to be delivered.

All those who decided they needed it should read the detailed review on 'The Verge'

It's a sobering thought.

We've just about got our TV satellite dishes sorted out now.

But every time it rains, the screen goes blank - 'Your satellite dish is not receiving a signal'

Some of the tech involved is brilliant but it is still 'Work in Progress'

And quite likely to be that way in the not-too distant future.

The problem, apparently, is trees.

Anything that interrupts line of sight to the satellite network affects the signal.

So the broadband works in fits and starts.

Maybe in a desert where there are no trees.

But everywhere else, it's wishful thinking for now.

In case you were planning to fire your current broadband provider...

Hold your horses.

Hotter than hot cakes

Miners’ vs gamers.

Earlier

, I had written about crypto miners competing with gamers to buy powerful GPUs amidst stock sellouts.

You can read about it here: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6766201744457261056/

Bots are being used to buy up stock as soon as it hits the online market

The contest has escalated with companies taking preemptive action.

They have created high priced product bundles to deter miners from purchasing all available stock.

At stake here is a battle between customers who could disappear overnight and those who have helped companies grow - the gamers

Now, that's creating a fresh set of problems.

Miners are still aggressively stocking up because these processors have the power to guarantee profits in bitcoin mining operations.

And to recover the inflated costs they're paying, they are likely to dump the rest of the bundle components like processors, motherboards and SSDs on Ebay and similar auction platforms over the next few months.

Creating more headaches for manufacturers with prices for the components being higher in the online markets.

There's real demand. And there's unreal demand.

Nvidia is planning differential premium pricing to make miners pay more.

There's no timeout for games in the real world.

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A few days or a few weeks?

Apparently, there are people who have kept the pet 'alive' for 25 years.

That calls for some serious dedication.

An egg-shaped plastic toy with a B&W screen burst on the scene in 1996.

The genius move was making rebirth easy. Just a reset after 'death'

The 'pet' would be born as a small egg and hatch into a form.

All action happened on the screen inside.

You decided how much effort you would put in.

But once you made a commitment, you had to stick to it. Everything from 'feeding' it to 'washing' it on a schedule.

As long as the schedule was maintained, the pet would 'grow' from childhood to middle age to old age.

And if it was neglected, it would 'die' early on.

All of this was achieved through minimal graphics. Like the 8 bit games of the time, it was more conceptual than real.

Tamagotchi care centers sprang up for the times the owners would not have the time to tend to their pets and keep them 'alive'

Over 80 million Tamagotchi have been sold.

Is it a toy? Or an obsession?

Or is it fulfilling a deeper human need?

The world's startup school

For startups, getting into Ycombinator is the equivalent of admission to Harvard or Stanford

They brought a fresh approach to investing

Modest sums of initial capital but feedback and an immersion into building the company.

Plus, a network to tap into for advice and sustenance.

Every founder knows building and growing a business is hard.

What Ycombinator has built is an entrepreneur ecosystem.

Get a bunch of smart, committed people with ideas.

Push them to innovate relentlessly, so they are able to refine and clearly think through the stages of value creation.

There's a Grand Canyon between having an idea and translating it into a business.

Too many people assume that money is all it takes. Like the myths about advertising.

Put together a smart campaign, release it across mass media and people will instantly convert and become customers.

That's a recipe for failure.

Ycombinator started small but their list of successes includes AirBnB, Dropbox, Stripe, Zapier, Flexport, Razorpay, Meesho.. it's a very long list.

But getting into YCombinator is no guarantee of success.

Like Formula1, it gets you into pole position.

And now, there are enough YCombinator alumni to recruit from

To keep the flywheel spinning into another orbit.

To print house, press P

It claims to be the first 3D printed house created from raw earth.

Rising from locally available soil.

It looks like a cross between an igloo and a termite mound.

Aesthetic rings of two clusters.

No windows and doors though. That is an extra fitting and so are the skylights that stream light into the house during daytime.

Interesting texture and shapes arise from the way the walls look like deposits that took millions of years to form.

In a sense, that's how the house came up - layer by layer and the net effect is a powdery rough texture far removed from the smoothness of walls we're accustomed to seeing.

This looks like an interesting experiment, but printing can only be accomplished with an electricity connection.

The approximate time for printing this house is 200 hours - slightly over 8 days.

The rustic huts that dot the landscape in Indian villages are just as ecofriendly. In addition, they provide employment to local craftsmen and artisans.

Indian thatched houses accomplish the same goal at much lower costs probably - as this website claims.

The material is local, the labour is local.

And they do look a lot nicer, don't you think?

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It was the early 70s.

And movies theatres were facing a new attention magnet

TV programs. The studios knew they had to get people back into theaters again.

Films that would make people long to see spectacles made for big screens

Much like the times we are in now but for a totally different reason.

Francis Ford Coppola was already a big name with 'The Godfather' having released.

But in his drawing room, over a weekend, they were watching a film made by a 24 year old.

In the audience - George Lucas, Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma, all of whom would be famous in their own right across the world.

The camera work is stunning. And in the first few minutes of the film, you don't see the characters involved at all.

It's all shot from inside the car. Long shots of the car moving out a residential neighborhood and on to the highway.

The radio is on all the time. Channels switch. The sound design makes you feel that you are the one going on the ride.

You've no idea where the film is taking you.

Steven Spielberg was 24. The film is 'The Duel'

It's still an education.

When did words become time?

Have you noticed that articles now aren't about number of words?

You're told how long it will take to read it.

The 1000 word article metric is useful if you are a writer looking to hit a certain number as contracted.

But 4 minutes to read is encouragement.

In your mind a 4 minute investment frames it in a way you're used to navigating in the world.

It started happening with Uber rides as well.

Telling you how long it would take to get to your destination instead of the mileage - and that's what you want to know.

Also happens with food apps - they give you stage by stage descriptions of the order being received, the delivery person being assigned, the route they are taking to your place almost to the point where they ring your doorbell.

This was not evident when the apps were first launched.

But over time, companies were able to use data to compute the time it would take from the time the order for food or a cab was placed to give you information that you could use.

This post is over 200 words. About a couple of minutes.

Worth the time?

Are missed calls missed?

You don't hear of them as much now.

By 2022, there will be more than 800 million smartphones in India and the country's data consumption is already one of the highest in the world - at over 8GB per month.

One of the poster projects of the 'missed call' number business models was Kan Khajura Tesan. This was launched in 2013 by Unilever in India to capture the listeners in 'media dark areas'.

The jargon meant people without access to radio stations or any other kind of media could call in to a number and hang up.

They would receive a call back and listen to popular music interspersed with ads.

It offered the company a way to get through to millions in remote areas

In 2014, it won accolades across the world for media innovation.

But the service was wound down in 2019, due to low engagement numbers.

Missed calls haven't disappeared altogether.

They are still used to get customers in long queues on phone support desks to request a callback instead of waiting endlessly on hold.

But the boom period where every brand jumped on to the missed call bandwagon is over.

Another 'blink and you'll miss it' business model is laid to rest.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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I didn't either but it's still interesting.

A Sydney student's homework has gone beyond his wildest expectations.

It's not clear whether he got an 'A' but researchers at Amazon AWS, Yale and Duke University were studying it as well.

He's found a way to reduce errors in quantum computers.

It's one of those problems that stops progress.

Quantum computing works exponentially faster than the computing power we have today.

Now, while that gets faster results, it also amplifies error rates substantially.

Errors in digital transistors are extremely rare

But qubits, the switches in quantum computing, are far more sensitive to 'noise' or external interference.

And that's where things have been stuck for some time now.

A Science undergrad in his second year at Sydney University turned in his solution as a homework assignment.

He didn't make excuses. The dog did not eat his homework or any one of the tired reasons professors have to put up with.

The code he's written modifies existing code written a couple of decades ago and solves for errors - helping move the field a step closer to quantum computing at scale.

Must be the only time a homework assignment was so consequential for the world!

What if the past could power the future?

It required computing to make electric motors absurdly efficient.

Turntide is a wonderful name for a company hoping to turn the tide on how energy costs can be dramatically lowered.

The technology was invented decades ago and then used only in situations where the motors had to last for decades - inside nuclear plants for example.

The primary problem was the instability and how hard it was to control.

In today's regular motors, the ones that run our fridges or air-conditioners, more than half the power is wasted.

Imagine if the efficiency could be increased by 60%.

If all the motors in use around the world could be replaced, our energy use could be halved.

Piyush Desai, an Indian scientist worked to create the 'reluctance' motor. The switch required to create the current has to be turned on and off more than 20,000 times a minute for it to work.

And until computing power could be harnessed to make it happen, it found applications only in outsize projects which operated in remote locations.

But that's changed now.

Turntide hopes to replace existing stationary motors that eat up half the world's electricity.

A lot of power equations could change across the world.

A 12-year-old was the original gaming 'streamer'

He was called Zot, the Avenger

And he had a grand audience of 50 kids tuning into watch him play games.

The public internet was still taking shape.

But the format that would power Twitch.tv was being imagined.

Zot's real name is JJ Styles.

Back in the early 90s, his mother worked at a community TV center in Tucson, Arizona.

Zot learned to operate the camera, light up the set and edit footage when he was just 10 years old.

Then, he and a friend decided to host a show of them playing games. It was shot on VHS tapes, edited and evolved as a format.

Live streaming was done from a cafe across the studio and they created 37 episodes

It was broadcast on community TV. But the concept of two anchors trash talking and playing games was born and it would be one of the biggest draws of live streaming almost 2 decades later.

Back then, it was just a 12-year-old showing off his game playing skills to a small group of enthusiastic friends.

Scrawls and scribbles define the graphics and titles.

But it created the foundations of what would become a billion-dollar pastime.

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We've all run out of ink and pens at specific points.

Asked people at random places and occasions if we can borrow a pen.

This product takes into account that behavior.

It's small enough to fit on a keychain.

And since it's made from a silver composite, it writes on most surfaces.

No ink required, so no refills

That solves the problems all ball points have. They dry up if left unused over time.

These days, the need to write in notebooks has progressively reduced.

But jotting down ideas exactly when you come up with them is not lost on writers or anyone who's ever been in the creative business.

Capture them as soon as inspiration strikes. Those moments of clarity are short. Recalling it never has the same feel.

Smartphone note-taking apps with styluses are available but writing on paper to capture the flow of ideas beats anything devised by technology.

The pen has been engineered to fit into zip linings, keychains and anything we carry around on a daily basis. That's where it scores.

Kickstarter projects are great testing grounds to evaluate customer interest and commitment.

If not diamonds, you can surprise her with a pen!

The flights to nowhere

They became popular in 2021 when people looked for a chance to escape from being cooped up at home owing to lockdowns.

The binge watches on TV screens had outlived their plots.

Virtual calls with friends and family had people longing for real conversations and parties without masks.

Any let up in the caseloads had people flouting norms as if it was life as usual.

Except that it wasn't.

Quantas was the first to try it. Their 7-hour sightseeing flight sold out in 10 minutes after it was announced.

Giving them a chance to get the planes back up in the air again.

However, work that does not require passengers in the planes continues.

Like re-designing airplane interiors for the future.

And some fancy ideas have been submitted for consideration.

One of them changes the seats in the middle of the aircraft to office workspace style seating.

Looks a little strange though and may not exactly be good to lean back and catch a nap.

The other interesting idea was swivel seats right across the interior.

This is one design adapted from first class that may actually 'fly'

Right now, it's all a fantasy.

And the solution required is not seating but managing security and passenger squeeze at overcrowded airports across the world.

What's your take on 'Baksheesh'?

In Persian it stands for charity, veneration and blessings.

Which captures the shades of giving.

There's a seasonality to it in India where it's woven into the culture.

At festival time, everyone who provides a daily service, from the milkman to the newspaper guy to the chap who does the ironing, they all land up, scratch the back of their heads, grin and look down while mentioning the festival - whether its Diwali or Pongal, or Dussera.

And it is given in varying degrees of generosity. Some of them have the ability to make you feel guilty with just one look, if you haven't met expectations

It's not as if there is a rate card and people know what is to be paid. In Hindi, the line is - Jo bhi aap theek samjhe (Whatever you think is right).

It sustains them and their families - giving them that little extra to celebrate the festival.

It's an informal 'bonus' system that has stood the test of time - built with contributions from everyone involved, so social good is achieved.

Beyond transactions to a bond for services that fill a daily need.

And the realization that giving and taking are intertwined.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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In social media, 'likes' are the currency

The more their follower’s number in the millions, the more an influencer can charge for a single brand mention.

More than a mass medium could ever hope to for a solo release. Even in prime positions or prime time

But this power is limited to an emotional connect and the ability to persuade

There are music, film and cricket stars at the top of the pecking order who have carefully curated and cultivated their social media profiles.

A single mention from them gets entire lines of clothing or mobile phones selling out.

The ones in the middle, the up-and-coming influencers are the ones stuck in a midway situation. Their fans like what they do but they may not vote with their purses.

That gets to be a critical call for brands. Which are the ones to select and go with - will fans make purchases or pass?

Tough call.

There's an older set of influencers who operate away from the spotlight

They wield unseen power

In everything from political deals to appointments to plum posts, they work behind the scenes. That's also influence.

Same word, different worlds. And that's the key.

Lollipops outside nightclubs

Drunken revelers were kicking up a storm.

And getting into brawls.

Arguments would escalate into fist fights and rash driving creating law and order issues.

The solution that seemed to work was ridiculously simple.

Hand them lollipops.

It the kind of thing you would do to keep kindergarten kids happy, but age apparently does not come in the way of enjoying sugary treats.

The idea of giving out lollipops was first suggested in a book written in 2008.

Kathryn Graham wrote Raising The Bar: Preventing Aggression In and Around Bars, Pubs and Clubs.

It was from her personal experience of working in bars as a student in the 80s. She went on to become a Psychology professor and this was one of the ideas suggested to control aggressive behavior.

The problem was sustaining it - and deciding who pays for the lollipops.

The night clubs don't want to be the ones doing it. Or buying and stocking it.

And policemen can't spend time doling it out across cities. Apart from how ridiculous it looks.

It's strange that leading lollipop brands haven't figured out a way to build a business model around it.

And advertise the social good they're doing.

A packaging riddle

Comment on social media - "We should cut down on packaging - make it sustainable"

Great idea. So where do you begin?

Recently bought an ink tank printer - estimated to have the lowest per page printing costs.

Now, the product cannot be shipped in one piece. The black, blue, red and green inks have to be in separate bottles. And wrapped in vacuumed plastic, so that they do not break and flood inside in a multicolored mess.

The two printer heads for black and colour printing have to be packed separately.

To align all of these, the corresponding channels in the printer have to be secured against rough treatment in the supply chain.

Simply sticking a 'FRAGILE' sticker does not work.

One sensible change. The old instruction manual has changed to a "Start Here' booklet. Illustrations instead of long text. All broken up into steps, so you know how to proceed from one to the next.

All the packing gaps have to be stuffed with cardboard, so that they don't move around.

And a printer is just one of the millions of products being shipped everyday.

Each with its own unique packaging challenges.

Now, where would an 'optimisation' solution idea begin?

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A tweet by Paul Graham opened up a window into adult-teenager conversations.

Let me reproduce it here because he puts it eloquently:

Parenting trick: When your kids reach the sullen teen stage where they don't want to talk to you, drive them places. In the car they forget they're having a conversation. It helps that you're both looking forward instead of at each other.

Simple enough?

Adults struggle to establish contact in those growing years. It's as if the kid you know well morphs into someone distant.

Conversations become awkward. The easygoing banter dries up.

One of the worst things you can do as an adult is to announce "Let's sit down and talk"

It implies that you are going to tell him or her something they don't want to hear or already know.

And the accusation "You don't talk to me anymore" doesn't work either.

Further down in the replies, someone said " Walks work just as well"

That's when I went back to childhood - and evening walks with Dad.

He would tell me things that shaped his life and then, I would open up.

Face to face is overrated. Side by side works better for conversations between generations.

Do you like the way you look on video calls?

It's the most unflattering angle.

The camera at the top of the laptop screen is level with your chin. And the placement makes you look dorky

Mobile phone cameras are flexible and have a better resolution but holding the camera steady is an exercise in futility.

Your image wobbles and goes into all kinds of light and dark variations and the room seems to spin if you move around during a call.

Various solutions have been proposed - from how you need to frame yourself, how high the chair should be, where the lights should be placed and of course, the all-pervasive rim lighting to avoid shadows on your features.

Seth Godin's Zoom call setup looks as complex as implementing a global marketing campaign.

But an Indiegogo project has come up with a surprisingly simple idea - the Centre Cam

It hangs from a clamp in the middle of your laptop screen and instantly, you look human again.

As if you were sitting in a chair and not suspended from the ceiling.

The inventor asked for $10000 dollars for the project. He went past the target a long time ago.

The right solution to a problem is a customer magnet.

P2P - the way to live life?

Peer has two shades of meaning.

One is to look carefully

The other indicates people of the same age or social standing.

The internet has given it a third dimension.

For a while, it was the best way to share digital files. Give while you take.

P2P enabled downloads of the latest movies and music before streaming became the established norm. Part of the attraction was that it was illegal and therefore rebellious.

For those familiar with Napster, this was the Wild West age of the internet.

Peer 2 Peer in human relationships is quite relatable. It's also about give and take and the connections people make.

Now think for a moment, how many of your friends are the same age group as you are? 80-90%?

Can you think of friends who are at least 20 years older than you?

Or are they completely out of your orbit?

Now assuming you are in your 30s, can you think of friends who are much younger?

Not many?

And yet, it's one of the easiest ways to build in-depth knowledge from people who are a generation older.

And the younger ones to tell you what's changing.

P2P works even across generation gaps.

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He was told he couldn't even jump over a garden chair.

And in the beginning, he couldn't.

But at the Olympics in Mexico in 1968, Dick Fosbury would invent a high jump technique people laughed at. It looked far from graceful.

As he approached the bar, he turned his back on it and when airborne, flopped his body across in an arc with millimeters to spare.

That was also the year the landing pad was replaced with rubber foam. Without the foam, there was no way to use the technique.

Even today, that jump looks wrong - like sailing over a wall backwards. You'll never attempt it instinctively.

Yet, this civil engineering student at 21 made the connection between a low center of gravity and arching his back to clear a 2.24 metres high bar without toppling it. Setting a new record and winning the gold.

Disruptors aren't welcome. And Fosbury never competed again.

He was no role model. A loner, with mismatched shoes, he would have been a nightmare as a potential brand ambassador.

And yet, he changed the way every high jump athlete is trained today. The scissor technique is buried.

The Fosbury flop endures, over 50 years later.

Holi-ness!

It's all about colours.

Multi-hued faces and buckets of water poured on people caught up in the spirit of the moment

And the songs that reverberate in the movies.

Soaking heroines in rain and bursts of psychedelic colour has been a common ploy to escape the censor's vigilant scissors.

And so have energetic dances that capture the vibrance of Holi.

But the colours had begun to bleed a bit - the chemicals were irritating to the eyes and causing health issues.

That's when a small village in Jharkhand, Chonga, discovered an opportunity that would catapult them into the centre of the 'organic' color business of Holi.

Through extensive manual labour, the villagers of Chonga extract a bright yellow from the Palash flowers. They are plucked and sun dried for a whole year.

The dry flowers are cooked in boiling water and the colour from the petals seeps into the water.

This base is used to create several other colours of the spectrum - and there's huge demand for the product, both within and outside the country.

The Hindi movie industry is a fan.

And probably the best off-season customer.

Nothing like Holi-ness to create an atmosphere that resonates with audiences worldwide.

Rail is the new Silk Road

It normally pops up in history text books.

But a new one is forming, working its way around all the geopolitical tension and undercurrents.

Container traffic already moves on railway lines covering distances of over 1000 kms a day - connecting Europe to China via Mongolia, since 2017

For centuries, ships were the dominant way to manage trade between continents

But there is significant progress being made in unifying railway line widths and connections right across Europe, Russia and China.

It's the same problem as electric plugs in one country not being compatible in another but at a different scale. The gauges in one country are not compatible with the neighboring ones.

As long as trains only moved within a country, it didn't matter. But if it loses out on trade simply because rail lines are narrow, change begins because every country wants a share.

It will take a few decades. Agreements that have to be worked out between nations as goods transit multiple countries on journeys.

New destinations will spring into prominence on land as they become transit hubs and reroute goods from rail to road and the seas.

These days, silk may only be flying Club Class

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In the 80s, it was a runaway success.

But the campaign 'I love you, Rasna' and the girl who was seen as cute and lovable have been eclipsed.

The rise of the colas and their deep pockets shifted consumption habits.

The soft drink concentrate powder had to be mixed into drinks - and the flavour seemed artificial to a new generation that was moving to 'real' fruit juices.

Even though they were just as sweet as the colas were

The 2-liter cola bottles could be stored in the fridges and brought out anytime. Cool, inviting and bubbly.

The birthday parties also evolved. They no longer revolved around light snacks and soft drinks. Event managers were hired to conduct games and keep the festivities going.

They were organised around themes and had lavish gifts in addition to layered cakes and pastries. And moved out of homes and into restaurants as guest lists expanded

Rasna got stuck in the middle. Competing with massive advertising budgets and changing middle-class aspirations.

When the market repositions a product, it's a much bigger issue - no easy solutions.

The kids of the 80s had grown up. And their kids weren't singing the same old song

The fish are knocking at the gate

Can fish get caught up in a traffic jam?

They can in the Netherlands - a country with the most sophisticated network of connected canals.

The water depth differs over stretches. To help boats navigating through the canals, lock gates were built underwater to maintain water levels steady, balancing flow and depth with the tides.

The fish swimming in the canals come up against the gates and for them, it's like hitting a wall.

A technical solution would have been to set up sensors to determine the number of fish waiting to get past the lock gates and then alert the person responsible for operating the gate.

Instead, the council placed underwater cameras to capture the flow of fish in real time and broadcast them to walkers along the canal.

When large numbers of fish crowd around the lock, anyone can ring the 'doorbell' to signal that fish are waiting.

When the gates are opened, the traffic jam eases.

The council decided that people participating in notifying the gatekeepers would drive higher awareness of marine species, get children and locals involved and be interwoven with life rhythms along the canal.

Ringing the doorbell for fish becomes a star attraction every day!

Did you miss a viral opportunity?

When the ship got stuck in the Suez Canal, what did you do?

Created a meme?

Scanned news sites and Twitter to get updates?

Wrote a post about it, like I am doing now?

Tom built a website - Is the ship still stuck?

He found the domain was available and had the single page up and running in a day.

In the 5 days that it made headlines around the world, he was getting as many as 8000 plus hits a minute.

He got 50 million views in that period, the equivalent of traffic to the New York Times

There were any number of shipping and logistics companies who could have created a website and got the traffic themselves.

But they didn't

There's nothing on the site beyond updates from Twitter and news sites.

All it required for the traffic to take off was one post on Hacker News.

There were thousands of comments on how the ship could have been unblocked.

The window for these opportunities is small - and one web developer found a way to put the whole thing together.

This opportunity is gone - but maybe when the next viral news breaks, who knows?

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The average human navigates away from a web page if it doesn't load in seconds.

The most studious kids can put in about 6-8 hours in a day but not at a stretch.

Think of what a Formula 1 driver takes years to achieve.

Unrelenting focus in 2 hour races with no break or lapse in concentration.

At speeds of over 200 mph (about 340 kmph), they can't afford a single mistake. Zero tolerance for error.

The fitness routines develop reflexes faster than those of fighter pilots.

They build unbelievable muscular strength to maneuver the car round those twisting and weaving bends - while keeping track of the clock and lap time.

The humidity inside the car can reach over 80% and they lose huge amounts of physical weight through sweating - as much as 2-3 kgs in the course of a single race.

It's meditation at full speed - where they are completely in a zone. There is only one link they have - to the team engineer through a radio egging them on.

Superhuman? You bet. No other sport on earth comes as close to driving on the line between life and death.

Imagine training to become one

Live in million dollar homes online

Buying homes that cost the earth is on wish lists.

In practice, most people would accept that it is a distant dream.

But what if you could explore the interiors of homes that cost millions of dollars any time you like?

No restrictions at all.

Think of the most exclusive neighborhoods - and then just dive straight into the home that catches your fancy.

Linger by the view from the French windows.

Admire the ornate staircase and the mahogany bookcases with a lifetime of reading packed into the shelves.

Gaze at the view is from the front porch. Or lounge by the swimming pool.

With the immersive 3D walkthroughs now available, it's doubtful if a real visit will make a substantial difference.

It's all available on Zillow. Decide where you're going to spend the afternoon. Or the evening.

And no matter where you are in real life, all it takes is a laptop and broadband connection.

Covid has accelerated the need to provide the home visit experience virtually.

But in the process, it is just as easy for anyone to visualise what all that money can buy you.

Tomorrow is chateau time.

And you don't have to spend a cent!

Automation proof jobs

Are you worried that your job will be automated in future?

Today's most highly regarded jobs did not exist a couple of decades ago.

Digital marketer, anyone? Or the swelling ranks of growth hackers? And molecular biologists? And whatever happened to nanotechnologists?

Instagram influencers? Or YouTube celebrities?

Physiotherapists don't have to worry about their jobs being automated.

But they do worry about doing the same thing for the next 30-40 years.

Here's one way to ensure that you stay ahead of the automation curve.

Expand your skill set to things completely unrelated to your current job.

Learn a new language.

Explore a subject that has no bearing to your field of specialization.

How will this help?

You won't know until you explore the possibilities.

True story. A friend's son has a unique gift. He can pick up a new language in less than 3 months.

He's been hired by an international bank which requires documentation to be translated into multiple languages.

They've retrenched hundreds of people doing regular bank functions.

But his skill is irreplaceable.

And the value of what he does rises exponentially every year.

There may be machine translations - but he beats what they do by miles.

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The ones that resembled phone directories are long gone.

They used to be a staple of the big chains for holiday shopping over the years.

The internet ensured that it was no longer necessary to print them.

So why did IKEA move out of a catalog into a podcast?

And why would anyone want to listen?

Put yourself in IKEA's position - catalogs are getting outdated but if they're your most potent marketing weapon, you have to find other ways to get the same traction.

So, how do you make it interesting?

Build it around subjects people care about.

Getting a good night's sleep, for example.

That includes turning off the lights and putting your mind at rest instead of worrying about what you'll need to finish tomorrow.

And throughout that experience of relaxation, product names and descriptions are inserted.

The bed for example. Or the mattress. The bedside lights you need to have if you wake up at night.

IKEA knows podcasts are hot. And rather than schedule an IKEA ad into popular shows, they're trying to create one.

You may not listen to a bland description of products.

But if the benefits are woven into the narrative, who knows?

The Kirana shop list goes electronic

The neighborhood stores were reborn in the pandemic.

Customers discovered they were the lifeline to groceries and vegetables at short notice.

Most are just a phone call away and all it takes to order stuff is announce which house or apartment block you are calling from - and tell them what is required

The entire shop's CRM probably resides on WhatsApp or the contact list on the shopkeeper's phone.

They don't have the funds or tech bandwidth for anything fancier.

The same holds true for the small restaurants in neighborhoods who have their regulars calling in on the phone to place orders

So when Google invests $27 million in a one year old start-up targeting this segment there must be a reason.

DotPe enables electronic ordering for Kiranas. The idea is to enroll every single neighborhood shop and then route orders to them through the app.

Like a Shopify on the mobile

What's promoted on the website is discoverability and ease of use.

They are hoping that it becomes the one app through which customers order everything around the neighborhood.

With global giants courting small shopkeepers in India, the race has well and truly begun

No stone is being left unturned.

The lesser known Covid victories

In March 2020, alarm bells were already ringing in hospitals around the world.

They knew that this was no ordinary virus.

The news reports largely focused on the spread worldwide, vaccine development and clinical trials.

In hospitals, however, doctors were trying out new ways to counter the rampaging virus.

In UK, Prof Martin Landray, a doctor and designer of large-scale drug trials, and Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, one of the world's biggest funders of medical research - started a program called Recovery.

It launched within 9 days of their meeting and made it easy to evaluate, track, analyse and publish what was working - and what was not . So doctors could be aware.

Clinical trials are long, bureaucratic and take years before anything is implementable. That changed with the program.

At Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Medical Center phase 1 trials of a nasal spray, appear to have helped numerous moderate-to-serious cases of COVID-19 quickly recover from the disease. That could be another long-term solution.

The largest one underway is Solidarity by WHO - where nearly 12000 patients at 500 hospital sites from 30 countries are working together.

It may be the best thing globalization achieved

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Google and Facebook can only point you in the direction of an online purchase.

But Amazon is the place to fulfil it - at least a large chunk.

So, what happens when Amazon becomes an advertising platform?

In case you haven't noticed, there are now 'Sponsored Products' on Amazon.

And those ads are paid for by companies

The digital equivalent of in-store advertising in the real world.

You've walked into the store and you're about to pick up your favorite brand of noodles, when you see the competition making an attractive offer.

And you switch.

That's exactly how it works on the Amazon store.

Just when you're about to purchase, you get alternatives.

And marketers have been looking at this pretty closely - because it goes beyond intent to the actual transaction.

So does it make sense to allocate marketing budgets at that precise point and influence the customer? It's already earning Amazon huge revenues - over $20 billion in 2020

The interesting part is revenue comes from both, advertising and the sale.

And that's what the competition fears.

Right now, they just have to grin and bear it, while Amazon's advertising business mops up marketing spends as well!

An octopus tugs at your heartstrings

The tentacles reach out and grab you.

But not in the way you expect it to.

My Octopus Teacher is a documentary on Netflix.

For Indians, the word documentary is equated to dreary. Documentaries from the Films Division of the government played out in all theatres in the 70s and 80s. Black & white and boring.

Sleep-inducing and even though they lasted for around for 10-12 minutes, it felt like hours had passed.

And when the main feature film came on, there were audible sighs of relief.

I don't want to spoil this wonderful film for you.

It is meditative and contemplative of the bonds we should build with nature. As opposed to a complete lack of it in our urban, tech-infused existence.

The emphasis in our lives is placed on how quickly, how easily and how much we accumulate - wealth, status or privilege.

It's films like this which show us what we can aspire to. And how it can be fulfilling for the soul.

Simply by revisiting the clichés about what 'wild' creatures really are.

We talk of migrating to other planets when we've not explored the oceans in our backyard.

It's more profound than we can imagine

Here's something to chew on

In the 90s, it was part of a movie villain's menacing buildup.

Singapore acted to make chewing gum illegal around the same time after it gummed up doors on the subway. People left remnants everywhere, including park benches, but now, it isn't the nuisance it once was.

So have we moved on?

Since 2007, ever since the iPhone was launched, the market for chewing gum has shrunk every year.

It's no longer cool to sit in college canteens and move jaws mechanically while feigning disinterest in pretty girls.

Amazing how it reduced humans to bovine status.

Cows chewed cud. They brought up the stuff from their many stomachs and then ruminated over it for hours.

How it got adopted by a couple of generations as the essence of a casual attitude will remain a mystery.

After the smartphone launched, people have been more active with scrolling thumbs than masticating mouths. Plus, it tends to come in the way of clear conversations.

Wrigley's has introduced new flavors including sugar-free variants. But the downward trajectory continues.

Covid seems to have accelerated the slide.

Stuck at home, mouth hygiene has languished, much like party wear.

For those who've scraped it off shoes, it's good riddance.

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What is it with the internet and cats?

The 'original' of a digital pixelated cat creating a rainbow trail behind it sold recently for $500,000.

What's happening here? Digital work that anyone can access selling for huge sums of money.

Keep the focus on ownership.

Everyone can see the art. Ownership is another matter altogether

You can look at the Mona Lisa by walking into the Louvre. But owning it is a different ball game

Here's where the internet, art and blockchain are converging.

If you can establish ownership of any piece of art, you won't need certificates of authenticity from the powers that be.

And that's what sets the cat among the pigeons.

There is already a huge debate on whether NFTs ( Non-Fungible Tokens) will be short-term fads.

Or a way for artists and creators to establish ownership and get royalty for their work every time the work is traded or changes hands

Don't worry about the NFT bit. All it means is that you can establish which one is the original in a sea of duplicates.

It may be used to verify art and artefacts in the real world than the virtual one - but we'll see how that evolves.

Recycling creative ideas

They shine under the arc lights on highways. Or at strategic urban crossings.

Towering over the traffic and a prominent feature of every cityscape.

Stretching for tens or hundreds of feet and visible from long distances.

Billboards, or 'hoardings' are they're called in India have always been larger than life.

Over the last couple of decades, they grew high tech and glossy.

The old ways of painters perched on rickety scaffolding and painstakingly drawing the design is long gone.

In its place is the cold efficiency of mounting and stretching the pre-printed vinyl across steel frames in a matter of hours.

Until they are stripped away and the tough material goes on to provide shelters for slums. Or thrown into landfills.

Rareform in the US has breathed new life into old creatives.

What started from a fishing village in El Salvador, the printed designs are reinvented to make everything from surfboard covers to glossy bags - stylish backpacks or duffel bags. Even mobile phone covers.

It's UV protected, waterproof and withstands harsh outdoor conditions. The bright colors and unusual designs make them attractive.

The company claims it has reused over 3 million pounds of creatives!

Recycled ideas can be a hit.

The toothbrush that stuffs your mouth

They haven't changed much for decades.

The bristles can be soft, medium or hard and you can opt for a bamboo handle if you think your toothbrush should be sustainable.

But the basic shape with the angled head has stayed constant.

The motorised toothbrushes haven't quite innovated either.

Instead of moving the handle you simply have to place the bristles in the right position.

This new design won't win any awards for good looks. And it seems effective, using an industrial kind of effort aligned to the shape of your teeth.

Imagine a denture-shaped toothbrush.

It brushes all your top teeth at one go. Then flip the head and brush the bottom row.

The claim - that you can finish brushing your teeth in 10 seconds. As if it's is the biggest time-waster in a day.

And going from 2 minutes to 10 seconds, what are you going to do? Catch another 10 TikTok videos?

That's not a benefit, it's more time wasted

However, the unusual design is definitely a stopper. And like an invasion inside your mouth. Not to speak of the amount of toothpaste required.

Seems a bit kinky. But it could be an unexpected hit.

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Talk about coincidences.

The original brain behind Zumba, the world-wide exercise routine was built around a set of dominoes that started tumbling in Cali, Columbia.

A city familiar to most people who watched the Netflix series, Narcos.

Cali was the capital around which Escobar's empire grew.

But the first Alberto, or Berto was a 15 year old dance instructor in the middle of the bedlam. Dancing away and making others dance to his tune.

Zumba began with a mistake when Berto forgot the regular dance routine tape and improvised with his class to do a high-energy combo the class loved.

The name Zumba was a play on another dance form Rumba, which is now more famous as the robot vacuum cleaner

On a trip to the US, he decided that he wanted to find fame and fortune.

He sold everything he had and then moved to Miami. Where the second Alberto came into the picture and was the one networked to gyms

But the third Alberto taught the first one English because that was the condition investors placed - that the Zumba instructional video should be in English

And then, the wave of Zumba instructors just lined up for classes.

Be in several places at the same time

Architects may have multiple projects underway.

Even if things slowed down dramatically during the pandemic

Openspace AI enables them to supervise several sites at one time without actually being present

Anyone on site can walk around with a camera on the helmet and a 360 degree view of site progress is captured and transmitted to the cloud

The architect or project managers involved can track construction activity without being physically present.

Time and geo stamped, mapping the stages of the project as an overlay over the previous capture .

Over time, the changes in the site can be relayed to assess and monitor progress as per plan.

It won't eliminate the need for personal site inspection altogether.

On the Openspace Ai capture, annotations can be made of the view obtained and sent back to site for making the necessary changes.

Architects can also use it to brief clients and document project progress, since it reduces the frequency of visits required.

The traditional ways of managing construction with site visits may soon get to be the exception rather than the rule.

Little by little, the physical spaces we need to inhabit by compulsion is shrinking

Not just because of the pandemic.

What exactly does bootstrapping involve?

It's what startups do before they raise money. Or get customers, for that matter.

Investopedia explains 'It became a metaphor for achieving success with no outside assistance'.

People know Zappos as one of the largest online shoe stores.

But what was the starting point?

The excel sheets and market reports point to the size of the market and year on year growth. But for every company trying to establish a base, figuring how to attract customers is the biggest issue.

So what did they do? One of the founders walked across to shoe stores in the vicinity of their office and snapped pictures of shoes on display.

That went up on the site as inventory.

If they got an order, they simply walked to the store, bought it and shipped it off to customers.

What they were testing was whether customers would buy shoes online because until then, no one had ever done it.

There was no playbook or guide to fall back on. It was learning by doing.

Any business idea can only be evaluated by one parameter - do customers exist and are they willing to pay the price you're asking?

The rest are assumptions, not business plans for success.

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Most countries aren't anywhere close.

South Korea offers a glimpse of what could happen when practically the whole population is online - 96%.

Blazing internet speeds and high urban saturation

In addition, the work culture follows the Chinese model - 996.

9 am - 9 pm, 6 days a week. That leaves little time or inclination to go shopping on the one day people get off from work.

The company leading the pack online is Coupang. They invested early in logistics and delivery infrastructure getting a head start and built an advantage.

Nearly 50% of the citizens order from the company everyday, or every few days.

Any other company entering the space will find it challenging to replicate the infrastructure and compete.

Customers can place orders until midnight and get goods delivered before 7 am the next morning.

While the pandemic has accelerated change, it is clear that people don't feel the need to go shopping at large stores anymore.

The weekly or monthly trips to get all necessities for the house may no longer be required.

Like Work from Home, Shop From Home could be a fundamental shift.

And that has big implications on how real world retail will evolve.

The food fight on Facebook

The New York Times has a group on Facebook built around food.

So far, so good.

It grew from a few thousand people over the years to over 77 thousand.

And a trickle of problems became a flood.

Turns out that even something as wholesome as food can become nasty.

And it isn't on account of spoiled food.

It's the way people respond and react to posts.

Fights break out on brand choices around mayonnaise - people are so passionate about their choices, they get into spiteful arguments and it spins out of control.

It becomes pretty clear that the clashes grow from differences in perception and points of view.

To maintain the peace, rules had to be made. But how do you impose rules in a group where no one is stopped from posting?

So arguments around food and presentation stray into politics.

And that is a recipe for disaster.

Even if no one on the group is discussing political beliefs, it hangs around like yesterday's dishes.

The moderators have to step in and defuse situations - and it has got to the point where the New York Times is asking for outside help to manage.

Food for thought?

Cut and slice. The new relaxation routine

Do you know how to cut a pomegranate perfectly?

A video showing an easy way to do it has over 3 million views on YouTube.

If you have never bought the fruit because of its complex structure, give it a second chance.

I have a sneaky suspicion that the popularity of fruits is directly proportional to the ease with which they can be cut and consumed.

Bananas are nature's best design example - from peeling to eating in just a couple of seconds.

Apples closely follow suit.

Surprisingly, dragon fruits with their thick interwoven bulbs are a piece of cake. Slice them horizontally and you get two perfect halves to dig into.

It may seem like a painful task but cutting fruits is a bit like listening to music while cooking.

The underrated benefit? Polishing your cutting and slicing skills.

You can let your mind wander and dwell on other things while you pluck grapes, slice papayas and skin the prickly pineapples.

And of course, your dexterity improves significantly.

Each fruit has it's own set of peculiarities.

So pick out different ones for each day of the week.

Instead of limiting your options to the most obvious choices at the market.

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Before iPods and CDs, there were audio cassette tapes.

Now forgotten in the lofts of old houses, you'll still find old collections gathering dust

The inventor, Lou Ottens of Eindhoven company, Philips has just passed away at the age of 93.

Another milestone in an audio journey that played out over a couple of decades.

Cassette tapes attained the heights of their popularity in the late 60s and by the early 80s, they were on their way out, having conceded ground to the vastly more popular CDs.

But in those 20 plus years, over 100 billion cassettes were sold. Like razors without blades, the cassettes were of no use without devices to play them on.

They were also temperamental. Tapes would suddenly unravel - getting sucked into a tangled mess inside the players was fairly common and pencils would be used to 'rewind' them, literally, if they survived intact

The change today is that everything has fused into one. The device and the music are no longer separate.

Chargers and wires are the new cassette tapes. Long after the device is replaced, they languish in drawers, separated like umbilical cords and cast aside.

Added to the debris of memories.

Here’s what the inventor of cassette tapes had to say: "I am not a psychologist, but that music experience is of course all nonsense. Nothing can match the sound of the CD. It is absolutely noise and rumble free. That never worked with tape. But who am I to say what's better, I'm over ninety and have old ears. I have made a lot of record players and I know that the distortion with vinyl is much higher. But some people call it "warm audio." I think people mostly hear what they want to hear. But there are always madmen who want to look back to the past. There is always a market for that.”

What if you gave politicians ranks?

New York is looking to vote differently to select its Mayor in the elections .

In India, you choose one candidate over all the others.

And that's where the difference lies.

The voters there will rank the candidates according to their preference, all the way from 1-5.

If that sounds confusing, here is a detailed explainer.

It isn't very new, apparently. Australia has been voting this way for the last 100 years.

The idea is to have various campaign approaches instead of merely putting one vs all. So politicians spend more time telling people why their ideas are better and try to convince the electorate.

There are parallels in branding - where you try and sell one brand over the others in the market by promoting a different set of benefits and customers vote with their purses every time they shop.

Packaging one set of benefits vs the competition. And if they're convinced, people give the brand a chance.

There are times when brands go head to head, like in the latest Sebamed campaign. Where pH became the selling point in a market that simply never considered it earlier.

But marketing isn't like politics, is it?

Can customers make money off the brands they buy?

Strange question, probably.

If customers are the reasons brands exist, should they earn a share of the brand's success? It doesn't happen usually.

There is a brand which put this into practice.

One of the most successful craft beer brands in the US.

Created by a person whose family had been in the beer business for decades - and knew popular taste centered around light beers, or 'water with froth' - the dominant ones that ruled the market for decades.

Beers with a deep, distinct flavor were rarities - unlikely to ever succeed

Jim Koch launched Sam Adams, named after a patriarch among brewers who represented a 'beer revolution' and 'beer independence' for the United States.

In the early days, he went around from bar to bar with cold cans and tried to get owners to place orders for them.

It took decades but over time, Sam Adams became wildly successful.

And for the IPO, they put in a coupon on the six packs of beer that allowed customers to buy 33 shares at $15 per share.

130,000 people sent in cheques that amounted to $65 million.

For once, customers also profited from a brand's success.

That's fair compensation!

Here’s the full podcastepisode

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When Amit Mishra was jailed in connection with his wife's suicide, it was the worst thing that ever happened to him.

When he emerged a year later having proved his innocence, he had built a software solution jail authorities are now adopting across the entire network of prisons, starting with Haryana.

The problem he solved - helping people who had served their sentences to appeal for release.

In the earlier bureaucratic system that existed, prisoners languished far beyond the sentences they had to serve.

By putting the details of the sentence online, wardens and the authorities concerned could determine the terms of release without having to go through the layers of existing procedures.

It's a rare story because requirements gathering usually happens in comfortable environments.

But Amit Mishra saw the deficiencies in the system and the havoc it was creating. And experiencing it first hand gave him a clear idea of how the problem could be solved.

The software, a prison management system is being used to frame guidelines for the future and implemented across all prisons in due course.

It's named Phoenix. About rising from the ashes.

A renewal of life and aspirations for others as well.

Do you sign with a flourish?

Do you keep it plain or follow what the star autographs do?

Arcing from the beginning to the end or taking one letter and dramatizing it.

If it has a 'G' or an 'E', it allowed for variations on a theme.

The 'G' could loop infinitely below and return to fly past the round head of the letter.

The signature used to come into play for opening bank accounts.

At that point, you did it self-consciously.

It had to be to be stylish but not so difficult to replicate that the bank would reject a cheque in future.

And this is where parental or star influence came to the fore. In most cases, it was modeled on the way a parent signed - mostly on report cards.

I admired the way my father looped the initial 'P' in his name and sloped the rest of of the letters before an underline that emphasized it.

That was definitely my inspiration.

These days, you almost never have to sign a cheque - just punch PINs.

But important documents still require a signature - everything from a driving license to a PAN card to passports.

Your last surviving trace of individuality in a digital world

Some YouTube stars are moving out

Imagine you have a great thing going on YouTube as a creator.

Millions of views, a growing subscriber base and money deposited into your account every month.

Life couldn't be better, right?

Now, it turns out that some prominent creators are building their own backup plan.

They don't want to be in a situation where YouTube dictates terms to them.

And they're a little tired of all the trolling and nastiness that seems to come along with universal free access

So, they've built an alternative.

They didn't migrate to another video service but built one owned and operated only by creators.

It's called Floatplane and they know it will never be as big as YouTube.

But they can build and sustain their own communities here because only paying customers are allowed.

As YouTube stars know, the bigger their fan bases grow, the more dependent they become.

Cutting the connecting cord altogether will result in a complete loss of revenue.

So, they are hedging their bets. New episodes premier for their paid fans first on their own channel - and then the same episode goes up on YouTube a week later.

If this becomes an exodus, things could get interesting.

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How much is a petabyte?

More than you can read or see in a whole lifetime.

Since 1996, the Internet Archive has put together the combined output of humanity in knowledge, thought and action.

75 years of pulp fiction are part of the collections.

Just in case anyone thinks that all it has are classics of literature only a few people read.

We have this image of a library in our head.

A quiet place filled with books where we spend hours learning about things.

Or falling in love, going by the number of movies where the couple meet each other across tables and shelves.

Or we imagine the classic Library of Alexandria which held the cumulative knowledge of early civilization.

We probably create more material in a day of the internet than humanity did in all the previous thousands of years.

There's no way any library can hope to archive everything.

And they shouldn't - most of it isn't worth preserving for a couple of seconds leave alone centuries.

But take a look sometime.

It's a library open to anyone on earth with an internet connection.

Knowledge is no longer the preserve of the fortunate few.

How was the party last night?

In the age of Instagram, a reality check.

Dispo gives you the option of clicking pictures at parties through a rectangular lens.

You can't see what the photos look like.

It replicates the disposable cameras with pictures captured in the midst of the party. Fuzzy, real and without filters.

They only show up on phones the next morning. Slightly delayed gratification and building the anticipation.

It's like re-living the parts you remember - and the ones you don't.

How quickly the pendulum swings. A decade ago, Instagram got you to use filters to mask blemishes and beautify pictures.

Now, there's an app that does exactly the opposite.

And it has built up a sizeable following already.

I guess the gloss and perfect world is less than welcoming.

And that makes smudgy reality relatable and memorable

Capturing more of the character and the mood at the party rather than the highly touched up version.

What's curious is how quickly the glitter fades. The perfectly composed and curated feeds feel like an overdose of cream pastries.

There's only so much sweetness you can take at one sitting.

Are you ready for reality yet?

Then hit up Dispo for an invite.

Watch out for porch pirates

You've ordered online.

And the package arrives on your doorstep.

Only to be whisked away by the fleet-footed porch pirate!

As ecommerce has boomed, so have the opportunities for enterprising thieves.

They are even keeping a lookout for ecommerce delivery guys on their rounds.

The packages that get looted the most are mid-sized, easy to swoop in and steal in deserted neighborhoods

If there's no one at home to receive doorstep deliveries, the package left out in the open can disappear without a trace if no cameras are installed.

It's a huge problem in the US. where 1.5 million packages valued at $25 million are lost everyday.

Its easy pickings for porch pirates who operate by stealth and make a getaway with the package in less than 30 seconds

So what's the way out?

Amazon Key allows delivery guys to open homes and leave the packages inside homes or garages.

The other option is setting up secure locations in neighborhoods where the company gives a password to customers to retrieve packages delivered close by.

The thieves may not know what they will get.

But when the risks are low, and rewards high, it's a tough problem to solve.

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There's no guarantee a college graduate is going to get a job.

However, the cost of education continues to rise every year.

The Bloom Institute of Technology is going in the opposite direction.

Tuitions can be paid from income earned after graduation. Or upfront.

The institute teaches courses in data sciences and full stack web. And instead of interviews, companies can try out students for a month without paying them

It's like bypassing the interview process altogether to see if the student delivers.

A risk-free way to determine the aptitude, the ability and the work ethic of students before committing to hire them.

Then, they can be absorbed for a full-time role

There must be a catch.

The condition is that students pay back 17.5% of their salaries for two years - after they start earning over $50,000 dollars a year.

If they don't make it in 60 months after graduating, they pay nothing.

Obviously this model works best in rapidly emerging technology areas where there is a mismatch between high demand and availability.

It seems like a win for everyone - the students, the school and for the companies that employ them.

Sad that this won't work for the vast majority of career options out there.

Are you a forwarder?

Of messages, not logistics.

Shooting them off with a flick of the thumb.

In the connected world of never-ending messages, how many breathless breakthroughs do you receive everyday?

A cure for asthma or cancer.

A set of exercises to make you lose weight overnight.

Or the key to a political conspiracy revealed.

If it was news, would the newspapers not be scooping it and broadcasting it for the world to hear?

Remember the emails that used to threaten ruin if you didn't forward them to friends?

Just select 10 people to send it to and you will be rewarded. Or condemned to eternal damnation.

Most of the time, the payoff is spiritual, beyond the control of mere mortals

Gossip always traveled faster than real news.

That's still true of all offices

Work deadlines may be pushed. But affairs and linkups spread faster than butter on toast.

Our fondness for the sensational always wins over reasonable explanations.

Like ghost stories that spring up around empty houses.

Passed around from ear to ear and growing steadily in gory detail.

And with each narration, another saucy detail is added, another irresistible morsel that makes it all the more 'viral'

Spice is not for cooks alone

Responsive design for architects

Think of a simple blueprint for floor plans.

But imagine that architects could make their designs fluid as well.

Exactly like web designers who create wireframes that change shape when the desktop design is adapted to tablets or mobiles.

There's no reason architectural drawings cannot be transformed with the elements being moved around.

Want the room to be narrower? Or broader?

The entire house to fit within a narrow boundary or a broad one.

In a GIF on Twitter a home design adapts to any kind of space and the elements within fluidly arrange themselves.

With current software you have to draw out the dimensions of a room and then add textures or materials or furniture.

Then, if you want to change the width or the length of the space, there's no way to do it with the same design.

Yes, it is a lot easier than the earlier generation of software but in our mind, web spaces can be fluid, but buildings cannot be.

Maybe it is simply a stunt. No one wants to live in a shape shifting house.

But at the design stage, shape shifts can open up minds to new possibilities.

Take a look.

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The extreme opposite of Amazon

Only one title is on sale in this bookstore at a time.

Where else but Japan?

In Ginza, in a single room, Morioka Shoten, transforms book retailing to high art.

The clientele is invited to interact with authors and absorb the creative atmosphere around the title.

Book readings and interactions with the author are all part of the package.

The books are changed only once a week

That limits the number of titles to just over 50 in a single year - which makes every book an experience.

It is the brainchild of a former bookstore clerk who arrived at this concept after two decades of experience in the industry.

Amazon, within a few years of launching had over 2 million titles.

This bookshop will never sell as many in a lifetime.

Like bookends on a shelf, it represents business models that are poles apart.

Abundance with minimal attention or scarcity with maximum attention.

The idea is to delve into the mind of the author who wrote the book.

Get to know the creative process and the drive that made the book possible.

A labor of love gets the love it deserves.

A remix of a remix

One of the earliest viral videos on YouTube was a lip-synch

A young man sitting in front of his screen recorded himself mouthing inane lyrics to a peppy tune.

For all those wandering down the evolving genres of YouTube, this was one of those happy intermissions.

The Moldovan pop group who recorded the original were never in the limelight but their song took off.

47 million views for a version voiced by a guy recording it in his dorm room and uploading it to YouTube, just for kicks.

But the group capitalized on the popularity with a video in 2011 that went to 75 million views

That may have been the end of that story but it was recently revived in a tweet.

And this time, the faces are famous across the world - Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffet and Jack Ma.

There are 9 faces on screen. And they change expressions in perfect synch to the same song.

Mark Zuckerberg looks more animated than he has ever been in real life.

This whole sequence was created by an AI program.

The remix of a remix looks like it's here to stay.

Talk about a random route to success.

Update: That particular tweet was taken down and the account suspended. Sorry.

Solve one problem at a time

Building a product requires several steps.

Identify a problem, then create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) find the product market fit and so on.

What if you had no such ambitions but simply solved whatever was bugging you?

A web designer who knew a thing or two about building websites and banner ads had to keep finding new clients. Revenues were ok but stagnant for nearly five years.

Then he took a hard look at the features most clients were requesting.

Back in 2000, it was the ability to create an email list and send out email promotions.

It was a side project but it was already paying more than web design

The revenue was negligible - $50 per client but the number of clients who required this increased steadily.

Now billing those clients for this service brought up the next problem to be solved.

A monthly invoicing system that included a credit card debit feature.

That was one of the earliest executions of Software as a Service. No one knew that it would become so big of course.

The company? Mail Chimp. Built with zero investment from outside.

To a current value of $4.2 billion.

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If you chew on your nails, don't bother reading this.

A nail cutter is the last thing you need because your teeth do the job just as effectively.

The humble nail cutter is standard in households.

Stainless steel with concave clipper blades and a functional design. It's a lot like the office clip. The look hasn't been updated in decades.

The slightly rough pattern on the back to smooth out the snipped nail edges is also standard.

But have you noticed how it is always easier to cut the nails on your left hand? If you're naturally right-handed, that is.

Left handed, when cutting the nails on your right, is awkward. It's like you're back to being a novice

Much like trying to write with your left hand.

The first time I saw a nail cutter with scissor handles on an online store, I laughed.

It looked like a freak.

A design experiment gone wrong.

Then, I went ahead and ordered them, because I wondered who would go so far as to manufacture something as ridiculous as this.

I'm a fan now. It gives you a grip that the earlier design never could.

But it still looks funny.

Stuff some cotton into your ears

Has your hearing reduced by about 70% or more?

Does it feel disorienting?

The Sound of Metal explores what it means to go deaf.

The premise is that a drummer loses his hearing practically overnight.

Riz Ahmed plays the lead and his performance forces you to confront what he's facing - a world going silent.

It's terrifying and the scenes where a garbled set of distant sounds confuse, then mystify him, drive home what he's going through

One of the crucial aspects of making the film work is the sound design by Nicholas Becker

He had to imagine what is was like to live through the journey

At a musical research center IRCAM, he went into a sound studio where every trace of sound can be banished. With the lights turned off, he wanted to understand the experience of a complete absence of sound.

Close your eyes and concentrate on the world around you.

It's never silent. The ear has a remarkable capacity for depth we don't appreciate.

That's what the film does to you.

It brings you up close to living in total, unending silence.

Maybe we'll give our senses the respect they deserve.

Can you replace bits of your laptop?

Let's say, your display goes blank

Most of the time, that's a sign of a deeper problem and buying a replacement is expensive.

A new brand of laptops is being launched to tackle precisely this problem.

The laptops we discard every year because they aren't fast enough, sleek enough or because repairs are simply too time-consuming could be a thing of the past if the idea works.

Hardware replacements are a lot tougher because they come from diverse sources and optimising every part of the supply chain is a sticky problem to solve.

Framework has created laptops we can customize - how many ports we want or add memory slots and other specific bits to keep them running longer.

It goes against existing business models where you simply dispose of it and don't really care where it goes.

In most cases, they go to landfills creating a bigger problem.

It's not as if our new laptops work very differently from the ones we already have. Delaying an upgrade cuts those e-waste figures

And Frameworkhas thought through the entire process of manufacture, replacement and repairs.

The modular laptop has arrived.

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What if you could change the patterns on the clothes you are wearing?

Simply by tapping a few places.

This was demonstrated at the CES booth in 2015

A model wore 'clothes' that changed right in front of the bystanders.

It was more like she was wearing strips of panels and not cloth.

The clothes were under this and they didn't change colour.

The idea was to demonstrate that it was possible to get designs to change based on what was programmed into fabrics.

Would people actually prefer to wear clothes that changed depending on the time of day?

For example, go from work wear to party wear at the touch of a few buttons?

The idea is in its infant stages because these clothes don't seem comfortable.

To make it happen, flexible panels will have to be woven into the fabric and respond to touch or temperature.

It should be easy to wear and style, otherwise there won't be takers.

The human form needs skills to drape and pulling off a look takes more than just great styling.

Otherwise people wearing them could end up looking like walking billboards.

We're not there yet, even for casual wear.

What a difference 60 years can make to design

The all-electric home was a major selling point.

Electricity could be used for everything - cooking, baking and laundering.

The video from Westinghouse Electric captures the aspirations of upwardly mobile customers.

And the constraints as well.

The man of the house takes his friend on a tour of the electronic heating, cooling and filtering of the entire house.

The women discuss the latest makeup advances and the cooking and laundry conveniences.

But the user experience and design is where the projections fall woefully short.

The prevailing design trends dominate

The TV is a boxy swivel that can be turned in any direction. No hint of flatness.

The buttons on the music system are huge. And the ones on the washing machine panel. The washer and dryer are in separate compartments.

The thermostat that controls temperatures is an industrial design control and command centre. No IoT on the horizon.

What will a home in 2050 look like? That will be an interesting exercise.

Back then, they missed the internet and the mobile phone revolution that changed everything

We can't predict what AI and machine learning will change in the decades to come.

It will accelerate the changes we can't see.

Storytelling through text messages

Books have a setup. Messages don't.

They pop on the phone and a stream of responses follow.

So, can you tell stories with messages alone?

Phony Texts has a small base on YouTube.

But on Snapchat, there are over 6.5 million subscribers.

They're called Text Message Movies - which is accurate.

All that happens is a flow of messages scrolling upwards with sound effects and notifications

The atmosphere is built using plain text.

And that's the power of narration.

You're drawn right into the texts playing out in unpredictable ways

Imagine eavesdropping on private conversations.

They're perfect for the mobile phone.

Banter between bosses and employees, girlfriends and boyfriends

They seem normal to begin with but then, some creepy elements pop up.

The conversations veer off in tangential directions.

Obsessive behavior and odd observations.

Not the regular placid ones you have with friends.

One of them asks for an introduction to a date.

And the response is that a payment has to be made for the introduction to happen.

Where does it go from there?

Try it out

This won't work as a book. Or even as a short story.

It has an intrusive quality that's hard to pin down.

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It's the single biggest mistake made by a bank.

Citibank transferred $500 million instead of $ 5 million, acting as an agent for Revlon.

It was part of an ongoing repayment plan.

It was like any other transaction - except that the term used in the form was misunderstood

The error was detected a day later - by then, it was too late

A tale of bad UI.

High value transactions like these pass through three levels of approval. And the box ticked seemed to be the right one. So, everyone concerned approved it.

There's a detailed explanation available in the article.

The creditors who benefited were delighted. They were expecting a protracted delay in getting the money back from Revlon.

Instead, they hit the jackpot

Citibank was aghast at the turn of events and tried to reverse the transfer. No luck.

Ordinarily, this would be reversed. But there is a provision in the law which says that if creditors are paid back by mistake they can keep it. And the transfer was equal to the money owed to them

The judge ruled in the creditors favour.

There's a crater to fill in the bank's accounts now.

In defence of boredom

Over the years, it has acquired a stigma

Boredom is to be avoided at all costs.

It has come to be equated with 'nothing to do' - a state of idleness which is frowned upon

Sometimes, the mind needs to wander aimlessly.

Without a looming deadline. Or toiling through a thicket of doubt.

There are proverbial warnings - An idle mind is the devil's workshop'

As if the exploring mind will immediately be oriented towards destruction and deviousness.

It's a time when the ideas in your head get a chance to interact and come up with fresh ways of looking at things.

When you lie on the ground and watch passing clouds, you see shapes and patterns that would never occur to you otherwise.

If you sat at the water's edge on a beach and listened to the waves chase each other endlessly, you'd get a sense of eternity a clock could never display.

Living life means many things - and all experiences don't have to be collected and stored in memories.

Boredom needs to be welcomed, not feared.

It's the space minds need to grow, without being driven to perform at every hour of the day.

It's your choice.

In corona times, creating safer public spaces

The coronavirus is not disappearing anytime soon

As governments struggle to help businesses open, an Israeli company, Protouch may have found a solution

Helping businesses operate and signal to people the places that are safe to enter

The original product was simply an LED lighting pole for exhibitions.

They collaborated with an American company Synect to install sensors and use AI to monitor crowd numbers in an area

As numbers increase beyond defined safe levels, the light indicator goes from green to orange to red.

The traffic light principle which everyone understands being applied to a new situation altogether.

These poles have been installed at the airport in Orlando and without using cameras or any other tracking technology, people instinctively move to the areas which show up as green

The light sensors can be altered to change depending on what is deemed safe.

So, if restaurants are allowed to operate at 25%, the numbers can be calibrated accordingly.

Or even entry into cinemas or malls.

It is applicable to all public spaces - and it can scale to just about anywhere because the components are easily assembled and deployed.

And it's what people easily understand and follow.

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They couldn't be more different

An onion and a potato.

But a restaurant in the US has managed to fry onions in a way that makes it irresistible.

It's not the familiar onion rings.

Dipped into batter and then deep fried.

There is no batter here.

It looks like a sunflower you can eat with the right dip.

There are several origin stories.

But it begins with an onion sliced deep in several directions but not all the way through.

Calls for some slick technique and preparation.

Expect it to arrive on hotel menus as its fame spreads.

The presentation is practically the story.

It's called a 'blooming onion' - a pretty accurate description if you can think of a fried flower in your head.

The chef who invented it was thinking of something inexpensive that would be a unique dish.

And the onion sort of popped into his head.

There is already a controversy on where it first came about and who stole what from whom.

The recipe involves using food colors and keeping the 'flowered onion' in a fridge overnight before it is dunked into the deep fryer.

Another sin food option for those who don't count calories.

Burt's Bees - a crazy brand story

Hat rakishly placed at an angle.

A face etched by the experience of living outdoors

An old world authenticity has made Burt's Bees a massive business in several countries.

Producing everything from lip balm to a range of cosmetics.

Burt is real. He's not a figment of some Art and Copy team's imagination.

His life story is full of contradictions and there are strange twists and turns to the brand story - or probably what sustains it.

He's a living mascot for the brand.

There's an opening sequence in the documentary where he arrives in Taiwan to a rockstar welcome.

Young people swarm all over him and pose for selfies.

He's got a straggly beard, speaks in a long-drawn drawl and seems to have the audience eating out of his hand.

To them, he's the very embodiment of a natural lifestyle.

Burt is happiest when he's left in a small shack from where his brand story began.

It has no running water and he has only recently upgraded to a place with normal conveniences available in modern homes.

He sold honey by the roadside for years to sustain himself.

And he still doesn't understand what the fuss is about.

Carbon farming

The best ideas are the simplest ones.

Several have been proposed to get carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

But there's a low-tech one which shows great promise

Kelp is a large brown seaweed that grows abundantly under the sea

It is a favorite in the nutrient business because of a high level of antioxidants which help the fight against disease-causing free radicals.

It has a slightly salty taste and is a favorite on the gourmet food circuit.

But the most important kelp benefit is what it does to the atmosphere.

As it grows, it absorbs an enormous amount of carbon from the air through photosynthesis.

And the bottom of the ocean is the best way to store carbon for millions of years.

A company called Running Tide Technologies is doing a simple experiment.

It's wrapping buoys with kelp seeds and floating them far out into the ocean.

As kelp grows in its natural environment, the weight sinks the buoys to the bottom, trapping the carbon as a massive benefit.

The genius of the method is that nothing needs to be manufactured.

It's just helping nature do the job it has done for billion of years.

Let's hope it works.

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The pandemic threw movie theaters into steep decline.

Through lockdowns and social distancing norms, it looked as if theaters would have a hard time springing back.

But they have an asset no home theater can replicate

A 650 ft screen.

The older games would not have stood up to this level of magnification.

But the new generation has amazing graphics that are rarely exploited to their full potential.

That's where the idea clicked.

A group of competitive X Boxers approached a closed movie theater in Singapore

The idea was to compete and have the game play out on the movie screen.

The theater agreed and they paid $325 for a 3 hour experience.

Of sitting in the darkened movie theater with Dolby sound and the thrills of the game playing out on an impossibly big screen.

Is this sustainable?

Can movie theaters thrive by renting space to gamers?

Well, they'll never know unless they try.

The initial reports are that the experience was 'epic' and 'awesome'

That will whet the appetite of other gamers

And with games overall being bigger than the movie business, there's a new model in the offing.

A pure adrenalin rush on a giant screen.

So, you're doing the daily grind?

It's a form of expression.

The cliché describing how life is stuck at a particular point.

Let's go back to a time when the daily grind really existed - thousands of years ago.

At the dawn of agriculture

Women spent five hours a day grinding stubborn grains on stones to prepare food for families.

There was no choice. It was either that or starvation.

So, for all those interested in time travel, it may not be wise to go back more than a few centuries.

Our soft, sensitive bodies and psyches certainly cannot endure the hardship.

And here's the thing.

An electric mill set up in one of the remote villages prevents more starvation deaths than any other form of development or progress.

Even today.

The ancient industrial systems, a precursor to the information age, started out only in the late nineteenth century.

It's hardly the stuff bestsellers and hits are written about.

As humans today, some of us are living in an impossibly fortunate period of history.

Our daily grind is boredom, not survival.

Women living at the time had shoulders which rivalled those of competitive rowers who train for 5 hours a day

And it wasn't a sport.

Finally, archeologists make an exciting discovery

It wasn't another tomb.

Or an ancient chalice of gold

It's something that would be considered a treasure even today.

The discovery of a 5000 year old beer factory

In Egypt, of all places.

Not England or Germany where you would have expected the find, going by the tipple's current popularity.

They found a unit with a large number of pots in which grain and water were heated.

So, humans knew pretty early on the secret of a good time. Along with grains as food, they experimented with fermented grain as mood elevators.

Back then, of course, there were no pubs.

This spirit was meant for royal rituals within the funeral facilities of kings.

We would certainly like some of our earthly delights in the afterlife as well!

Beer has traveled a long way through civilization.

And settled into the large, comfortable bellies of the faithful.

They will argue the finer points of hops and the perfect 'head' of froth while it is poured.

As well as the bitter accent.

Back then, beer was meant only for the royals.

And Egypt can claim the original recipe.

You can't expect the English to be ecstatic about a historical twist in the tale.

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Skyscrapers that stick out like needles on the New York skyline.

The haunt of the well-heeled crowd.

Looking for the perfect address in the middle of the swankiest neighborhoods.

But large vacant spaces were hard to come by.

And so, architects designed dazzling needles going as high as 1400 feet into the air.

Promoted as marvels of design and engineering.

The needles would tower over the older remnants of the neighborhood.

And they got across zoning locations that limited the height of buildings by going around a loophole - if the floors have structural and mechanical equipment, they are not counted.

So a building with nearly 90 floors has about 25 floors filled with equipment and structural artefacts - and the rest could be sold

Gleaming palaces of glass and metal priced at tens of millions for a single apartment within.

But nature's forces have their own rules.

The buildings face unexpected water damages and plumbing issues due to the immense height.

High winds cause the buildings to sway and while the design accounts for certain tolerances, it's deeply unsettling.

The view is incredible. And being on top of the world should feel absolutely great.

That's the whole point, isn't it?

Will smart cities be built around street lights?

It's an enduring image in film plots.

Students without means studying under a street light.

We don't pay much attention to them in the normal course. Except when they aren't there.

Then the darkness seems to paint frightening shadows.

So what do smart cities have to do with street lights?

Its early days but the plan is to make light poles the central point of a smart network

The new LED lights save a a considerable amount of power compared to Sodium vapour lamps.

However, that's just the beginning.

A whitepaper from Intel sees street lights as the core around which smart cities can be built.

They are already placed at a defined distance from each other.

Now, they can be networked to do far more.

Image sensors can measure the volume of traffic passing at different times of day

Parking violations can be caught from cameras mounted on the lights

Air and water quality measured with another set of sensors.

Even emergency responses coordinated by showing public the way to exit the city. Much like the pre-flight announcements by the hostess.

And of course, outdoor advertising on the poles could subsidize the expense to be incurred.

Smart thinking?

'V' and 'W'

They are right next to each other on the alphabet lineup.

But in primary school, we had a teacher who built a wall between them

She would pick out words starting with each of the letters and make us say it with emphasis.

At that age, we didn't see any difference between 'verb' and 'word'

But she underlined it with the expressions on her face.

All words starting with 'v', she would bite her lower lip and blow out her breath.

All words starting with 'w', she'd purse her lips like today's duckfaces for selfies.

Imagine a whole class of little kids with pursed lips trying to form 'world'. Or biting their lips to say 'very'

She persisted.

Almost like a drill sergeant making men out of boys.

Pronunciation was her passion, not just grammar. It didn't matter if you spelt the words right. You also had to say them right.

We'd realise why only much later. Catch people routinely stumbling on 'world' and 'very' and 'went' and 'vent'. Or 'won't' and 'vault' - there was no difference.

Try this with words from the dictionary. And then, see how it impacts the way people understand what you say.

Thank you Miss Doctor.

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Does your mobile phone wake you up with the tune of your choice?

And do you press 'snooze' several times before you finally get out of bed?

A look at how people used to wake up before alarm clocks were invented reveals some far-fetched solutions.

A lit candle, placed in a metallic plate, had nails pierced into it at regular intervals. When it melted to reach the nail, it would clatter down, waking people up.

The 'Knocker up' was a real job for people . They went around knocking on doors in the mornings as human alarm clocks in the early industrial era

The factory whistle was a loud, high-pitched sound that could be heard far away. It must have been the most hated sound of its time.

Bladder control was a thing for a time. People figured out how much water they had to drink every night before the pressure to relieve themselves snapped them awake. The ultimate personal alarm system.

Whatever the method, the snooze button on alarms was probably the most gratifying innovation - introduced by GE in the 1950s

We may have our favourite alarm tunes but we still want those precious additional minutes every morning.

Gamers have competition. Blockchain miners

As usual, competition comes from the places you least expect.

Gamers now compete with miners for high end laptops.

Their objectives could not be more different.

Gamers want to have the best sensory experience.

And blockchain miners want the firepower to crack complex algorithms to authenticate Ethereum transactions.

As elements along blockchains get more valuable, the resources required to mine them have risen.

The miners are after PCs with Nvidia RTX 30 series GPU to give them an edge.

The gaming PCs are connected in stacks and play another game altogether - away from the public eye.

Market demand is unpredictable and this is a quirky example.

Nvidia is creating GPUs to enhance the gaming experience but they're being used to solve complex algorithmic puzzles.

The miners are willing to outbid gamers in order to lay their hands on the GPUs

They have to constantly reinvent themselves as cryptocurrency mining is energy intensive - first, they had to find the countries with spare capacities or where power is cheap.

Now, they have to compete using superior processing power

It's Ethereum mining vs Geshin Impact and Guild Wars

And there's no end game in sight - or rules. It's winner take all.

Training the mind to win

2020's French Open champion came out of nowhere in October

She was ranked 54 but she didn't lose a single set in all the matches she played.

Then she won the championship.

Iga Swiatek is from Poland. But the most unusual thing about this 19 year old?

Her association with a sports psychologist from the earliest stages of her career.

We've gone past the era of coaches who drilled hard work and methodical progress to get to the top.

It's now a mind game as much as a physical one

What separates the top seeds now is not technique or game play alone but tenacity.

And that comes from shaping the mind to win.

The sports psychologist she works with builds her emotional anchors. A former sailor, she's at the helm of bringing sports psychology into the mainstream for sports in Poland.

It won't be long before other countries jump on the bandwagon.

The retinue for a champion is going to grow.

Raw talent will be molded, shaped and directed to victory.

So, the ones who seek to win on sheer talent may have a bigger mountain to climb.

The focus will shift to subtleties of the mind game.

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You get off the train and walk up and down the platform.

It's built at a scenic spot where a river bends and charts a course through the mountains.

The strange thing about the station is that the platform has no entrances or exits

It's simply a long viewing gallery along the railway line.

Breathe the clear air and enjoy the view.

Then wait for the next train to arrive, get back on and proceed to your destination.

There's something mystical about a railway station that's not the beginning or the end of a journey.

How could it have been conceived and executed?

It requires a culture to come up with a pause for a moment of happiness.

Where the main function of the station is for people to watch and reflect as the river gurgles past.

On mountainous roads, there are scenic spots marked out for travelers to stretch their legs and admire the view.

But a train station built only for that purpose? That's unusual.

What was the justification offered?

Was it conceived as an aberration?

How did it get through layers of bureaucratic approval?

Maybe there are philosophers working in Japanese government offices.

Flatcams will soon be here

4 cameras on the back of mobiles is now common

Plus a punch hole on the front for selfies.

Camera technology has advanced at a scorching pace since it became one of the prime reasons for people to upgrade.

Most advances have come from software because glass has limitations.

DSLRs had bulky lenses and it was worn as a badge of pride by professionals. Like massive telephoto lenses which required a stand to keep steady

Mobile manufacturers struggled to deliver higher image quality with space and optics limitations.

They even tried pop-up motors on some models but it was clear that it wouldn't fly beyond a point.

But constraints have a way of unleashing creativity.

Metalenz is working with mobile manufacturers to merge those multiple lenses into one.

Creating flat lenses using a new technology called optical metasurfaces.

It produces images with the same quality as traditional ones, gets bright pictures and even improves sensing abilities.

Best of all, it takes up less space.

So the design gymnastics mobile phones use to fit multiple lenses to achieve great results won't be necessary. It will be possible with a single lens.

And then it's a shorter hop to AR and VR applications.

The monk on the mule

He was a small kid. And already a monk in the making.

He was recruited to play a role in an ad film we were shooting for Rockshox cycles

The location was the scenic valley of Jomsom in Nepal.

One of the most picturesque places on earth I've ever been to.

When the film crew landed and got out of the ancient Russian helicopter, we looked around.

It was a valley surrounded by snow capped mountains.

The entire village was a row of stone houses.

And back in the 90s, there was practically no tourist traffic.

The producer of the film Bharat Bala had thought of casting a small local kid to show the reaction to stunts on the bike.

The little guy had never seen a cycle in his life.

But he rode a mule with practiced ease.

And all of us who had grown up in cities were completely uncomfortable with the idea of riding mules

We wanted a final shot with the bike rider and the little monk riding doubles.

But he threw a king-sized tantrum and we had to drop the idea.

For me it was the perfect lesson on how our beliefs shape our comfort zones.

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Real life throws up more twists and turns than the movies.

Picture this.

A young lady dressed in proper aerobic gear in the outdoors is going through her daily routine.

Yellow top with black leggings and a mask, in accordance with the pandemic rules

The words are unfamiliar - but the tinny track and beats are perfectly in accordance with a class anywhere in the world.

Now, the backdrop.

A wide multiple lane road, largely empty when the video clip starts.

Behind her, a stream of vehicles enter the street.

As she continues, oblivious of what is happening behind her, more and more vehicles gather.

Then, the setting becomes clear.

This is Myanmar's capital, where the ruling government was overthrown.

The military vehicles had arrived on the scene, preparing to go into parliament and make arrests.

The aerobic dance routine has just photobombed a coup.

When she woke up in the morning and went about her routine, she would hardly have expected to play a leading role on Twitter.

Imagine scriptwriters coming up with this as the setting in a movie.

And being laughed out of the room because it's completely unbelievable.

Real life is nuts!

Did you have a 'forest bath' today?

Japanese doctors are actively prescribing it.

A walk in the woods.

The problem is that we don't even get enough of sunlight everyday.

It's making our systems weaker and we're compensating by adding multivitamin mixes to our diets.

There are proven studies that show how exposure to green canopies builds better immunity.

Listening to birdsong, shuffling through fallen leaves and hugging trees is part of the treatment that Japanese doctors recommend.

They ask people who lead stressed lives to head to the closest nature reserve and just spend time there for the body to heal

The only cost incurred is the transport and possibly staying out there. Maybe it won't be convenient

It doesn't sound exciting to our attention deficit thrill-seeking lives.

Dialing down is for older people who don't know how to have 'fun' anymore.

Think of how little contact we have with nature in an urban environment. High rises look into a landscape of traffic and artificial lighting

And the fundamental issue?

What can anyone do in a forest other than walk around and take in the sights?

The scenery doesn't change.

It's the definition of boring weekend.

And yet, that's what tired minds and bodies desperately need.

Can we break away from routines?

It's what the mind resists.

Being forced into a routine

Doing the same thing everyday is soul shattering

At least, that's the way it appears.

A routine forces people to believe they are getting into the kind of existence from which there is no easy escape.

The curse of working life

It's what assembly line or garment workers do.

However, the same thing may not apply to jogging everyday.

That routine leads to better health

Or meeting friends and chatting away for hours every evening.

That's not a routine, it's what makes life interesting.

Or have a party every other night.

What's different?

The musician practicing for 4-6 hours a day is following a routine.

So is the cricketer executing square drives and pulls and stepping out to deliveries until his technique and reactions can earn him a place on the team

The programmer who looks to solve tricky issues in programs so users have a rewarding experience.

The arguments could be that cricketers and musicians are following a passion, so they devote the time willingly.

And that is the point.

Not to be a beginner all through life.

You can't get to 100 without crossing 99 milestones

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At home. At work. At school. In restaurants.

No wonder chairs are an essential test of a creative designer's portfolio.

They literally come in all shapes, sizes and materials.

Flashy or functional.

When a ruler sits on it, it's a regal throne.

Commoners can dream of recliners, high-backed, low backed and futons.

Office chairs are different from the garden variety

They can be stacked, folded and assembled.

And come with or without arms.

There's even a shapeless version - the beanbag which folds people into a comfortable embrace.

The easy chair with it's old-fashioned frame and long extended arms which become footrests

Or the massager that people sink into at the end of a tiring day.

And the rocking chair with it's curved arcs to swing gently back and forth.

Cups and plates can be ornamental or decorative.

But chairs signal status and the pecking order.

Who sits at the head of a table?

Why are executive chairs different from staff chairs?

And decadence defined by deck chairs around swimming pools?

Elevation, for the rest of us, is once in a lifetime

When newlyweds sit on glittering fake thrones and welcome guests

Chairs speaks volumes more than we're consciously aware about.

The big reset

On a phone or a laptop, you press a button and restart.

On a manufacturing line, it's going to be chaos.

Tesla has always been an electric car manufacturer.

Now, other big names are planning their own transition before Tesla threatens to eat their lunch and dinner.

And wipeout their carbon footprint along with their market share

No engine or drive train parts

Electric cars have completely different dynamics.

The changes will pierce deep within and impact every aspect of manufacturing

And they can't take a holiday in the meanwhile.

They have to reduce their fossil fuel models and ramp up electric cars in the line up

While getting new customers on board with the changes and servicing current demand

They're going to need lots of luck, apart from knife-edge execution skills.

GM, the world's largest automaker has made the first move.

They have announced that by 2035, they will go completely electric

The competition does not have a choice anymore.

They have to be ready with their own offerings.

No one is going to have it easy.

Not the car ancillary companies. The agencies. The distributors. Or logistics.

This is a reset of the global auto supply chain.

Your flight to ___ is delayed

That's what most of us are concerned with.

If our flight's taking off or arriving on time.

Before the pandemic, the giant screens at airports buzzed with activity as flights crisscrossed the earth.

But did you ever pause to consider if all these schedules would add up to a business?

Airline schedules, flight data and historic data from airports across the world gives surprising insights into the whole business.

Even in January 2021, there were nearly 200,000 people traveling between Dubai and Heathrow. And over 150,000 people between Cairo and Jeddah.

May be they are dramatically down from their hist0rical highs but even in the world's biggest pandemic, there are large numbers of people still flying between the world's major cities.

The Official Aviation Guide (OAG) has been around since 1929 - almost the time that commercial travel in the world became a reality.

And practically all passenger air travel decisions are made from the data provided by OAG.

What routes are opening up and where?

As millions of flights take off or touch down around the world, the data is generated for how the market is growing, changing and evolving.

By 2037, over 8 billion people will fly every year.

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That wasn't a typo.

But it was calculated to stop you in your tracks.

Music, that is. There's some serious saxophone underlining the Hindi melodies of the 60s and 70s.

Interludes to transport you straight back in time to the haunting tunes that never fade.

How did an instrument invented by a Belgian music maker in 1840 drill deep into the Indian psyche?

And his name was Sax. Adolphe Sax. Wasn't pulling a fast one.

Back to where we were.

Go to a number from the movie Guide - Gaata Rahe Mera Dil

About 1 minute and 10 secs into the song, you'll hear the sax take off.

Now listen to it and tell me that you weren't affected by it.

It's like the soul of the song.

Some staccato congos hammer out a pulsating heart in an accompaniment.

The sax goes into a joyful meandering glide through the tune, creating an atmosphere that has held people in its thrall for decades.

You hear that bit and the song with all its associated memories will come rushing back.

SD Burman and RD Burman were the magicians.

But the sleight of hand was performed by the sax.

Are marriages power play?

For all the romantics here, it's sad news. Apart from post-wedding blues.

The podcast episode on marriages from NPR paints a very different picture from movie plots and romance novels.

Marriage began ages ago as a social contract, a way to ensure and maintain the peace between families and kingdoms.

There was no love involved, not the way it is in the regular Hindi potboilers

Possibly why Indian marriages are still largely 'arranged'. And parents say that they are seeking 'alliances' for their sons or daughters.

Some words are more revealing than they intend to be.

For Indian families, finding matches with the right community, gene pool, prospects for the future and social standing is an enduring problem.

Looks may be important to the people involved but there are far bigger considerations at play.

For all those who argue that you need to love the person you marry, listen to the podcast episode.

You may not agree with the conclusions and the points made, but it will certainly expand your views beyond common clichés

There's also a lot more on why marriages today are a lot harder than they used to be.

And that's not the punch line.

The bulls, the bears and the bees

Until recently, the stock market was only about bulls and bears.

The bulls make money by sending stock prices soaring.

The bears by making them plunge.

It's a dance where both are in lockstep and the market can swing either way. But those involved know when the market is getting scorching hot and cooler minds prevail

Money is lost and made but the stock market wall is never breached.

It requires huge investments to influence prices. Only the biggest players can enter the ring.

Those who watched Scam 1992 will get the dynamics.

Small retail investors are like bees. They buy 10, 100 or even a thousand shares which amount to raindrops in an ocean.

Minnows in a sea of sharks.

But recently, there has been an uprising of sorts.

A company called Gamestop was being driven down by hedge funds in the US. Millions were in play

And a swarm of buyers on Reddit, the maverick social media site, bet against the hedge funds.

They acted in co-ordination, thousands of them to drive the price from $80 to $230

Making the hedge funds sweat blood.

Bears and bulls now have to factor the effect of unpredictable bees into the game.

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Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash

You don't. Not unless you try anyway.

The first thing you'll feel is emptiness.

Much like switching on a recorder and trying to find the words to say.

Or the moment people freeze when they are told the camera is rolling.

Begin by writing all the jumbled thoughts and expressions that spring to mind. Expect a mess.

Forget about it for a few hours. Come back later and see if there are parts which make sense.

If it doesn't, give it another shot. Keep going. There is no other way. Unless those words appear on the page, they'll remain trapped in your mind.

That's the strange thing about writing. It doesn't get easier but you learn to persist.

Before it can become extraordinary, it must go from being terrible to being ordinary.

There are some who have the gift.

Even then, unless they've chipped away, struggled and overcome frustrations that last for years, it doesn't get better.

Words are your masters to begin with and you cannot command them unless you earn their grudging respect.

There's a constant tug of war going on - and you won't win all the time.

But when you get it right, you'll know.

There are no fuel stations in space

We've seen the soul-stirring shots of spacecraft lifting off from launch pads.

That's fine to get beyond the earth's atmosphere.

But how would they keep going?

That's the problem space scientists solved in the 1950s

And it was also the beginning of solar power finding the ideal conditions for growth.

There were huge arguments between scientists who wanted to rely on chemical batteries.

Dr. Hanz Zeigler showed that silicon solar panels would be the best solution

At the time, in the 50s, solar power was unbelievably expensive

$300 per watt.

There was no application on earth that could have justified the cost.

In space, however, it was the best way to ensure long galactic voyages.

Use the sun to generate power - the ultimate refueling station.

In sixty years, the cost of generating solar power has dropped dramatically.

It's now the cheapest source of electricity on earth.

Comparable to computing power increasing exponentially while the price plunges every year.

Where will you see a similar transformation?

In agriculture. The second largest exporter of food in the world is the Netherlands.

And the food grows in skyscrapers, not on land. In a sustainable environment.

Change happens slowly, then suddenly.

What came first, reading or writing?

It's like the eternal chicken and egg question.

Unresolved and riddled with contradictions.

Until we learned to write, there would be no readers.

And unless there were readers, why would anyone write?

An article in the Smithsonian makes a confusing point.

That the art of writing was not invented by the educated

The alphabet, apparently, sprang from hieroglyphs, the pictorial depictions of language which were the precursor to a written language.

The miners, immigrant labour brought in to build the temples of Egypt, were not well-versed or didn't have the ability to understand the hieroglyphs.

So they created their own simpler forms and scrawled them on miniature versions of the Sphinx to offer their own prayers to the Gods.

Discovered thousands of years later, they point to the origins of language from these simple forms that came to represent sounds and words.

The question is this.

At the time, would literacy have meant anything at all?

If reading and writing was largely unknown, so was the concept of schools. At least that is the assumption.

So, to say that writing was created by the uneducated is a bit like saying - 'before we were alive, we didn't exist'

Incomprehensible, isn't it?

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.A couple of years is a long time

Many would be quite happy to change every six months

There's a breathless quality to it - if you need to charge more than once a day, if the display or the icons don't have the same fluidity...

It's easy to be dissatisfied.

And advertising plays a starring role in it for sure. Making comparisons is now completely acceptable.

In this game, no one wins. Whether it's a house, a car, or any highly priced article, there's always something better.

So, 'Buy For Life' is a site that sticks out like a sore thumb

It is meant for people who look for good quality, durable products that are meant to last.

In today's world, they could be called 'cheapos'

And the site approaches the listing of products in ways we don't see in regular ecommerce sites

Do you want a lifetime warranty?

Or products that are plastic free?

Recyclable products ?

Or vegan without animal cruelty.

There is even a listing of products that can be repaired. Good heavens. What's next?

Maybe some of us will decide we don't need the glitziest smart phone on the planet to survive.

What's your take?

Imagine a waitlist - for shopping at a supermarket

Here's the kicker.

You carry your own packaging as well.

It started off with a crowdfunding project.

They offered to sell groceries and other household necessities without any packaging

The articles would be bought in bulk from manufacturers, reducing the packaging costs right along the supply chain.

Almost like going back the time without plastic and having to get glass bottles for everything.

They have had to understand the complexity involved in sourcing and distributing every single product in the store, evaluate demand and the stocking necessary.

At the end of the first year, they had about 3000 customers and a long waiting list.

Apparently, it takes 6-7 months of waiting to get admitted.

The work involved for customers is also much higher than shopping at a standard supermarket.

What's the draw?

Cutting down on the waste. Reusing and recycling as much as possible.

The average customer generates 30 kgs of plastic waste a year from discarded packaging.

To many people, this will look like several steps backwards.

Why go back to living the way we did before plastic took over?

An experiment in sustainability and the willingness of people to do their bit.

Do you think it's mad? Or sensible?

There's one place you can walk through water

The Moses Bridge in the Netherlands

And like in the Biblical fable, you can experience it without getting your feet wet

The steps from the bridge dip into the water and as you descend, water rises to waist level on both sides without spilling over into the actual path.

It looks like an optical illusion but it's real.

The idea was to preserve the look and feel of the moat without having an overhead bridge disturb the visual symmetry.

It's also a permanent demonstration of the product Accoyo, a wood treated with a non-toxic coating to prevent erosion and decay, even while it goes through all the seasons.

So in winter, a solid block of ice rises in the path of the wood making the bridge disappear altogether.

During that time, it becomes an ice skating rink attracting a different set of enthusiasts.

It was built in just 3 months and opened in 2010.

A decade later, it's a testament to the design and the materials used that the bridge continues to function perfectly.

Even during heavy rains, pumps drain away excess water without it spilling into the path

Making it among the best real life-demonstrations of product quality on display.

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How can you make a regular football better?

Well, it gets kicked around a lot. On rough grounds, it's likely to get scruffy quite easily as well.

But one of the biggest problems with footballs is that they deflate often.

The local bicycle shop is usually the place to breathe life back into it and get it bouncing again.

The other problem is the rubber bladder. Once punctured, end of game.

Nendo has created an airless football that can be put together in a few minutes.

It's like a 54 part puzzle designed to be assembled with the same hexagonal colour highlights that give the football its familiar look.

Inspired by woven Japanese bamboo balls, with interweaving and interlocking pieces that come together to form a smooth circle

And kids from anywhere don't have to scrimp and scrounge to get one

No worries about the ball deflating over time.

It has the same bounce and feel of regular footballs. That was an important consideration.

Broken pieces can be replaced and the ball maintains its structure and feel over time.

Perfectly set for the rough and tumble of on-field treatment.

Designed to make disappointments disappear from everyday football

Sourav's second innings

Sometime ago, it made the prime time headlines.

Former Indian cricket captain Sourav Ganguly and Fortune oil brand ambassador had a heart attack.

The ultimate brand nightmare.

Having the celebrity stricken by the condition he was endorsing against.

It was all over social media.

And predictably enough, the brand announced a complete withdrawal of the current campaign.

It looked like the relationship was over and Fortune would opt for safer options.

After Sourav emerged from hospital came the news that he would continue to be the face of the brand

The campaign would be reworked with the new reality

That's a courageous step but predictably, it went from the front pages to the inner sections.

While the heart attack and its aftermath was trending on social media, this news barely went reported.

In essence, it demonstrates how weaknesses and downfall attracts attention, not courage.

Fortune has a mountain to climb. And the agency has its work cut out to bring customers back into the fold. A comeback story with a twist.

It won't be easy. Even though it is the right way.

And if it is done with sensitivity, it could become a classic.

I'm rooting for Sourav's second innings.

Update: Alas, it looks as if the brand has moved on and replaced him with another celebrity.

The colors of the family tree

Have you looked through old B&W pictures and wondered what the world looked like back then?

There's a certain resonance to shades of gray but once in a while it evokes curiosity.

The Singapore government worked on a project to convert old B&W images into color

They wanted to keep the texture and feel of the old pictures.

However, they're not using artists to do the job. There are just too many for it to be done manually.

Apart from the cost and time, a project like this would entail, it was not practical

So they used a bank of pictures to train the AI to work its magic on the palette

You can see the results, both the successful and the failed ones in the links below.

It worked best on high resolution pictures featuring humans and natural scenery.

Not the saturated, glossy and detailed millions of colors you see in images today.

May be that's for the best.

A colorful but slightly faded version of the world then

Not just in sepia

The project is now open for anyone to upload and experiment with their old B&W images

Are there family pictures you would like to see in color?

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It wasn't invented yet. CRM.

Neither was Nike. The company was called Blue Ribbon and Phil Knight's first hire was a guy called Johnson.

He sold Tigers, the company's imports from Japan with the tenaciousness of a terrier.

And faithfully reported every move back to Knight.

He wrote every day detailing what he had done - the phone calls, customer responses, updates on sales calls, everything.

He sent so many letters, Phil Knight lost track. And at time, patience.

They were hammered out on a typewriter and covered details big and small.

Every single idea he had about selling more shoes was shared, photographed and earnestly followed up.

The lack of a response from his boss didn't dishearten Johnson. In fact, it seemed to propel him further.

Every customer he sold to got their own index card with the name, shoe size and shoe preferences.

This database was maintained in real files, not computers.

He sent his customers Christmas cards and birthday greetings.

When they won marathons, he sent them congratulatory notes.

They included track stars and weekend joggers.

So, Phil Knight had an early human-driven CRM system much before it became the norm.

Just Do It was coined decades later

Waiting for the phone to ring

It rings. A customer calls in to talk.

Looking as if they are positively inclined to a purchase

But you know little about them and how they got to you

The digital journey that translated into the call is hidden

What worked for the customer and where you can begin a conversation is unclear

That's a gap that can be filled only by tracking customer interactions with advertising across platforms.

Wild Jar is able to get the points at which customers interacted and the digital journey to the point where they got in touch

And if you can get a sense of the stopovers on that journey, you're better prepared to engage.

It's like analytics that picks out progress points along the way.

An inbound call is like amber turning green.

Customers on the verge of buying - checking out companies they have shortlisted.

Wild Jar has signed up nearly 200 companies paying $1000 a month.

Alerting them to calls which should not be missed.

A social medium for movie buffs

Facebook may have the billions but is there a way to build for specific social interests?

For years now, Ning has offered the choice of building niche social networks and communities away from the dominance of Facebook.

Somehow, this group approach has chugged along gathering people around building drones, youth services, education and tackling mental illnesses and they probably fulfil the needs of those communities.

There are exceptions, of course - a company called Ravelry has built a massive network around crochet and knitting on its own, something that seemed like a trivial pursuit or a hobby.

It has a base of 9 million registered users with over 1 million active every month.

Now, there's a social medium devoted to movies.

Letterboxd allows you to find people with the same taste in movies that you do.

So what does it have that IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes don't?

It allows you to build your own fan following around the films you care about.

Exchange notes and playlists with people who like the films you are passionate about.

It's also a new mode of discovery for movies not in the mainstream.

The site already has over 3 million members who have signed up.

Interested?

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We've grown used to slipping emojis into our messages.

What looked like a simple set of smiley, frowny, teary, impatient, laughing or exasperated expressions have become part of everyday messaging.

That statistics are off the chart

There are over a 100 trillion messages sent online every year across all messaging environments.

On Google there are over 1.8 trillion searches a year.

So the messaging market is 50 times larger than search.

The overall messaging market has splintered into huge sub-groups - for everything from gaming to payments to information.

And Travis Montaque, the young CEO and co-founder of Holler had an idea.

He saw that conversational interfaces would expand far beyond text.

How could they be made more interesting?

It was a problem waiting to be solved.

Holler is a company that creates emojis, GIFs, stickers and context sensitive messaging for many players in the market

In many ways, text is limiting. It requires you to be fluent in a language.

Venmo, the payment app uses emojis and stickers for every conceivable payment situation created by Holler.

It adds layers of interaction that goes beyond text.

And brands are already experimenting with non-verbal communication that highlights the fun quotient.

The painter of sands

His preferred tool is a rake.

The ones you sweep up dead leaves with.

And he wields it with grace and force in equal measure

His canvas - the sand on beaches.

And to complete every creation, he races against time.

Only to see them washed away by the tide in a few hours.

He records the massive undertaking with drone photography - both to document and make prints to sell.

They span areas as wide as 200 feet.

And range from geometric patterns to flowing lines and shapes.

In India, we're familiar with kolams and rangoli.

Housewives work intricate designs starting out from simple grids into complex, breathtaking detail drawn everyday.

But they span a maximum of a few feet - even the most elaborately imagined ones.

The beach artist is Andres Amador.

An environmental engineer turned computer technician who dabbled in sand during a holiday in Hawaii.

He designs on tablets, then operates by instinct, drawing small grids and connecting them through elaborate routines.

With a growing base of customers on social media, he has attracted a small wave of enthusiasts who want to learn from him.

The art of leaving imprints on the disappearing sands of time.

A short-sighted world

How long does it take you to get your spectacles?

If you're shopping online, trying out fancy frames can take hours.

But in the real world, more than a billion people have poor vision and no money to fix the problem.

That's what Global2020 solves.

Access and the cost issue.

No optometrist required.

A sliding scale of lenses attached to a frame. It's like using binoculars. Keep turning the dial until everything comes into sharp focus.

People just look at a chart and at the point where they can see clearly, they stop

Then, they get color coded glasses for their power range inserted into the frame, and suddenly, the world comes into perfect focus. It only takes a few minutes.

The cost of the entire operation? $5. Or Rs. 375. A cup of coffee in a fancy restaurant.

The innovation was in creating the testing system that could be deployed in the field with practically no training.

And it's changing the lives of school children and adults with vision loss.

Spectacles were invented 700 years ago.

But for a whole lot of people, getting glasses is a luxury they cannot afford.

A billion people market is waiting to be tapped.

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There are millions of cogs in the Indian economy's wheels.

They grind ever so slowly, sickly, barely making it from one month to the next.

Getting them into the digital age is like forcing them to time travel.

But Udaan believed it was possible.

The founders had helped to build India's first ecommerce company, Flipkart.

And they knew that there was gold beneath all the heat and grime of India's small B2B businesses.

They didn't promise these businesses the earth.

What they did tell them was the mobile app would make it easy for them to find products, place orders, track inventory and sales.

Through the last 3-4 years, the small businesses began to rely on the app instead of travelling to distant cities like they used to earlier.

Connecting traders, wholesalers, retailers and manufacturers, Udaan saw how the cogs connected and what was moving.

The estimated credit demand of these businesses, according to a survey by the Bank of America adds up to $300-$350 billion.

And Udaan is uniquely equipped to identify the consistent and fast growing players in the network.

The early success of Udaan came from establishing the payment infrastructure for these businesses.

The next leap? Helping them grow.

Plastic gets all the attention

Only 10% of all plastics produced can be recycled. So, we're drowning in the stuff.

But there's more to managing the environment than cutting down on plastic.

The fashion industry is supposed to be the second largest polluter after oil.

Other studies have pronounced chemicals as the culprit.

Agriculture is a major drain on the freshwater resources of the world

Manufacturing metals is also a major contributor to emissions.

All of this adds up.

But we don't have an accurate picture of the overall situation.

There are several overlaps and the way in which manufacturing, trade and logistics interact.

That data is not consolidated. Bringing them all together is not feasible because each country generates its own data sets.

There isn't a single way in which all of this can be seen through one lens.

Bringing about change requires fundamental shifts in every aspect of how business is done.

Activists highlight what they are most concerned about.

Technologists and researchers are the ones who have to come up with solutions.

Implementation is another ball game altogether

But some sectors get far more money and attention than others.

Policy, politics, profits and power are involved

And that's a heady cocktail

The dictionary became the stock exchange

It was precisely defined.

The headline was limited to 25 characters, followed by 35 characters for the second and third lines and then the URL.

That's how the original AdWords were and the dominant format continues with tweaks from time to time.

All those slaving away on writing the ads must have thought the limits were plucked out of a hat. Or torture tests.

There are times when words had to be fitted into the defined limits using all kinds of tricks from the thesaurus or swapping one word for another.

It's data-driven creative, not the one that ad agencies in the 80s and 90s would have had anything to do with.

A little like writing classified ads all year

The billion dollar market is an assembly line of words and phrases churning out profits far beyond what traditional agencies ever could

But it had it's roots in newspapers.

Each newspaper column is roughly a couple of inches wide

There's a clear reason. It's easy for eyes to scan and read columns.

The longer the line, the harder it is to read

AdWords was built on sound principles of a century of newspaper design.

And making a stock exchange from the dictionary.

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Data is oil, right?

But do we have the vehicles to drive it?

Numbers are the foundation but we've not made it much easier to understand.

We represent them through pie charts, bar graphs and spatial dispersion. In advanced cases we are able to create interactive points to get a better picture.

Even then, we're on the outside looking in through screens.

So, how can we enter the data landscape like we navigate physical environments?

We understand spatial data well because of our immersion in the real world.

Bad VR is building data walkthroughs in VR.

The choice of the company name is strange but memorable.

They use VR to create immersive environments to reach out and touch data.

One of the applications is to figure out where to put 5G transmission towers.

With the help of the headset, technicians can actually reach out and hold signal bars to see how strong or weak the signals are within a space.

This improves on the previous installation procedures which were both manpower intensive and less efficient.

Hopefully at some time in the future, we can actually walk through annual reports.

And sales projections. Or safely explore disease prevalence in cities.

What's your earliest memory of computers?

My father used to work in a civil defense establishment.

And I remember seeing bits of leftover punch cards from the programs running the behemoths then. Never saw the actual computer, of course.

It occupied a whole floor and no one was allowed entry. But it was far less powerful than the smart phones we carry around today.

The earliest memory I have of working with one is an Apple Mac 2 used to 'pulse' audio visuals.

Essentially, they were the kind of presentations you make on Power Point or Keynote or Canva today.

They took weeks.

First, the script was recorded. Then images captured from books , magazines, newspapers and brochures to create transparencies or real slides loaded into Kodak carousels.

You couldn't just hit 'New Slide'

Each of the slides created were laid out in a sequence on light boxes. The Apple Mac 2 programmed the slides to be projected and positioned according to the script, and synched with the voice over track.

Setting up a presentation involved carrying slide carousels, projectors and audio and took hours of rehearsals to get right.

Laptops were still a decade away.

Now, it seems like the stone age of computing

How far does your health obsession go?

Smart watches measuring your blood glucose levels

And your heart rate to tell you if something's off.

We're slowly but surely outsourcing our wellness to multiple devices.

And ignoring our inner voice.

You know, the one that tells you to get some sleep.

Eat some food. We tune out both, hunger pangs and when the body says enough

Or fatigue signals telling us we should be taking things easy and not stress too much.

The mobile phone has become the master we blindly submit to.

Now, there's a device called Lumen.

And it hacks your metabolism. Tells you if it is on track through the day.

Suggests a detailed diet plan to compensate or cut down.

You breathe into it in the morning or before a meal and you'll get feedback on how your body is doing.

One more chart to obsess about.

Monitoring used to be for patients who had a problem.

Checking blood sugar levels. Or blood pressure.

Lumen has evolved from studying high performance athletes and what they need to do in training for competitions.

So the pedigree is impressive.

Question is, do you need a device to tell you how you're doing?

It certainly appears that way.

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The art market is worth over $60 billion.

90% of it comes from paintings that cost over $10 million each.

Where can you park money after buying a few dozen mansions, cars and practically every article manufactured in the world?

There was a great summing up in a book called Maverick by Ricardo Semmler.

He said that everything you can put a price on in the world can be bought for $12 million. That's it. You don't need billions. At least that's the way I remember it.

A chateau, an airplane and as many high end cars as you like.

So paintings are assets to park value that will grow over time.

It's not simple though. Most things start out looking simple and then rapidly become complex.

You need the whole ecosystem built around art over centuries to extract value.

Companies like Sotheby's and MOMA, whose pronouncements about a painting can either send it shooting up or crashing down.

And like most valuable things, they are tucked away in private collections

Stashed away in secure vaults - like trophies in solid cabinets.

The thrill is in the pursuit and the acquisition.

The sublime creations and the labor of artists - an afterthought

They've got the logo right

It's an asterisk.

And the simplest shapes are the most memorable.

The logo animation is beautiful as well. Lines that cross each other and freeze into the asterisk.

The name is just as easy. Arrival.

A company making EVs. And it's already valued at a few billions.

Making buses, trucks and vans.

It's the little details that have been thought through.

Bodies made of a new composite material to be recycled time and again into making new vehicles.

Cutting down the use of robots for assembly from a few thousands to less than a hundred.

Micro factories that can be put up in months and used to supply surrounding cities.

The videos on the website play in vertical mode on mobile and landscape on the desktop

By 2021, they aim to deliver the first sets of buses.

It's a long road to move from diesel to electric transportation.

Charging stations have to be installed at regular intervals.

And charging in the initial phases will take a few hours, if not more.

Petrol vehicles can be tanked up in a few minutes.

Innovation has to be applied at every single phase of the supply chain.

To get ready for the new arrival

Chaos is the cradle of opportunities

Pre-pandemic, over 50,000 buses were sold in India annually - and about 10,000 are bought by schools.

Apart from education, schools had to manage a complex schedule of picking and dropping children.

The Principal of a reputed school had ruefully admitted to parents - " Sometimes, I wonder if I am running a school or a transportation company!"

Schools in India don't have a need right now.

But Zum in the US has made it their business. Started by Indian entrepreneurs who saw the potential in transporting kids to school.

They're taking the load off school management and bringing in far greater efficiencies into the process.

One of the big problems was the number of children spending an hour or more on a trip - over 70%. And Zum was able to bring this down to 3%.

It's an opportunity waiting for entrepreneurs who can manage the transportation needs of multiple schools.

The complexity, of course is that routes, residences, schedules, child safety and timings have to be perfectly managed.

In the midst of a pandemic, until children return to schools, this is all academic

It's not an easy problem to solve. But schools are 20% of the total bus market.

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The first remote controls were wired. And called 'Lazy Bones'.

And they gave birth to the couch potatoes of today.

They were originally invented to mute the volume when the ads came on.

And the early designs were like guns you pointed and shot at TV screens.

Basic functions were to change channels or move volumes up and down - and there were just four buttons to begin with.

The number of buttons expanded to accommodate the proliferation of cable channels. And awkward, complex user interfaces arrived.

We developed channel surfing behavior that continues to this day.

Our habits have also been defined by the 'click' to change anything.

And remote controls morphed from being adblockers to essential accessories.

Over time, everything on TV could be controlled by a single or multiple clicks.

The compulsive need to check if there was something better to watch became ingrained.

Like Bruce Springsteen's classic - 57 channels and nothin' on

The lyrics predict the world we were moving to:

"We switched 'round and 'round 'til half-past dawn

There was fifty-seven channels and nothin' on"

Remote controls were our first search devices.

We're still clicking away all the time.

Compulsively seeking but never sure of what we really want.

The true loner is a rare species

Being single is not the description of a loner.

They may not like attending parties or public gatherings

That's more about being socially awkward than being reclusive

But the true loner shuns human contact completely.

Lives without any creature comforts in the midst of nature - forages for food and has the bare essentials of protection from the elements.

There is a documented case of The North Pond Hermit

He left home and disappeared into the woods at Maine where he lived for the next 27 years.

No conversations with any other human beings

He survived by stealing food from empty cabins.

The family he came from did not report his disappearance to the police.

The National Geographic wrote an entire feature about him after he was sighted and captured.

What comes through is a man determined to avoid human contact at all costs.

Unseen by anyone even though he lived in an area that had several private cabins and dirt roads.

How he managed to go for years without being discovered is still a mystery.

Being a true loner is hard because we are dependent on social structures to survive.

The mobile phone recluse is no loner.

Smart gardening in your kitchen

Indian housewives are obsessive about fresh vegetables

And getting curry leaves for free.

Bunches of them are picked out and handed over at the end of weekly shopping.

Over time, that became a habit and even swanky new vegetable stores were forced to follow suit.

They could charge huge sums of money for a tiny bunch of fresh coriander but the curry leaves had to be handed out for free.

Strange are the ways of doing business

Precision agriculture is trying a direct approach via the kitchen.

You can pluck fresh coriander, chilies, rosemary or mint leaves, every time you need them.

Or a set of exotic herbs if that is more of your kind of thing

You don't have to settle for packaged infusions of herbal tea.

Go straight to your garden every time you feel like the need to indulge.

Will it work?

Well, the products are beautifully presented and the promise of having to do little adds to the charm.

They also guarantee that if the plants don't grow, you will get a free replacement.

Did you ever think that regular greens in the kitchen could become exotic luxuries?

And would you consider growing them?

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It started out as a convenience.

An added layer of security - the inclusion of a One Time Password (OTP) to process transactions online.

Then it became a source of stress.

Some smartphones could help you copy a number and paste it to let a transaction go through

Or apps which automatically entered the OTP. But that was confusing to some people as well.

There was no standard procedure to deal with them.

For users with varying degrees of expertise, it became a race to switch between the messaging app to see if the OTP had arrived, memorise it, switch back to the app and enter it...

With banking transactions, this became a clear liability. A mistake in the entry and the whole process had to be initiated all over again.

The last straw that got telecom operators to move away were SIM swaps where OTPs were used to gain control over the user's phone and drain bank accounts

A new system is being piloted where one software layer will talk to another to verify mobile numbers and approve transactions automatically. Users don't have to intervene.

OTPs will probably disappear over time.

And life will probably be a lot safer and definitely less stressful as well.

2020 was a leap year

The Olympics did not happen.

The races were in hospitals and clinical laboratories

Time stood still even while weeks and months came and went

We discovered how it felt to be stuck in a loop.

Masks became symbols of protection, not aggression

Travel was largely in our thoughts

And a cough set off waves of panic.

Screens became the core of our interactions.

And vaccines the saviors

We were glued to scorecards of the spread of cases.

Denied the simple pleasures of eating out or hugging close friends, we craved them.

And yet, marriages took place, babies were born and life continued.

So what does 2021 hold? Now that we’re practically at the end of it, it remains to be seen what ‘22 will hold.

The new year resolution is to survive

We've moved to an online existence.

Seeking out the solace of binge watches and parties in absentia.

There's a clear divide between people required to be outside all the time

And those who are told to stay home

Graduations and love stories are scripted in a void.

Prayers have to be confined to the heart.

We're trying to press 'Pause' and 'Play' in unison

The masks have started to slip. The crowds are surging

But somewhere at the back of our mind

Fear and fantasy keep swapping places.

The charge of the local brigade

In India, Jio is getting local merchants online.

Will the charge of the local brigade succeed?.

Each of us receives messages to help small local shops

But that involves going around to each of them in the area to find what you want.

It was the only way to do it before Flipkart and Amazon arrived.

People care about their own convenience. And prices.

And between whipping out the mobile phone or taking a vehicle out to buy something, what do you think most people will settle for?

Intentions don't matter, actions do.

Sook is a browser extension for Chrome.

The developer, Jonathan Sandals is approaching local shopping from another angle.

He's going city by city

To begin with, he's aggregated local merchants in Seattle.

So, people living in the city can add the browser extension, to shop local online.

Without having to go to individual websites of the local shops. And registering at each one.

Aggregation is the only way it will work.

But this is bottom up, not top down.

Of course, the shop has to have a website, or else it won't work

In India, the shops will probably be built on WhatsApp

But this idea has legs.

If you enjoyed this newsletter, please consider sharing it with friends. Or Tweeting the link. The more people we can get to tune in every week, the merrier. Thank you.

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Car drivers have been protected from crashes for a few decades now.

It's standard equipment even on entry level models.

Do two wheeler riders have an option?

Especially when on-vehicle deployment is dangerous?

A French company has come up with an ingenious solution.

An air bag built into the rider's vest

It works for motorcycle riders, horse riders and skiers

And it is now mandated equipment on the GP moto racing circuit.

That's where the split second precision of deployment is critically tested

Race riders weave in an arc around bends on the circuit. They shift from side to side.

But when they lose control, there's a split second before they hit the ground

That's the precise time the air bag inflates the vest - before impact

The spine and upper body of the rider are cushioned to break the fall

The same thing happens to horse riders if they are thrown off.

The trickiest one would have been the engineering to protect skiers

There are points when the skiers are airborne and then land perfectly.

Figuring out the mechanics of a crash would have been insane

But they've made these high speed sports potentially a lot safer

Time to retire the smartphone 'slab?’

In 2007, it was a major breakthrough

In 2020, or 2021, every brand looks the same. Almost.

The big innovations over the past year or so have been foldable phones.

Doubling the size of the screen but unique design aspects were largely restricted to the hinges connecting the screens

A pivotal design broke a few days ago and came from an unexpected brand - Oppo

They commissioned the Japanese design company Nendo to rethink the smartphone

And Nendo has created an object every smartphone fanatic will lust after

It slides and glides along a central axis.

Starting off as a credit-card sized shifter. With a flick of the thumb, the phone can be extended partially to see the time, or messages.

Another thumb push reveals the full face of the phone for all normal functions - everything from typing out a note to taking calls.

Semi circular buttons on the side of the phone combine into circles to bring the phone back to its original state.

Words, however, don't do it justice.

It uses everything we've grown used to, from the thumb flick to the scroll to create a form completely different from what we see today.

Nendo has engineered an escape.

The beauty salon business gets a makeover

Small businesses used to be unique, have their own character

SAAS irons out the quirks - and hopefully that means more will survive

Beauty parlours became a 'thing' when India went through an economic boom in the 90s.

They sprung up in several neighborhoods all across the country.

But the only 'tech' they deployed was in equipment or the billing

Appointments were fixed on the telephone and practically every beauty parlour built a set of regulars over time.

The pandemic threw the whole situation into disarray.

And a company called Zenoti has just emerged as the new SAAS unicorn in the sector.

There are no overnight success stories even though it's always projected that way.

They have created a network, providing a range of 'no touch' solutions for spas, medspas, and beauty treatments, integrating billing and managing customers. In other words, an ERP for the beauty business.

The pandemic has forced beauty salons to upgrade their entire set of offerings.

And that means good business for companies like Zenoti operating across 50 countries.

'Global' in SAAS means operating from a few locations to service customers anywhere in the world.

Unlike the beauty business which needs to provide makeovers in person

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He's just been declared YouTube's Creator of the year.

His videos collectively have over 4 billion views.

He doesn't act or sing

And he's just 22.

How is it that the YouTube universe generates statistics that would make mainstream studios salivate?

He's got a bunch of buddies doing his bidding, staging what seems like dumb stuff.

On average, each of his videos get over 20 million views.

And they're elaborately shot and produced.

The first one, which propelled him to stardom was unbelievably simple

He counted non-stop straight from number 1 to 100,000.

That's it.

The video on YouTube goes on for 23 hours and 48 minutes.

It's got over 20 million views.

Behind him is a poster of an elderly lady using an inhaler

An Asian man's face partially covered is right behind him. He tells you it is his best friend.

Also in the frame is a partially eaten sandwich.

That's all there is to it.

He lets you know he's doing it because he is bored

And he goes on and on and on.

It's exhausting to watch him.

What is working? The plot? The effort? The monotony?

He's cracked a code but no one knows what it is.

Today's hits are tomorrow's classics

At some point, every classic was a hit

Whether it was books, fashion, movies or songs.

It blazed a trail and made an impact that lasted decades or centuries.

With the number of songs and movies being churned out today, this journey has got compressed as well.

A decade is now deemed to be enough time for a hit to become a classic.

And as the hits increase, the classics grow voluminous as well.

There's no way we can keep up with the profusion of year end 'Best of...lists'

It used to be easy.

If we have 2 or 3 hours of leisure a day, what do we devote it to?

There's no way to keep up with everything.

Instead of worrying about missing out on something, stay in a narrow lane.

It is not necessary to gather all the the wisdom and the variety of the world.

Trying to catch up with every single 'Best film of the year' at the Oscars would mean starting from 1929. That's not pleasure. It's work.

Over time, you will begin to like current hits a lot less. And lean towards the classics.

All experiences over time are distilled into memories. The past is how the present ages.

The charge of the local brigade

In India, Jio is getting local merchants online.

Will the charge of the local brigade succeed?.

Each of us receives messages to help small local shops

But that involves going around to each of them in the area to find what you want.

It was the only way to do it before Flipkart and Amazon arrived.

People care about their own convenience. And prices.

And between whipping out the mobile phone or taking a vehicle out to buy something, what do you think most people will settle for?

Intentions don't matter, actions do.

Sook is a browser extension for Chrome.

The developer, Jonathan Sandals is approaching local shopping from another angle.

He's going city by city

To begin with, he's aggregated local merchants in Seattle.

So, people living in the city can add the browser extension, to shop local online.

Without having to go to individual websites of the local shops. And registering at each one.

Aggregation is the only way it will work.

But this is bottom up, not top down.

Of course, the shop has to have a website, or else this won't work

In India, the shops will probably be built on WhatsApp

But this idea has legs

If you enjoyed this newsletter, please consider sharing it with friends. Or Tweeting the link. The more people we can get to tune in every week, the merrier. Thank you.

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If you don't follow podcasts, this may be mystifying.

Why is the podcast market growing at a compounded rate of over 27% per year, on average?

It's close to $11 billion in value now and is likely to be at $60 billion by 2027.

That's a lot of podcasts people are listening to.

Audio books never took off the same way.

So how is this different?

For one thing, podcasts are a reinvention of radio programs and talk shows.

The range of topics and what is covered goes much deeper than any radio programs do

You can probably find 25 good podcasts on investing alone. Or businesses.

Conversations aren't like books.

Authors write books in solitary contemplation. They agonise over the right word and phrase. Then the editors step in.

What you get is a structured set of thoughts well-explained and researched.

Podcasts are flee-flowing conversations. It's like listening to people you get to like and look forward to hearing from.

You can listen to music when you're walking or driving. But it's also the best time to tune into podcasts.

You won't know the miles go by. It will take you time to find the gems.

Persist. Because it's rewarding.

A moment in your life

What were you doing at 7.47 am today?

Not sure?

A project called human clock is integrating the dry numbers of a digital clock face to photographs of people displaying the time

It's not more efficient

A photograph freezes time anyway. But by crowd sourcing moments, you get a glimpse into the lives of people around the world

It picks up the time from your device or desktop and displays the photos for you to scroll through.

8.42 plastered on a post-it note across a dog's head

A signboard showing 20.49

You're welcome to contribute.

It's like a creative assignment on how many ways you can depict the passage of time.

Some of them are simply people holding up the time in the picture

But you'll find the points of departure

A deck of cards placed in a sequence

A set of pins arranged on a map.

A lady mimics the hour and minute hands with her own.

A deal signed between partners.

The exact minute a bottle of wine was opened to celebrate

It feels silly and profound at the same time. It could be goofy or emotional. Your choice.

A time stamp of your life.

The 3D future of online shopping

It had to happen, sooner or later

Online shopping is an apology for the actual in-store experience.

You click and browse through a set of categories and images before arriving at what you'd like to pick up.

There's no thrill of discovery, no wandering down the aisle and coming across something unexpected.

A company called Matterport allows companies to replicate real shopping environments or any other space online.

Place products on shelves. Let people wander through them virtually before they pick up things and add them to shopping carts.

After being cooped up in homes and wearing masks for every trip outside, it's refreshing to see that 3D can also be used beyond game environments, for something as mundane as shopping.

This opens up the market for online bookstores - where you wander through aisles again, pick up books on the shelves and flip through them.

Probably letting the imagination run riot but it's surely possible

Right now, you can move from one section to another and see what you'd like to pick up.

Restocking may be simpler because people don't have to actually put merchandise on shelves.

It could even reset what virtual stores looks like in future.

If you enjoyed this newsletter, please consider sharing it with friends. Or Tweeting the link. The more people we can get to tune in every week, the merrier. Thank you.

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It's long past its expiry date

Microsoft stopped all support for it in 2000.

Yet, these systems are still in use in several offices - but they aren't connected to the internet

They won't survive for long without firewall protection. But we forget that upgrades are not the only option.

Replacing the entire system infrastructure is hard to do, if not impossible. Even software patches are applied only after extensive testing

Beyond a point, the speed at which systems run is not an advantage. Not much of a difference between getting something done in 0.004 seconds instead of 0.008 seconds!

Microprocessors do millions of calculations per minute. But humans still speak or type at 130 words per minute, on average.

Our thoughts don't arrive faster because we have speedy machines. Computers are only good at doing repetitive processes faster.

So, why do we upgrade our phones every couple of years? The interfaces don't change much. We have been primed to be dissatisfied.

And how will we progress beyond instant response and gratification? Beyond real-time, we won't even be able to process things.

And who's still running Windows 95? The Pentagon.

Upgrades aren't inevitable.

Does the arrangement bug bite?

Are you able to resist it?

A persistent urge to rearrange things every few months.

The sofas migrate from one corner of the living room to the other.

The bookcases travel from room to room

The beds go from facing North to facing East

Some of us want home arrangements unchanging but we're territorial about the office.

What goes up in 'our' space. It could change from posters to knick-knacks to certificates to plain untidiness.

It defines our interests and our state of mind.

The same behaviour is exhibited on laptops and desktops

Some of us have screens devoid of all icons and wallpaper that stretches from one end to the other

Or we cycle family photographs as the screensaver

Or the favorite deity in ornate splendour.

And screens where hundreds of icons pepper the entire surface like a game arcade.

It extends to the mobile screen as well - the personalisation’s

Backgrounds, notifications, status updates, selfies.

Some of us go berserk with them.

Others could keep the same background picture and the ringtone that came straight out of the pack.

Do you recognise the types featured here?

Or are you in a class all by yourself?

Hitting the right Soor

How do you get people to pay for an app when the competition is free?

Soor has been rated as one of the best app updates in 2020. It's a paid music player app on the App Store

Tanmay Sonwane is the developer

There are several free options available, including the one that comes pre-installed on the iPhone.

So how do guys like Tanmay manage?

They are solo performers. By operating as a single person or small teams, they figure out gaps that free apps don't address.

Tanmay Sonwane is probably into music big time - and he's figured out things that the Apple Music app does not do.

He has figured out features that a sub-set of the audience is willing to pay for

How do software products solving the same problem manage to differentiate themselves and find a paying audience?

Tanmay saw the shortcomings of the existing apps - and developed workarounds.

He appeals to a tech, music-aware audience like him who will pay for features not available elsewhere.

So you have to be both - a talented developer tapping into a sense of how people navigate music.

Not just how they listen

If you enjoyed this newsletter, please consider sharing it with friends. Or Tweeting the link. The more people we can get to tune in every week, the merrier. Thank you.

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You've heard the stories about how Pierre Omidyar built a site to help his girlfriend sell candy dispensers

Wikipedia says it was a fabrication by the PR department to create a 'human interest' narrative

In other words, people would not bother if they were told that Ebay, called Auction Web to begin with, sold broken laser pointers.

So, have you heard of Mjunction?

It's the second largest ecommerce site in India. The largest is IRCTC, India's railway ticket booking site.

So what on earth does Mjunction do?

It's a joint venture between Tata Steel and SAIL - the largest e-marketplace for steel in the world

It also auctions coal, idle assets, minerals, tea and more.

Mjunction does not have a Wikipedia page yet. I checked. They haven't bothered to create one.

The business transacted by the platform from inception until 2020 is Rs. 9,13,839 crores. (That’s around $100 billion)

Ebay transacted around 25% of that figure in 2021

Remember the government auctioning telecom spectrum? Well, this is the company that handles it.

Started with a share capital of Rs. 8 crores Mjunction has returned Rs. 100 crores in dividends. It has never required to raise capital since.

The biggest B2B ecommerce player in India

Celebrating two birthdays every year

It was a routine and over the years, we stopped thinking about it.

The twice a year birthday

The first one was the birthdate according to the English calendar. The second was the 'star' birthday, anchored to the planets, the one that kept the link to ancient traditions.

They would come within a few weeks of each other, either before or after - different dates every year.

A monthly regional calendar showed both English dates and all the other planetary configurations.

It was a fixture in the kitchen or the place of worship in the house, purchased without fail every year.

On the special day, you stood out in your 'coloured clothes' instead of the school uniform and self-consciously handed out sweets in class. Then looked at the floor and blushed when the class sang 'Happy Birthday ' and you felt a little glow spread on the inside

'Star birthdays' were family affairs, with a visit to the temple and a feast at home. Another treat to look forward to.

But parents would not really make a big deal about their own birthdays or anniversaries, except possibly for a sweet dish.

The idea works. Celebrate twice a year when you're young.

How do you ask for directions at sea?

Before GPS, personal explorations and directions to places unknown arrived on carefully explained and detailed maps. Or communicated on long phone conversations.

The actual journey included looking out for landmarks and occasional signboards to keep track

Invariably it was the local shops or the autorickshaws who guided you during the last mile.

At sea, you're out of luck. It looks the same in every direction.

A navigational system in India, Navic, has been making the headlines.

Set up with seven satellites in the sky with pinpoint accuracy down to 3 ft.

It has been approved by International Maritime Organisation (IMO), which has steep standards to be met before the system is deployed and integrated into global shipping networks.

Look for it to arrive on smartphones in India by next year, apart from guiding ships which are within 1500 kms from Indian shores.

India is just the fourth country in the world, apart from the US, Russia and China to have built its own system.

The data will help in driving multiple applications from land surveys to missile delivery.

That has major military implications - we own the eyes in the sky.

It changes equations on the ground

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For some people, wearing masks is an imposition.

Fining those who don't is not a solution

This idea from a Turkish agency comes at it from a completely different angle

It's installed at bus stops across Trabzon in Turkey.

Unmasked people see the reflection of a virus projected over their face.

And it disappears the moment the mask is worn.

The coronavirus image is now familiar across the world.

And showing people affected creates greater impact than any smart line.

We are at a stage where people need to see the consequence of not wearing a mask

And this is unforgettable

Imagine being reminded at every public place.

People have this subconscious urge to look at themselves in the mirror

They will adjust their hair, turn their face around and see if they're looking ok

All that needs to be done is show their unmasked face with the virus all over it a few times a day.

And it goes back to being a normal mirror when masks are worn

It's communication stripped down to the bare minimum and impossible to ignore

Perhaps this idea should be adopted and executed universally where cases are rising.

There's nothing lost in translation

She knows more secrets about men than any woman

She has conversations with men all day

And they tell her everything.

She's not real. Microsoft developed a bot it in 2014 and called it Xiaoice.

And now, she knows more about the lives of men in China than any other other woman

She flirts and jokes with them and her online persona is that of an 18 year old schoolgirl.

Responding to queries all day long.

Everyone chatting with her knows she's a bot. And yet, it doesn't matter.

The common factor is that her audience is male, from a lower income background.

She learns from the multiple conversations and engages them. Crossing over from so-called 'human' conversations to being able to keep their attention for long stretches.

The movie 'Her' was also released in 2014. It showed a man fall in love with a mythical operating system that knew exactly what he wanted.

It's surprising how soon life imitated art

Xiaoice can be summoned exactly like Siri or Alexa. But she is no assistant.

What is it about her that keeps men hooked? The fact that she's non-threatening. Or attractive? That they can speak to her about anything?

Will this redefine how men and women interact?

The googly against spam calls

How many spam calls do you get everyday?

4-5? Or more? And what's the solution you have found?

In India, most people use call screeners like True Caller. It works but they have been getting more aggressive on getting you to pay up.

And that's the root of the problem.

We want to get rid of annoyances - for free.

For signups online you can generate temporary email addresses and then junk them.

But calls are a little tricky.

You know your number is out there on practically every database. And enrolling in any DoNotDisturb registry won't work.

I've seen that the call is cut when I ask a simple question "Where did you get my number?" But you don't want to keep doing that several times a day.

As you block them, telemarketers simply change their virtual numbers, so its a constant game.

Which is why the new app Doosra seems to be a step up.

It lets you create a new virtual number without having to get a new phone. Or another SIM

And it screens calls, provides voicemail, etc.

But there's a monthly fee.

Question is, will you pay to keep spam callers at bay?

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Join the queue.

The road to the tallest mountain in the world is getting crowded.

There's competition between local sherpas and the foreign guides who take a few people to the summit every year.

And the money generated makes up 10% of the GDP of Nepal.

Everest ascent has become a badge to wear pursued with zeal and single-minded commitment.

Success means you can spin stories about the exploits and and hold audiences spellbound. By regaling them with stories of avalanches, frostbite and near misses

It's not cheap by any means. The investment is nearly Rs. 50 lakhs per climber, even at reduced rates.

A photograph published last year shows a long line of people in a queue waiting to get to the top.

If this is what an Everest ascent looks like in 2019, imagine what it could become in a few years from now.

Maybe it is all worth it.

The oxygen deprivation and the brush with real danger for a few weeks.

Pushing yourself beyond ordinary limits to fulfil a deep-rooted wish.

Perhaps you'll find something deep within to cherish for a lifetime.

Even if all you bring back is a selfie at 29000 feet.

Banking on teenagers

The cliché is that young people are great at spending, not saving

But there's another lesser known cliché

Bank accounts are among the most stable customer categories.

In the US, the average tenure with a bank is for a couple of decades.

How many businesses can count on that kind of stickiness?

That's why a new bank is making a play exclusively at teens.

The pitch is that young people need to learn to be financially independent.

True. But the real reason is that they are unlikely to change their bank accounts as they move into a job and higher earning.

The lure of no banking fees, ever, is a big draw.

The entire model shifts to fees from merchants and keeping the costs of servicing this category low.

Young people are digital natives. They prefer to manage everything from their phones or swipe a card.

In India, we call young people minors.

Parents are the ones pitched and they retain control. The same conditions apply.

Like everything else, banking is only managed under close adult supervision.

Financial literacy begins with financial independence. And helping young people understand that responsibility and risk are linked.

Fashion by subscription

Would you rent clothes like the movies?

Companies are betting that it could happen.

One of them is Rent The Runway.

The big appeal - get the latest clothes every month at a fraction of the retail costs.

Obviously the clothes are used by multiple members.

So, you have to overcome a mental barrier

But people do rent suits for occasions. So making the leap to party clothes or designer wear may not be that much of a stretch.

The benefits are quite substantial.

No washing or maintenance, for example.

And your wardrobe does not pile up with clothes you haven't worn for years.

That's a huge space saving. Plus you don't have to worry that you're behind the trend curve.

So for those fashion conscious on a budget, this could be the perfect match.

Sure, people may wonder how you manage to wear the latest outfits all year round.

That's an advantage.

You could take your Instagram account a few notches higher, for example.

Question is, will this narrow the options to look different as well?

Let's say this is one trend that could trim the waste in fashion

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The camera moves over dense green foliage from the air.

It's the kind of footage that sets the atmosphere for everything from travelogues to war even in films today.

In a beautifully narrated documentary, Todd Dominey talks about the problem that drew Kodak into the war.

In the early 40s when the US pilots flew over enemy terrain, they faced a strange problem.

They were unable to pick out enemy lines in the midst of green foliage because of a cheap hack. Camouflage.

It was so effective at hiding artillery and supply lines that the US military approached Kodak and asked if there was something they could do.

Kodak created Aerochrome - the film that gave all natural foliage a reddish hue by shooting it in infrared.

And the camouflage stood out because it did not contain chlorophyll.

All the pilots had to do was photograph terrain with Aerochrome and the enemy lines stood out in stark contrast.

Post war, Aerochrome went on to find expression in the album covers of rock bands and acid experiments of the sixties.

In graphic design, it's one of those instantly recognisable representations of flower power.

Not the soft and emotional moments of brand Kodak.

Blackberry reinvents itself

Remember the Blackberry?

Before the iPhone came up with the 'slab' they dominated the world of mobile telephones at enterprises globally.

There was a generation of business users addicted to the Blackberry and they even had a name. Crackberry.

If you've read 'Losing the Signal' you'll understand how a small Canadian company went from obscurity to dominance and then seemed to lose their way altogether when the iPhone appeared and wiped them out.

Turns out corporate obituaries are short lived.

Blackberry flirted with the idea of new phone models but it was a half-hearted attempt to return to relevance.

There was another market they were quietly working on.

Car manufacturers were integrating sensors into their vehicles - for navigation, engine performance, mileage, parking... You name it, there was data being generated

Blackberry figured that a system to integrate all that data and bring it to a common platform would be of interest to them for developing new applications.

That's exactly what they've built.

Seeing the progress Blackberry made, AWS from Amazon has joined hands with them

It's called IVY and built for an era when data from cars will flow into one giant network.

IoC (Internet of Cars) may well arrive before IoT (Internet of Things)

The walk-in movie theater

Defence cantonments were great places to grow up in.

Open spaces, trees to climb and coves to explore.

But the weekend movie was special.

Kids could stay up later than normal to watch.

The setup was temporary - a cloth screen flapping in the breeze, a rented projector, even the seating - stools, folding chairs and mats spread on the ground.

Families would arrive at the designated time in the open ground when it got dark.

Home cooked dinners were parceled out and shared - a giant pot luck between neighbours and friends

There were several breaks every time the assistant ran the projector through a reel of film, rewound it and then played the next one.

So things would easily stretch into late night.

The sound of the projector whirring was a constant overlay on the soundtrack.

In the breaks, the movie was discussed. Or even better, ladies would lower their voices as they exchanged the latest local gossip.

Kids with sharp ears could catch on easily. Sometimes, the subplots were as interesting as the movie on screen.

No one drove to the theater. It was all within walking distance of the housing blocks.

That's how 20th century social media worked.

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The resemblance is superficial.

Both are round rings. As cultural icons, the Indian version is more of a South Indian staple, though that is changing

The Indian Medu Vada is culturally as distant from the American doughnut as Indians are from Americans.

Eating a doughnut is basically like chomping a re-designed bun. Doughnuts need makeup. They have to be bathed in chocolate, drizzled with sugar, slathered with caramel or stuffed with things a chef can imagine to acquire a character.

And they're sweet, fluffy and airy.

The medu vada, on the other hand is spicy and crusty.

Getting the medu vada right is an art. It has be perfectly brittle and crumbly on the outside and layered softness on the inside. The best way to eat it is piping hot, dipped into sambar or the chutney of your choice.

When cold, they are best enjoyed submerged in hot rasam or sambar. Or marinating in curds with a seasoning of curry leaves and mustard and a sprinkling of fresh coriander leaves.

Depending on which Southern state you belong to this can be an intensely spicy experience or soulful.

East is east and west is west. Truer words were never spoken.

Solving an impossible problem

In the 90s, I remember using digital diaries from Casio.

They could store up to 6000 addresses and messages.

The capacity? A grand 32 kb. It's not as if those devices were cheap. They used to cost about Rs. 5-6000 back then.

Upgrading to a new device was hard work.

Music cassettes were the rage until the compact disc took over

Video microcassettes, popular for decades are all but unusable now. Unless you find stores with the original hardware to convert them into .mov or mp4 files.

As technology evolves, new formats are created. And the old ones are trashed.

That is the impossible problem.

How do you make formats accessible beyond their expiry dates?

Making everything backward compatible is not a solution because too many technical aspects are involved.

For most people, the answer is simple. Move on to the new one.

Anyone remember Flash? Even in the early 2000s, it was the tech that defined animation. All the wonderful work done is Flash is now mostly inaccessible.

That's why the File Format project deserves to be better known. It's trying to gather every electronic format ever used and create a solution.

Universal access to every file format ever created.

The rebirth of electric batteries

What happens to electric vehicle batteries after they die?

Rebirth is the only option

The number of electric vehicles on the road in the next decade is going to increase by 800%

And the batteries cannot be disposed off without causing an environmental catastrophe.

Fossil fuels posed a different kind of issue. Fouling up the air.

So engines had to evolve.

It's been a tug of war between car manufacturers and governments on the standards to aim for.

Electric cars have no engines.

The batteries are pivotal and vehicles are built around them.

But in a few years, after multiple charges, they run out of juice.

They won't disappear into thin air.

It was a problem the former CTO of Tesla saw as an opportunity to build what he calls a 'remanufacturing ecosystem'. In other words, rebirth.

It's a contest to figure out how it can be done at massive scale. The change in mindset from seeing spent batteries as waste to harnessing it as a resource.

There are already multiple environment friendly approaches to conversion - using it to create raw materials for several industries

Rebirth is no longer a spiritual issue but one looking for practical solutions

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No Millennial coder knows COBOL.

They'll laugh when you tell them that the earliest banking systems in the US were built on it, back in the 70s.

We know there are mainframes chugging away somewhere in the background, unseen and unheard but they are the roots of fintech.

They can't be replaced or made redundant because billions of lines of code generated over the years still run the systems.

It could process millions of transactions a day back then. That's how it made its way into the heart of the financial system and stayed there.

Over 50 years of debugging has gone into it, so it's the most time-tested code language out there. Nothing is going to replace it.

There are so few COBOL programmers in the world now that the 73 year old who wrote the initial code still gets calls to come in and add features.

Probably to talk to languages conceived decades later.

Millennials can be proud of the smartphone on which they live and document their glorious social standing and aspirations.

But the Baby boomer generation built the financial foundations for today. They really did change the world.

COBOL has cool written right into it!

No baby sitters required

The majority of players and game developers on Roblox are kids.

The environment is made for them with easy to understand game development. And gameplay modeled on simple Minecraft style graphics.

They build and play the games they like with some even making revenues from them.

Roblox has over 36 million daily players in the US and Canada. Over 18 million games or 'experiences' have been created.

The company's revenue comes from in-game currency used to decorate avatars or other virtual trophies in the games.

It's on track to make $1.2 billion in the last nine months of 2020.

Gaming for pre teens was a market mostly ignored. Roblox saw them as the core audience back in 2006 They encouraged kids to make the games they wanted and created a kid safe environment to unleash their imagination.

It wasn't adults imagining the games kids wanted to play. It was kids experimenting with game concepts they came up with to play with friends. That is a different ball game altogether.

And Roblox got insights on what kids like and how they evolved into game designers.

In time, will coloring books and crayons grow less popular?

Why is climate change like the Bitcoin problem?

Both are fighting established belief systems.

And both are fundamentally important to what the world will look like in a few decades from now.

The business models that will work for both are unclear.

We've tried carbon credits, sequestration and exchanges but they're still work in progress.

Bitcoin is trying to convince the world that decentralized finance is the best way forward.

The internet was a small shift in established systems compared to what climate change and Bitcoin will bring about.

We know we can't keep taking from the earth without balancing the equation.

Money has always had masters. That's the source of the conflict.

What will the tipping points be?

We're already seeing some of them. The wildfires. The pandemic. And the melting of the Arctic.

Venice started building a flood barrier system back in 2003. It was commissioned in 2019 and saved the city from certain flooding in 2020. But what happens when the water rises further?

Nature doesn't negotiate. We can't buy our way out of this.

It's time for a reset. Where we think ahead not in quarters but decades.

If we succeed, you'll see more trillion dollar companies in the news.

Or else, it won't matter anyway.

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You may not have heard of Ward Cunningham.

He's the quiet guy who invented the wiki.

Which in the Hawaiian language means 'quick'

He created a new concept of collaborative editing of ideas through linked documents in 1994.

Hypercard was a set of pages , ideas connected to each other before the internet with weblinks and URLs came into being. People could navigate from one page to another.

As soon as a new idea was added, a fresh page would be created and anyone could write and edit the contents

The pages could evolve through collaboration but it took 2 years to get people to understand and explore the infinite possibilities.

This was before the early web browsers were built.

That experiment grew rapidly into what we know as Wikipedia today.

Jimmy Wales, the well-known face of Wikipedia made two vital contributions.

He got the licensing terms right, so contributors could not claim specific rights to content and fragment the site's immense knowledge base.

And he opened it up, so anyone, anywhere in the world could write and edit pages in any language about subjects they knew well.

That's why Wikipedia exists the way we know it.

The AI that takes lunch and dinner orders

In 2018, Sundar Pichai of Google showed an AI program that made a booking for a hair salon appointment.

The AI assistant made the call, responded to queries and wrapped up the job in less than a minute.

At one point, the AI says 'mmhmm' in response to a question instead of 'Yes' - a human response. It received thunderous applause from the audience

Turns out that these tight well-defined situations with a clear outcome is one of the best places to go ahead and install AI.

For a company called Kea in the US, it's the business model.

It reverses the roles, taking orders at restaurants for lunch and dinner from customers calling in.

Why is that a big deal?

Restaurants in the US are short staffed and employees are unable to respond promptly to customer calls at lunch and dinner time, resulting in long delays.

It's also a great problem for AI to solve because the context is narrow.

You ask for menu options, pick what you like and place an order.

The conversations are predictable and all you need to know is if your order has been taken down.

It's already live at over 250 restaurants

What if solar power didn't need panels?

Today the two are seamlessly joined.

Every time you think of solar power, the solar panel pops into your mind.

However, a young student from the Philippines had a different idea.

And it won him the James Dyson award this year for renewable energy innovation.

Mixing a luminous bio-resin and lining it with solar film, he was able to generate enough power to charge two mobile phones at the same time.

The clincher? It works by converting UV rays to visible light. And solar film converts that to energy far more efficiently than any available option.

It can be fixed to walls, roofs, or any other surface, essentially converting buildings into electricity generating structures.

There's no need to face the sun, since the absorption of UV happens even in the absence of sunlight.

Until now, this was one of the biggest problems to overcome - the sun shines for around 10-12 hours a day and the panels had to be oriented towards the sun's movement.

That will no longer be necessary.

Existing solar film manufacturers can incorporate the resin into the production process.

In the years to come, solar power generation may just blend into the decor.

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Netflix's greatest hit, The Queen's Gambit has exponentially increased chess game app downloads in the store

That wasn't part of the script.

Though the connection between brand surges and hits has been documented, it's still hard to figure out what will work.

Product placement in films has become an integral part of funding productions.

When Madhuri Dixit, swayed to 'Didi tera devar deewana' in the hit film Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, it was the purple sari she wore that sold in the millions.

The song still tops the charts with over 140 million views on YouTube

Rip-offs hawked on street corners and small shops probably made more money collectively for shopkeepers than the movie did for the producers.

Movies influence popular culture and design more than we care to admit. But it is a lottery.

The flops are forgotten - unsold merchandise gathering dust in musty warehouses and victims of fickle public taste.

There was even a short-lived trend of building the brand into the song lyrics. 'Main Zandu balm hui', was one that hit the sweet spot.

For marketers, it's a long shot in the dark.

The ripple effects of Covid vaccines

Only a few products have truly global demand and the vaccine is one of them.

Pfizer's vaccine has to be stored at minus 70 degrees.

That has sent the requirement for dry ice skyrocketing. Production capacity at all plants manufacturing dry ice has been locked up already

The companies involved are trying to see how they can ramp it up further.

But storing large quantities of dry ice, which is hazardous, is also a problem and regulations around that are sure to follow.

There will be a search for alternatives and cheaper solutions will emerge to drive prices down.

There are already plans to reformulate the vaccines to be effective at room temperatures but that is at least a year away before it is tested and proven.

Governments will push forward to expand the cold chain in a hurry and that will support the deliveries of many other products in future.

Logistics companies will come up with new ways to preserve and deliver the cargo

Those solutions will be used long after the vaccines reach their destinations.

The ripple effects of vaccine discovery have already shaped clinical research and approval procedures.

But we'll keep that for another day.

A note to myself

Handwritten notes are a rarity now.

When you hold a pen in your hand, it feels alien.

Like a forgotten memory, the lines struggle to form legible words.

In your mind, you still think you know cursive writing, that point when one letter flowed perfectly into another.

Some of us were commended and got prizes for good handwriting but that's over in school

There was a joy in seeing words form and arrange themselves on a single line, like birds on a wire.

Now, they've all flown away and we have perfectly legible impersonal text.

No indication or the personality of the person sending it. Like many other things, the features that differentiated us have merged.

Like fast food restaurants have done for food. Reduced it to a state where it's acceptable to everyone and distinctive for none.

But we won't accept that things have changed.

The technology to mimic handwritten notes is now available.

The fake versions of the genuine thing.

What is strange is that we won't simply pick up a piece of paper, write a note and send it off to a dear friend. Too much work.

As usual, something gets lost in translation.

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As the world warms, the market for air-conditioners is increasing exponentially.

What we need is a reset in the way the problem is approached.

At a point when electricity had not been invented, architects knew that high ceilings and thick walls kept the temperature at a pleasant level.

In our high-rises, most ceilings do not go beyond 10-12 feet. Windows are smaller than they used to be.

Pollution and mosquitoes are forcing people to keep their windows closed most of the time.

We're creating an artificial environment where we transition from freezing rooms to the hot and humid environment in India.

And that's for the people who can afford air-conditioning.

Two students, Anna and Esmee, from the Berlin School of the Arts have approached the problem from a unique angle.

They have coated curtain fabric with a phase shifting material they developed.

It keeps room temperatures inside at around 25 degrees C.

The material warms up the room when it gets cold. And when it's hot outside, it cools the room.

Obviously, it doesn't work as precisely as an air-conditioner does.

But if you can keep homes comfortable simply by using curtains, it opens up amazing possibilities.

And savings on electricity.

Are you a plastics fan? Or foe?

Plastic waste is bad. We all know it.

The question is, how do we solve the problem.

There's the activist route that informs and tries to influence policy. It's absolutely essential because it ensures that it won't be business as usual.

Good luck trying to change customers because only a small percentage of people will make the necessary sacrifices of convenience.

People at stores seem to happily pay the price for the new eco-friendly plastic bags while those who conserve come armed with reusable bags.

It's the large companies who make the most use of plastic. For everything from packaging to logistics.

There are several problems to solve. Collection. Recycling. Making the collected waste reusable. And so on.

The Ocean Cleanup is making headway - started by a young Dutch entrepreneur in 2013 when he was just 18 years old.

They are hoping to haul in 50% of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the next 5 years

Another company called Biocellection takes waste from plastics consumed day to day and creates reusable plastic for footwear, apparel and consumer electronics industries.

They are leading the way to bring about change long term.

Activism and innovation need to play off each other.

The stock trading Grand Prix

Only in the Grand Prix do the microseconds count (1/1000th of a second)

Where you go to the 3rd place after the decimal to determine who finished faster.

There's another place to make money if you're milliseconds faster (1/1000 of a microsecond) - The stock exchanges in the US.

Ever since high speed trading (HST) became the norm, it wasn't enough to be competitive in terms of microseconds. You had milliseconds to execute.

Brad Katsuyama co-founder of the IEX exchange noticed this during his stint as a trader.

They would initiate a 'buy' order for 10,000 Microsoft shares, for example . Only a portion of the order would go through and the share price would have moved up in the interim, making the next purchase costlier.

This happened time and again only for high value purchases, where millions of dollars were in play.

It took them some time to figure out what was happening.

Competing companies had a millisecond advantage in figuring out that a 'buy' order had been issued.

They were automatically primed to sweep up the shares from the other exchanges, so the purchase was executed fractions of a millisecond faster.

The shoe had shifted from bidding to tech execution.

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It has become one of the most divisive aspects of our time.

How do you figure out what's fake news and what is real?

There's a part solution to the problem developed by a team from University College London and UC Berkeley.

A machine learning tool identifies new domains created to generate false information.

So, instead of stopping fake news stories after they have spread, the objective is to stop them at source.

Social media will need to adopt a filtering technique, so any URLs shared from these sites are prevented from featuring in the feeds.

Social media news feeds remove the 'friction' from sharing and consumption. That makes it easy to spread both - information and misinformation

It levels the playing field for all publications, making it impossible for readers to recognise the difference.

When that changes, fake news sources can be weeded out.

The principle is the same as malware. If the URL keeps generating a stream of fake news, it should be treated like a virus and quarantined.

It should not be hard to implement but it needs news organisations to come together and make this mandatory.

The question is, who defines fake and real?

The window seat is passé

On the flight, a window seat makes sense - at least if you like panoramas.

If you have to squeeze past two adults with their knees digging into the back of your legs and a profusion of 'Sorry's'

The view during takeoff for a couple of minutes and when you come in to land is worth it.

Gliding past puffy clouds and shifting terrain, the aerial view is still an unusual perspective.

Kids these days don't care about the window seat anymore.

They want screens - either a TV or the smartphone for company.

The view from the window does not change in a flash. It eases from one landscape to another.

It doesn't go from green fields to desert dunes in an instant

Or switch between an action-packed game and a video.

The fights for the window seats, whether on trains, cars or buses were the essence of family outings.

If you were stuck in the middle, the trip felt like it would never end.

The only other entertainment possible was to needle your cousins or complain.

Today, everybody lives their own world.

Family outings are cocoons inside cocoons.

The nuclear family is down to the atom.

The internet balloon is coming down to earth

Broadband in metros and Tier 2 and 3 cities mean very different things.

We've all seen it happen. Travel beyond city limits and mobile internet speeds and coverage drop dramatically.

Google had launched Project Loon to deliver high-speed internet access to remote locations.

It started off with hot-air balloons floating above the earth, a 100 kilometers apart.

Like a relay, the balloons are used to connect remote areas and deliver faster internet speeds to the ground areas below.

The first step was developing the technology to transmit data at high speeds through the air.

That tech is now being deployed on the ground.

Project Taara is an experiment being conducted in India and Africa. The equipment is being deployed with line of sight 20 kms apart.

Narrow data streams of 10-100 gbps are sent through the air to the next point, from where they are re-transmitted.

It's far more economical than fiber and easy to deploy quickly across diverse terrain including rivers and mountain ranges.

If the data stream is interrupted by birds in flight, the data is re-sent automatically.

The Google moonshot is coming down to earth.

And success will mean that cat videos will also stream in Chapra!

Update: Google has shut down Project Loon. The balloon will be deflated and possibly come back in another form altogether!

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In 1958, David Ogilvy created the immortal Rolls Royce ad.

"At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in the new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock"

At the time, automobiles were noisy, greasy and could be heard from a long way off

Luxury and refinement was defined by how skillful engineers made the car interior quiet for occupants.

Another famous one in 1990, showed the Volkswagen driver irritated by a persistent squeak in the car he's unable to diagnose.

The electric car poses another problem altogether.

It makes no noise at all. And that's a traffic hazard because it's dangerous to pedestrians and other road users who cannot hear the car.

In July 2019, the European Union passed a law mandating that all electric cars had to emit a 50 db sound when they were going at less than 20 kms per hour.

But it wasn't specified what the sound should be.

And companies are already looking at how to distinguish their vehicles and trademark sounds.

What will an electric Rolls Royce sound like?

The pendulum has swung in the opposite direction in 60 years.

What is your take?

Can Power Point be used to create real animation?

Not in the normal course of your office job.

Power Point offers a set of stock animation effects and most of them are awful

The 'Fade in' and 'Appear' are the best from the list.

The others that bounce, swivel and spin are best ignored or left alone.

I've seen presentations where every single animation effect has been used and the results are terrible.

People are so fascinated by the ability of the letters to move on screen, they use it all.

This post is not to provide a graphic design lesson but to illustrate how a determined programmer was able to bend Power point to his will.

It's complicated and even after watching the video, I'm not sure how he achieved the effects.

And this guy did it while in high school on the underpowered school computer - not on a fancy graphics workstation or high end systems.

Start watching from around 4.00 - 5.15. I'm quite sure the designers of Power Point never thought it would ever be used to create 3D animation.

If you stick around and watch the rest of the talk, he'll blow your mind.

He labours through his English but his work sings.

Scam 1992 - Sony Liv's OTT trial by fire

Good guys are boring.

It's always the guys who crash and burn we're fascinated with.

So, the small time trader Harshad Mehta who electrified the stock market in the 1990's is introduced to a new generation.

Riding on its success is Sony Liv. Having created its space in the satellite and cable wars, it was late to the OTT party.

Over The Top (OTT) is a great descriptor. The app has to work on the mobile phone. Then it has to play nice with the new TV gatekeepers, Chromecast and Firestick. Not to forget the wifi networks.

As long as access was free, it was ok. But payment gateways and the security involved throw in a few more obstacles.

So, you pay, sign in with an email, generate an OTP for the mobile phone and key that into the TV to start streaming the series through the Firestick remote. Or the Chromecast.

The confusion is evident, especially because Netflix has set the bar very high. Move from TV to laptop to iPad and you pick up exactly where you left off.

Sony Liv stutters all the way through search and streaming.

Like Harshad Mehta did on his first day trading at the stock exchange

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You've probably seen this happen several times

Gone out with friends or family to a restaurant and everyone spends time looking at the menu.

Suggestions fly back and forth on what's the 'best' dish available.

Then, most of the people around the table order exactly what they did the previous time!

So, why do we go about this elaborate routine of pretending to make decisions?

In a sense, we want the ability to choose. To be told we can have what we want.

Not necessarily to exercise that power but simply know that if we ever change our mind, the options are available.

Netflix has accepted that a section of their audience falls into this bracket.

They can use predictive algorithms and all the persuasive power of the range of titles available.

But some people like to watch just what is available on TV

In France, Netflix is offering a channel called Direct, accessible through browsers and streaming a fixed schedule of films through the day.

Much like TV has always been.

Right now, it's only in France. But if the experiment succeeds, you could see Netflix come full circle.

Because some people prefer having choices, not making decisions.

The Airpods stuck on tracks

They hang stylishly out of ears.

Slim, white and imitated by every wannabe brand.

Symbolising the clean break between wired and wireless worlds

The engineering and design ensured that it fits snugly into ears while wearers walk, jog, skip or jump.

Ever since launch, airpods have moved to the 'most wanted' list and become one of Apple's most successful products

In 2020, they are expected to earn the company over $20 billion.

The transition to wireless has been a smooth ride.

There's just one minor problem.

Subway passengers in Japan have lost airpods during rush hour exits which end up on the tracks below

Probably the only time the music is off synch

It's too dangerous to retrieve even though some people are crazy enough to try.

Lost and found departments are kept busy with passengers filing nearly a thousand complaints every year.

They're hard to pull out, given their small size

The rail company partnered with Panasonic to design a mini-vacuum to solve the problem.

Workers use it to suck the airpods off the tracks and return them to their rightful owners.

Opening up an opportunity for Panasonic to make money off an Apple product.

Strange how markets are created.

Wanted - Brand Safety Officer

In the years to come several companies will have one.

They will fulfil an increasingly important function.

The explosive growth of advertising across millions of points on the internet has created strange bedfellows.

Well-known brands were featured alongside terrorist videos. Or pornography.

And companies paid out billions of dollars because there was no way to track where the ads appeared in the chain of networks.

There was no separation between the trusted players and the ones that simply siphoned off ad dollars.

In 2016, the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) was set up. The objective - cut down ad fraud and create a set of standards across the ad supply chain.

Every month, TAG produces a Data Center IP List collected by partnering with qualified companies to trace the origin of malware IP addresses.

Certified ad companies and brands add these IP addresses to their ever-growing filter list to ensure that the brand ads never appear on these sites.

They are also clearly defining invalid traffic generated by bots and other unauthorised sources. In essence, creating safe channels for ad serving

The results are impressive. A reduction of nearly 90% in fraudulent traffic.

And that's what Brand Safety Officers will police.

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We've started receiving robocalls in India

Insurance companies telling you your premium is due.

Or from airlines when the flights are delayed.

And at election time from political parties asking for your vote

A recording delivers the message, not a real person

Spam calls are different. They are call centre personnel trying to make a sale.

The robocaller menace is real in the US because it still makes good money for telemarketers and costs next to nothing.

Policies, Do Not Call listings and fines do not work because a case has to be filed to recover money

That's where DoNotPay's Robo Revenge comes into the picture

At some point during the call, the customer could be asked for money

With DoNotPay, the user can create a fake card number for the caller to attempt a transaction.

It's the only point at which the real identity of the robocall company and the bank details are revealed.

And a recovery of $3000 can be initiated right from the app against the company.

That’s the fine levied by the US government for robocalls that route around blocked numbers.

Robocallers prefer to settle. As more customers trap them, the profits dry up.

Another win for the customer.

Compensation for service deficiencies

Getting money back from airlines and large companies for service deficiencies is difficult.

Policies have been drafted to protect customer interests in the US.

But there's a layer of legal conditions to comb through and getting money back takes time and individual effort.

That's where DoNotPay steps in.

The customer is required to provide relevant details and establish that the refund or the chargeback is applicable.

Then the site automatically makes the submissions the way the company specifies.

The company concerned is then bound to fulfil its obligations.

Automation has been the whipping boy for job losses. But it may just turn out to be a savior for customers as well.

DoNotPay applies automation to simplify processes and opens up a range of interesting possibilities

It is a perfectly viable template for the future.

Get customers out of the picture and let lawyers argue the finer points.

It pits one set of finely drafted legal documents that protect company interests against the clauses that protect customer interests.

That levels the playing field.

It's like millions of customers hiring the best legal mind by putting in a few dollars into a common piggy bank.

Automation may be just what the customer ordered.

In the customer’s corner

Taking the customer's side is a new business model

That's why DoNotPay is in a unique position.

How many companies have come up with new dispute resolution ideas ?

For Josh Browder, users have provided the direction for what to do next.

When people got their parking fee charges reversed, they wanted to know if the company could help with landlord tenant disputes.

Or secure compensation for delayed flights.

It was as if the complaint box morphed into a string of opportunities.

There was no shortage of ideas for the company to tap into.

DoNot Pay has focused on software that automates dispute resolution in the customer's favour.

From canceling services to flight compensation to cutting time on customer service calls and getting refunds, it's all automated.

There is no interaction required.

And that's why the company should be able to make this happen for a large number of customers over time.

Depending on how they evolve and the success they achieve over time, they will lead the way for several other companies to tap into this large space.

And that will make unscrupulous companies think twice before they short charge customers. Hopefully.

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Parking tickets are a problem in the US

New York alone apparently collects over a billion dollars a year in parking fees, for all kinds of violations.

Back in 2015, Josh Browder was issued over 30 parking tickets in the first year he started driving.

Like most teenagers, paying off a parking ticket left almost nothing for him to spend on anything else

Since each fine was a $100 or more, he went through the laws and looked for ways in which he could get the ticket reversed.

That taught him quite a bit about how parking tickets constitute a nice chunk of revenue for the police department

He found there were strange situations - where two signs in a parking lot gave completely different instructions.

Or where the 'No Parking' signs were covered by trees

He worked on getting some of the fines reversed by sending out letters explaining why the parking violation was unfair. This worked about 50% of the time.

That gave him an idea.

He built an app "DoNotPay' that helped users to send out automated requests to reverse parking fines.

The business model? He charged a flat $3 per month.

And that's where his story took off.

Customers on hold

How long do you wait to speak to customer service representatives when you have a problem?

Five or ten minutes?

In the US, it can take as long as 30-45 minutes on hold before customers get to a human.

And if it is to cancel a service, they are passed further up to a manager with another long wait.

In several companies, this is by design.

The objective is to make the cancellation so difficult that people simply give up, since they have to repeat this manually every time.

Internal service reps are incentivized to keep subscriptions going, with whatever delaying tactics they can come up with

After automating the filing of parking tickets fee reversals, DoNotPay figured a way to beat this routine.

The app calls the customer number and a robot begins to record the call right away after informing the company.

The time it takes to get to a service rep is tracked and so are the responses.

The user needs to come on call only when the service rep is available.

So, it saves time and shines a light on questionable customer retention practices

Reputations are harder to repair than revenue losses.

And companies know that.

The trials that customers keep paying for

How many 'free trials' do you keep paying for after the trial period?

A survey in 2016 showed that over 60% of people in the US forget to cancel subscriptions that renew automatically

That's another problem DoNotPay solves.

It gives the customer a card, and an email address to sign up.

After the trial is over, the card cannot be charged, unless the customer specifically allows it.

It reverses what the companies count on - the laziness hardwired into human nature.

A free trial is the simplest way to commit to a subscription and the date it ends on slips out of memory.

We could be receiving reminders that the card will be charged on a certain date but action needs to be taken.

Login to the created account and cancel the subscription

Seems like a trivial thing but as described in the survey, too many customers keep paying

The free trial credit card is DoNotPay's most popular service.

Built in controls ensure that people don't misuse the service by signing up with a different email account or another name.

Maintaining the balance between genuine trials and keeping freeloaders at bay.

That's a fine line to walk between consumer and company interests.

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Fame is fickle.

That's because people need new stars to worship.

Each generation has its set of politicians, film, and sports stars.

At the next level, there are singers and celebrities.

The business stars who may drive stock markets up and down but are anonymous outside of TV

The Carnatic music singers who shine during the annual festival

The YouTubers with millions of 'followers'

Take the 'guests' on news shows.

Or the judges at reality shows.

They may all aspire to be famous, but end up with varying shades of fame and fortune.

And the realization that fame is hard to sustain and hold on to.

It lasts as long as the shows last. Or the films run. Or when they actively play the sport.

Today, Sunil Gavaskar is best known as a commentator.

Not the world-class batsman he used to be back in the 70s and 80s

For today's generation, he's just another guy on TV.

What about the others on the team?

Faded into old record books to occasionally surface in social media.

Under titles like "What Happened to...?

For a fond moment, that spark of fame returns.

Only to disappear like ripples on the surface of water

Don't make things difficult for digital marketers

Instagram allows only a single link away from the site.

And that was the provocation

The guys running a digital marketing company called Bolster found this frustrating

So they created what looked like a simple workaround called Linktree.

A way to direct audiences to multiple web destinations

Built around the user profile. In essence, giving users much more control.

It's getting nearly 30000 sign-ups a month

A series of links below a profile.

The user determines where the links point to.

The links can be changed whenever necessary, instead of having to navigate websites.

Or hop from one social medium to the next

Selena Gomez, the singer was an early adopter. Her page already gets a billion views

She has links to her songs, her merchandise, promotions and tickets to her concert

And her Instagram link now directs to Linktree

So problem solved. And new business model created.

Red Bull also has a LinkTree profile.

They promote what's current. Tell you what's happening with the brand now.

Where to check out the hot stuff.

It's all built around the mobile.

A single page with links you can change at will.

This is how people will take the web back.

Will algorithms become astrologers?

It's bad enough that algorithms have bundled us into echo chambers, influenced our political beliefs and even narrowed our musical sensibilities.

On TikTok, they're sending streams of tarot readers to you if you express interest.

The algorithm is not predicting your future or computing it.

But it is shuffling the deck and serving up a succession of tarot readers to you.

It's a bit like the fortune cookies in restaurants.

Thousands of lines printed on thin strips of paper

And hopefully, the one on your table will tell you what happens next in your life.

The lines are general enough to fit several contexts

"The fortune you seek is in another cookie"

Or. "You'll be hungry again in 1 hour"

On TikTok, however, it's an elaborate act.

Tarot readers record fortunes and send them out much like dances or other acts on TikTok

If you click on one or stay through the reading, you'll be served more.

The algorithm directs a never-ending stream of tarot readings - the ones crossing your mobile phone path of destiny.

Will they actually predict your future?

Well, did anyone in the world see Covid coming and the world shutting down?

The chances are remote.

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Apart from the camera icon itself, how many apps open to a camera frame?

None? QR code scanners, maybe?

For an adult, the first response is that they opened the camera by mistake.

There's a sense of being stuck in a space they don't understand

Maybe it wasn't intentional.

That's exactly what Snapchat has achieved.

Over 200 million people use it everyday.

And its a sliding scale of users who practically disappear by age 50

Using pictures to talk to friends does not make sense to them.

And having the pictures disappear after a few seconds is even more mystifying

Snapchat translated the conversations classmates have with each other

Without being caught by teachers. Or any other adults, for that matter

They went in a completely different direction from Instagram

Of being able to express yourself to a close circle of friends all day long by sending photos to each other.

It's still something adults don't understand and will not bother to learn.

To them, pictures belong in albums.

Let's not even get into the AR lenses bit.

It's the best world for young people to be in.

Older people are truly clueless about how it works. Or why.

When did you grow up?

Do you remember the time you accepted you were no longer a child?

You went to sleep on the eve of your birthday at 17 and woke up as an 18 year old

Growing up legally means being 'old enough' to drive a car or vote.

In your mind, were things any different?

What does the term signify?

Age, attitude or awareness?

Was it when you left home and made your own decisions?

Was it when you graduated?

Or landed your first job and got your pay cheque?

Was it when you realised you were responsible for the decisions you made?

Ancient tribes made the process painful and physically grueling

Coming of age was carefully choreographed to drive home the point that growing up was somewhere between a tragedy and a triumph.

That's barbaric but it's now swung to the other extreme

Today's generation is protected and brought up to believe anything can be achieved.

The struggles are all in the mind.

Of measuring up to social aspirations and setting goals

What we've lost in the advancement of technology and the rise of the individual are the ties of community.

The gap that a million followers and social media will never fill

When the postman is your best friend

He would arrive sometime around noon on his daily rounds.

Except on Sundays.

And in the age before the internet, the postman was the most anticipated visitor of the day.

Would he bring a letter calling for an interview?

You picked up small things - the squeak of the cycle pedals, the shuffling walk, the bunch of letters in his hand as he went through them to pick out the one meant for you.

He rarely smiled or made eye contact. The peculiar shade of the earthy uniform, khaki, made dust invisible

On most days, it was a disappointment. Bills or receipts you had no use for.

Job seeking was tortuous. Handwritten applications neatly composed after going through endless job ads from newspapers. Deposited into red postboxes with a silent prayer.

It would take a few weeks before there was a response.

Not the ping of a mobile notification that young people today are familiar with.

There was no instant gratification.

And the occasional rejection was enough to darken your mood for a week.

That was probably a blessing because it was spaced out.

You learned patience without knowing it.

The slow drip of anticipation until that chapter in your life ended.

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Married couples know exactly what the loaded question means.

It's code for 'Are you pregnant yet?'

In a country where births are now conducted by the time prescribed by astrologers, this is where it all begins.

The time of birth can be controlled down to the exact minute, and C-sections are the choice.

No ambiguity. We've gone from accepting natural birth cycles to making it part of an elaborate workaround.

Once the time of birth is fixed, the rest of the horoscope can unfurl to the future predicted.

At the time of marriage, there are no surprises or having the wrong planet appear to cast a shadow

But conception is still beyond the bounds of control

And the pressure to perform is leading to a situation where fertility is bought - at a steep price.

There's been a gradual but clear shift - infertility treatment is referred to as fertility treatment.

The social stigma is around infertility. That must be avoided.

Who needs fertility treatment, the husband or the wife is never brought up.

Only that they need some help conceiving.

And that makes it acceptable to everyone concerned.

In India, the past, present and future overlap uneasily.

Ripping the rip offs

Fakes are brand leeches

They feed off brand reputations built at great expense over time.

The customers for fakes are a curious mix.

Some of them do it to flaunt labels they can't afford. Whether its bags, watches or clothing.

For others, its dangerous. Especially when it's low quality medicines or cosmetics. That causes real damage

For brands, it's bittersweet. Knowing they're now big enough to be counterfeited.

But the double whammy is the loss of reputation and revenue

Proceeding legally against the shadowy companies does little damage in the long term. Fake business models are portable

Companies have tried everything from affixing 3d stickers to educating customers but keeping it out of the distribution chain is tough, especially when the profit margins for fakes is much higher

A company called Sproxil tried a different route.

They work with the supply chains of large drug companies in Africa to fix unicode stickers on the products.

Customers scratch the stickers, send a message and get a verification if the product is genuine

That seems to be working. Retailers don't want their reputations hurt.

And customer education, though slow, is catching up.

For fakes, losing distribution is fatal

This could work globally.

How do you convert signatures into a business model?

One way is to get close to famous stars and organise autographs for fans at a prescribed price.

There won't be too many takers, though.

Especially now that star selfies have become popular.

Authors do this to promote books.

At a book launch they may end up signing personal copies for the tens or hundreds of devoted readers.

Cramps for a single day but probably worth the effort.

Any other ideas?

So can signatures become a big business?

What if they solve a problem?

On any given day, millions of agreements and contracts are signed by the top management at companies.

The big ones may be signed in the glare of the public eye.

But behind the scenes, hundreds of papers detailing agreements and contracts have to be signed and records maintained for legal and statutory requirements.

And that's where signatures become a business worth billions.

Docusign has efficiently, steadily built a business across the world since 2003, with half a million paying customers and hundreds of millions of users worldwide

Digitally creating and refining the process of affixing signatures and maintaining records securely for companies.

A global business growing at a CAGR of nearly 25%

Now, imagine what it could become.

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This post will sound like a 'trip' on magic mushrooms but the facts are even more surprising.

Vegans have been on the look out for milk substitutes for years.

None of the options come close to mimicking the taste and mouthfeel of milk-based food like butter and cheese.

Whey and casein are the proteins that make milk what it is.

And two obsessive vegans, Ryan Pandya and Perumal Gandhi decided they would create milk proteins without any cows back in 2014. At a company called Perfect Day Foods

And they did. Synthesizing milk proteins with the help of microflora - or mushrooms that feast on plant-based nutrients in massive tanks.

It has all the nutrition that milk provides without any of the problems of managing dairy farms, and cows.

We've reached a point where we no longer need cows to produce milk.

The company claims that the milk proteins produced are free from hormones, antibiotics or cholesterol.

They've got some way to go to produce cans of milk that arrive at your door in the morning, without the dairy farm attached.

Right now, they're looking to supply bakeries and pastry manufacturers. Which is the bigger market.

Will you miss the 'MOO' in the milk?

The cooking gas UX

The blue flame is now available on demand.

India's LPG penetration has reached 97.5%

The transition has taken decades, but look at the hazards that were overcome.

A highly flammable gas used and stored safely at home by people across all sections of society.

Consider the effort it took to communicate ease of use and the precautions to be taken - to literate and illiterate audiences.

In India, the first dealerships began in Kolkata in the 60s and people were highly apprehensive about keeping an explosive hazard at home

They changed because it was clearly superior to noisy or troublesome kerosene stoves or firewood .

The design was conceived and executed in the US in the early 1900s

The UX is clear. You can turn the gas stove knobs in just three directions - Full flame, Sim and Off.

Same to operate the gas cylinder - On, Off and remove the regulator.

Cooking gas has a distinctive smell strong enough to be noticed as soon as small amounts are released.

Other safety features are built into the tamper-proof cylinder.

A perfect example of early, intuitive UX. Much before the term was invented or hyped by technology

We're all junk collectors

It starts from childhood.

Kids stuff little stones, pieces of paper and all kinds of debris into their pockets

Adults are no better. We fill our lofts, shelves and cupboard with things that are rarely used

During occasional spring cleaning, we find tickets of journeys made long ago, bank spam envelopes never opened and receipts of products we've thrown away.

But we'll never find guarantee cards when we need them.

The strange aspect is that we follow the same behavior online as well.

Old emails and blurred images from long ago languish in online folders, stuck in limbo.

It's as if deletion means a break with the past.

What if we deleted something important?

The dread is enough to preserve and prolong the same behavior.

The self-storage market in the US, which is largely personal effects is growing at a CAGR of 135%. It is expected to go from $87 to $115 billion in just 5 years.

Online data storage is not far behind, growing at 12.5 %, and already worth over $53 billion

Memories are supposed to be precious but it's also a great business for people providing the storage.

We're not just stuffing the landfills but our lives!

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Can you imagine thrillers where no guns are fired?

No action sequences with vehicle crashes?

Only conversations.

You get to know what happened based on the questioning

A set of 4-5 police officers take turns to ask questions.

It's psychological warfare

Each episode has a different suspect being questioned

The setting is always the same. The questioners and the accused in one room

The observers in the other.

The camera shifts, pauses and goes deep.

It's called Criminal and commissioned by Netflix in UK, France, Spain and Germany

How is the action sustained?

With taut writing, direction and performances.

Little touches in the set design. A bright red line frames the rectangular window between the questioners and the observers.

And that's worked into the title design.

In the word Criminal during the title sequence, the red rectangle takes the place of the two 'i's.

The interplay between the police officers and their working relationship is the only thing we see.

We don't get to know them as people.

If you like muscled and toned bodies grunting while they smash their fists into each other, don't even bother.

Here, the violence is in the words. And the mind.

8 years in 4 minutes

It captures change.

Singapore's skyline and neighborhoods evolving.

Not a single human in any of the shots.

Unless, of course, you count the little dots in some frames.

Cranes move in perfect synchrony dancing in the dark

Traffic weaves lines of light that ebb and flow like a river.

Buildings get covered with vertical gardens.

Or light up and shimmer in the evening sunset.

Each sequence would have taken years to shoot.

The cameras placed at a strategic points and triggered to shoot a frame every few minutes or hours at multiple locations

Getting permissions and then stitching it all together in a seamless narrative.

It looks like a sequence from Bladerunner.

A futuristic paradise of skyscrapers and residential blocks.

Rising and then changing with the patterns of light and dark washing across the exteriors.

You marvel at the skill and dedication of the people involved.

They knew what they were getting into.

It would have involved meticulous planning and execution for years

Keith Loutit is the filmmaker.

An architect who documents changing cities.

He worked in collaboration with the government, other architects and property developers.

To build a visual time lapse chronicle of change

The Boss Factor

The paycheck is important.

But the Boss factor is crucial.

There's no point in getting good money and a bad boss.

I don't need to go into the details. Everyone's had at least one.

Instead of researching salaries at the company you hope to join, learn more about the person you will work for.

Talk to the people who have been on the same team.

If you get the wrong vibes, the biggest paycheck isn't worth it.

You'll save yourself a whole lot of stress by simply avoiding the experience.

There's a difference between being aggressive and being focused.

Between acceleration and riding a rollercoaster.

In the early years, a toxic work environment has a permanent impact.

No matter what is achieved in terms of success, the aftertaste lingers.

Instead, look for the people who lead by example.

Abdul Kalam kept repeating the story of his boss, Satish Dhawan

When the mission failed, he was the one who faced the press

When it succeeded, the team went out in front.

He created a collaborative culture that continues in India's space program

His teams went on to manage by the same example

Careers aren't built by paychecks alone.

It's not winner takes all

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The formula for Coca Cola is it's secret sauce.

It has never been disclosed. It is the single most important thing that preserves Coke's legacy

But this directly conflicts with the results of blind taste tests.

Assuming there was a big difference, shouldn't you be able to tell two brands apart?

If Coke and Pepsi were poured into identical glasses out of your sight and then served, there's a 50% chance you'll be right.

And a 50% chance you'll be wrong as well.

So, why does this obsession with a secret sauce persist?

Because we want to believe that it exists.

Mystique sustains more brands than facts do.

We want a secret sauce that magically reduces our weight.

Or one that makes us attractive. And all powerful.

The magic potions that transform us. In our own eyes. And those of others.

The fantasy beckons. Superheroes who have the qualities we all desire.

Strength. The ability to do good at will.

The ease with which 'bad guys' are taken out.

Fixing things in an instant.

It's like living on the fringes of a fairy tale world.

And we're condemned to be on the outside looking in.

Is that pessimistic? Or realistic?

Video bandwidth just went on a crash diet

Nvidia has managed to do for video what mp3 did for audio back in the 90s.

Today's generation may not be familiar with the details, so we'll do a bit of time travel.

Back then, an audio file was just as heavy as video files today.

A 7-10 MB song would take forever to download.

The MP3 format was a godsend. It stripped out the higher and lower frequencies of sound not audible to the human ear and reduced file sizes by 80-90%

It's been the story of the internet.

Start with heavy file formats and slim them down progressively.

With the start of the pandemic, binge watching on streaming sites, gaming and video calls went into overdrive.

And strained the infrastructure of ISPs across the world.

What Nvidia has done is smart compression on video calls.

The first image of your face is sent across as a reference.

Then a neural network maps out the points on your face and sends across data in real time, compressing bandwidth requirements by 80-90%

Even with low bandwidth, faces look clear, though a touch artificial.

The applications of the tech are truly mind-blowing.

The murmurs about deepfakes have already begun

The spiky sweetness of community

The jackfruit will win no beauty contests.

It doesn't have the rich redness of strawberries

Or the yellow glow of ripe mangoes.

The symmetry of bananas curving around a central stem.

It hangs off the trunk of the tree, lumpy and ungainly.

But you'll know when it's ripe even when you're far away

The smell hits you hard. It's on the very edge of being unpleasant.

The durian and the jackfruit are united by smell. But apparently belong to completely different species.

And I found that liking the taste of jackfruits is no guarantee that you'll find durians palatable.

Jackfruits have a community characteristic that I don't see anymore.

Women and children gathered to individually pluck out each of the yellow, glistening and shapeless 'flowers', the part that is savoured the most

Everyone would prepare by rubbing their hands with coconut oil.

Or else, the white, sticky sap inside the fruit would be impossible to wash off.

A large, heavy fruit would easily take a couple of hours to pick apart.

Accompanied by conversations, good natured ribbing and the steady pile up of the yellow gobs of delight.

Like the coconut, the jackfruit can fill whole books of recipes.

And family memories

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Remember the vehicles that were dreamed up for the film?

Well, the platform is ready

With electric cars, the engine disappears. So does the steering system and a lot more.

So, the car can be imagined from the battery flatbed and four wheels, all with independent motors driving them.

As Fast Company recently wrote, car design has become a skateboard on top of which you build anything.

You literally have a rectangle with four wheels as the canvas.

That's just one step away from imagining a car which is 3D printed in any shape imaginable.

It would still have to pass safety and automobile regulations of course.

But if they were self-driving cars, they could be as distinctive as you please.

The assembly line may lead to mass customization.

So car companies give you a range of aerodynamic designs for you to choose from - and you decide which one you like.

Plus accessorize it according to your lifestyle

These platforms can also be remotely controlled, so last mile delivery gets easier.

It will take a few years for sure.

But REE's has got a head start. This could become the microprocessor of car design.

Fury Road imagined this!

The magic shoemakers are here

You remember the Elves and the Shoemaker fairy tale?

About a poor shoemaker who was down to a single piece of leather from which he could make one pair of shoes.

Long story short, some helpful elves made the perfect pair of shoes overnight

The shoemaker returns the favour and things get better for all from then on.

Now fast forward to the future and imagine robots as elves.

They don't need any favours returned but have to be precisely instructed.

Adidas has developed technology to weave shoes into complex, crazy patterns. It's called Strung.

Borrowing inspiration from textile manufacturing and a bit of the Bird's Nest stadium design that China built during the Olympics.

Tightly packed fibers crisscross the entire upper of the shoes to move in perfect synch with the runner's movements.

Like they are molded on to the feet. Thee patterns on the threads can be modified according to requirements and what athletes in a sport expect to accomplish.

The shoes look magically woven because they are - threads move not just horizontally or vertically but in the directions designers have imagined.

Not arriving until end 2021 though.

Does going from paid product to a free tier make sense?

Vidyard hosts videos for enterprise customers.

Not everyone is happy to be on YouTube.

Enterprises want to provide layered access to videos they create.

Product pitches, email marketing integration, they need to know what works. And track it at every stage.

When creating communication for customers, it helps to know exactly when they lost interest.

Or when they're moving to the next stage of purchase.

Vidyard's customer base included 6-7000 companies in martech (technology led marketing) Now there are over 50,000 martech companies.

Vidyard decided basic features would have to be provided for free to keep customers coming in

Then, they could always be upsold with more features and data benefits into the next paid layer.

Wouldn't that put them in competition with YouTube?

Not really. Because this customer segment looks for a combination of security, speed and flexibility. Plus lots of actionable data.

YouTube is not an option as far as they are concerned.

Not the right environment for some brands.

Free is still a great hook. A no-consequence opportunity to try.

It's where customers get to experience a product worth paying for.

Sometimes, what makes sense is crazy

Especially in marketing

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Do you like your bristles soft, medium or hard?

That's the most choice kids have these days.

We had much more back in the summer holidays spent in Kerala.

Wake up in the morning and make our own toothbrushes.

A new one every morning. It allowed us to pick and choose

We'd walk around the compound to find several mango leaves lying under the tree

Some of them would be spotted and orange with strange patterns

But we didn't care. They tasted better than the plain green ones.

Then it would have to be folded into a tight roll. So, you had layers and layers of leaf tightly bound between thumb and forefinger.

And then, start brushing.

The edges of the leaf would fray as you brushed vigorously.

Like scraping off a carrot, you would wear the rolled leaf down to a stub you could barely hold in your fingers.

The flavour of the leaves comes rushing back along with the memories.

No toothpaste. Just the varying flavours of something that tasted vaguely of mangoes.

But your mouth felt so fresh, it was unbelievable.

Try it sometime.

Even the mintiest toothpaste wont be a patch on this one.

Nature packs a real punch.

Bhakarwadi is a delicious mouthful

If you've never eaten bhakarwadi, pause right here.

Place an order at the link below.

Chitale Bandhu is a landmark in Pune but people across India are just as familiar with the wide range of food products that people line up for.

What is bhakarwadi?

I'll help myself to this delightful description written by NDTV food.

The favourite item of choice at Pune's Chitale Bandhu is a deep-fried disc of dough, stuffed with a wealth of spices.

It unites the gentle sweetness of dried coconut, and the musty, warming flavours of poppy and sesame seeds plus, cumin seeds, with the tang of dried, powdered mango, and the potency of chilli.

The origin story goes back to 1939 - as a dairy farm.

Generations and experimentation later, the Pune brand has gone from local to spreading its wings across the world.

It's one of the sweetest pleasures of the internet.

You no longer have to trouble friends and family for the authentic delicacies at faraway stores.