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  • Lucky Restaurant : Chai Maska Bun With The Dead !

    Lucky Restaurant : Chai Maska Bun With The Dead !

    Do You Feel Uncomfortable In The Company Of The Dead? What About Eating Tea And Pineapple Jam Bun In Their Company?

    Welcome To The Most Interesting And An Unusual Restaurant – The New Lucky Restaurant In Ahmedabad. The Place Is Famous For The Tombs In The Restaurant. People Drink The Famous Tea And Maska Bun In The Company Of The Departed Sufi Poets And Saints Of The Mughal Era.

    I Accidentally Visited This Place. Year Was 2003. I Was Early For A Morning Meeting And I Decided To Have Tea. I Went Inside The Restaurant And Ordered The Tea. As I Was Reading My Newspaper, I Noticed A Tomb Besides Me. I Was Surprised. Then I Saw More Of Those Tombs. As I Started Chatting With The Restaurant People, I Learnt The History Of The Place. Since Then, It Is A Must Visit Place In Ahmedabad Itinerary For My Guests And Friends!

    Lucky Started As A Small Street Side Tea Stall Under A Tree Near The Sidi Sayyed Mosque. The Business Grew And It Got Converted Into A Larger Restaurant – With Benches & Tables Around Twenty Tombs. The Tree Still Exists Inside The Restaurant.

    One Unknown Fact Is That This Restaurant Has An Original M F Hussain Painting, Gifted By None Other Than The Most Celebrated Painter – Who Was A Lucky Restaurant Fan !

    The New Lucky Restaurant Was Featured As One Of The Top Ten Odd Eateries By Time Magazine.

  • India 2014 : Priyanka Vs Modi

    The Most Interesting Fight Should Be Priyanka Vs Modi, If That Happens. It Is Congress’ Best Bet. The Rahul Vs Modi Seems Like South Africa Kenya Cricket Match. Only Time Will Tell !

  • Mobile World Congress 2013 – Recap By Chetan Sharma

    I am a regular follower of Chetan Sharma’s blog. He has recently shared his notes and comments on Mobile World Congress 2013. Please find the same note here.

    Chetan Sharma on Mobile World Congress 2013

    Welcome to Spain, Thank you for your business,” remarked the immigration officer and thus started my yearly pilgrimage to the grand slam of mobile – The Mobile World Congress 2013. It is truly a global event with participants from virtually all countries looking to do business, learn a thing or two, and ponder over what the year will bring forth. The show moved to a new venue which made the logistics work much better for attendees and exhibitors but the venue lost its charm and character. We used this opportunity to feel the pulse of the industry and understand where things are headed. This note summarizes our observations from the show.

    While there was no blockbuster announcements or products that will knock your socks off, several interesting trends emerged that will keep the industry exciting to watch in 2013.

    The perennial search for the #3 ecosystem continues: Windows sales have disappointed thus far, Blackberry has launched new devices but hasn’t quite hit the mark. So, while consumers seem perfectly happy with iOS and Android, industry’s desire to have a third robust ecosystem is palpable. The biggest announcement in that regard was from Firefox OS and in a matter of 12 months, it has not only forged a strong alliance with operators, it is actually getting ready to ship phones. It is going to be targeting the low-end of the market which is a smart strategy but a lot depends on the range of price points of the devices and how quickly it can attract the developer ecosystem. Given that Android device price points are hovering around $50 and it is a mature ecosystem with great developer reach and support, it will be challenging to convince consumers to go the Firefox route. However, if the price points are attractive enough, with the distribution power of some key operators, we could see some early traction. Ubuntu, Jolla, and Tizen were also vying for attention.

    LTE everywhere: LTE deployment is growing at a very fast pace. The US market is ahead of the curve with almost national footprint from Verizon followed by substantial coverage from the remaining three operators. Elsewhere, operators are gearing for deployment once some of the spectrum issues/auctions are sorted out.

    The 4th Wave has arrived: Last year, we put forth a framework for future mobile industry revenues in our 4th wave paper. Since then, the framework has been embraced by many leading operators around the globe. It was good to hear operators talking more about services rather than data plans. Several areas were discussed by the leading tier 1 operators such as health, retail, education, cloud, M2M, automobile, enterprise, security, connected living, home security, commerce, identity and privacy, big data and analytics. Operators who are able to steer their giant organizations to focus on services will be able to survive the commoditization of access. We will have more say on the subject later this year.

    Yo OTT, luego existo: which is Spanish for “I OTT, therefore I am” To be a player in the digital world, one has to be an OTT provider for communications and beyond. The interesting dichotomy of the communications OTT business is that very few will survive. The end state of a majority of them (if not all) is either an M&A with a telco or an Internet player or they run out of cash. The new breed of OTTs has forced the lumbering giants to think different about their customers and their markets.

    Mobile Broadband, Cloud, and Apps: The troika of broadband network access, the cloud infrastructure and the applications are creating a sea change in the enterprise, especially the SMB segment. It is also changing how developers see the enterprise segment as the opportunity migrates from windows to iOS and Android. We conducted some in-depth research in the space and will have more to share later this year. Our Mobile Breakfast Series later this month will be dealing with the topic of Cloud and SDN in more detail.

    Redefining Monopoly: The mobile and internet worlds have collided but the regulatory regimes haven’t changed. European operators seemed to indicate that it is time to reassess what a monopoly really means and the rules should apply to all layers of the ecosystem stack and that means devices and OSs as well.

    Device Launches: All major OEMs are following the Apple playbook as far as the device announcements are concerned. To garner media attention, it is best to announce the “hero” devices away from major shows. Just like CES earlier this year, MWC lacked any big device announcements. Nokia announced mid-low tier devices to expand its portfolio that will help it in unit sales. ZTE, Huawei, LG, Asus, NEC, Sony, HTC, HP, Asus, Acer, Lenovo all had new devices to display but media’s eyes are set on Samsung’s Galaxy release later this month.

    Local OEMs: Traditional OEMs are facing some healthy competition from new entrants in local markets. Players like Fly and Yotaphone in Russia are giving the veterans a run for their money. By both innovating with new features but also by customizing the devices for the local market (e.g. bigger battery that last 3 days), they are creating their own niche. After gaining good market share in Russia, Fly is expanding into other markets.

    Connected Cars: When the biggest operator by revenue announces a deal with the biggest car manufacturer, people take notice. GM and AT&T announced LTE cars by 2015 which will pretty much force the entire auto industry to provide broadband connectivity in a hurry. However, the auto industry has misplaced expectations on apps and any incremental revenue they might be able to harness from them.

    Samsung Knox, Blackberry – can you hear me now: Android is probably the most insecure mobile platform out there. Blackberry has long been the gold standard, iOS has improved, Windows has security features built in but security has always been a step-child of Android. Samsung’s Knox announcement elevates Samsung’s role in the mobile enterprise and to some extent takes over some of the development capability of Android that are squarely aimed at Blackberry. The container security feature set with MDM integration is well thought out and opens up the mobile enterprise market for Samsung especially in North America and Western Europe.

    Spectrum and Regulations: While spectrum was a universal issue with the operators, more is better, European operators were particularly vocal about the state of the regulatory affairs on the continent. Regulators, they complained, are killing the industry by cutting of revenue opportunities, are fostering too much competition, too much taxation, and too involved in the operations of the operators. This is leading to declining revenues and turmoil at the operators. There might be some unintended consequences of weakening operators and regulators will have to grapple with some interesting questions that a free market economy will pose in the coming days.

    TU Go – Take your phone number everywhere: In our opinion, Telefonica has done the best job of dealing with the digital world in putting forth an org structure that can crank out applications and services at Internet speed. TU Go is a new service (launched in UK) that allows users to take their phone number to any supported device and use it for calling and texting – number in the cloud at its best.

    NFC is dead, Long Live NFC: Vodafone CEO’s frank admission that he doesn’t expect to make much money from NFC gave the audience a bit of a pause. Several NFC initiatives have floundered without clear goals or vision. Instead of working together, the industry has remained fragmented and thus the lack of scale has hampered progress. For too long, the industry has focused on payments but the opportunity lies in the engagement with the customer. For better or for worse, the financial industry has sequestered its commission for the foreseeable future. We saw some clever NFC implementations to drive consumer engagement and commerce in retail environments, primarily in Europe.

    Consolidation looms: The question that is on everyone’s mind but was hardly discussed at the show was the coming onslaught of consolidation at virtually all layers of the ecosystem.

    Developing Markets: Connecting the next billion was a recurring theme. The smartphone penetration in the developing world is in the single digits. More than that, introducing consumers to a computing platform for the first time is an exciting opportunity. Creating services that are tailored to the local environment remains an opportunity that can have a profound impact on society. Our own work with the UN/ITU has shown the transformative role of mobile in almost every walk of life. The device unit growth is coming from the developing markets and as they get connected, the world becomes flatter, and the competitive dynamics in a globalizing world will create for some interesting policy and political battles.

    M2M and Internet of Things: As we wrote in our book “Wireless Data Services” back in 2004, the connectivity is becoming pervasive. The module costs are coming down fast and the desire to measure and track every number that is important in our lives is creating a massive opportunity. However, privacy, battery life, environment, security remain key issues that need to be tackled.

    Identity as a business opportunity: In a digital world where access to information and resources depend on verification of your identity, the guards and keepers of the identity information have a big role to play. As such, “identity” management is emerging as an opportunity that can be monetized. In the online world, Facebook has become the dominant way to integrate apps and services. In the mobile world, operators can play a significant role in authentication and verification. Will the two worlds collide? Fasten your seat belts.

    The Post PC world: As an experiment, for the MWC trip, I carried just the Nexus 7 tablet and an iPhone. I felt liberated. In the past, for day trips, I have relied just on iPad/iPhone for taking care of my computing needs. For this trip, I wanted something that I can carry in jacket pocket. Nexus was good enough for taking simple notes, email, browser and even some phone calls. I could easily switch back-and-forth between the tablet and the phone, and the combined battery life lasted the whole day.

    The Miscellaneous:

    · Google’s absence from the show puzzled many

    · The enthusiasm for RCS/Joyn seems to have subsided as reality sets in

    · Nokia is broadening the reach of its HERE platform to other operating systems

    · AT&T/Ericsson showed WebRTC demo

    · Facebook announced messaging partnerships with operators in developing countries

    · Small cells remained a hot topic though seen more of a compliment for the macro network

    · Signaling traffic continues to grow at a faster pace than the data traffic as more LTE devices come on the network

    · Qualcomm launched RF360 solution to deal with frequency band fragmentation which is serious problem for LTE roaming

    · Yotaphone with its dual screen (front and back) and NEC Medias with its stacked up screens had something fresh to offer in the devices space when 99% of the devices look the same

    · Virtualization is the new black in mobile networks

    Best booth: Ericsson’s networked world theme was well thought-out and provided a unique exploratory view of the opportunities and technology evolution. A close second – Connected City.

    Best party: There won’t be an MWC without the bevy of parties every night. Qualcomm again stole the show with the jam-packed confluence of the mobile elite.

  • Experience Snow In Ahmedabad !

    The Climate Is Going Crazy These Days ! Ahmedabad Has Experienced Extreme Cold, Rains And Hot Weather In Last Few Days – Like All In One Smartphones ! We Decided To Add Snow To The Above List – Hence We Visited Wonderland Snow Park Near Sarkhej Crossroads.

    The Maniar Wonderland Has An Artificial Snow Park – An Escape From Heat Of Ahmedabad. The Experience Was Good – Not Extraordinary. It Was A Good Fun For Children – A Difference Outing From Normal Sundays. Play In Ice, Make Ice Balls And Enjoy The Slides. The Snow Park Was Well-Designed But Undermined By Lack Of Crowds And Hence Maintenance. It Could Have Been Better.

    The Park Has Also Other Adventure Like Zip Lines, Dessert Bike, Aqua Ball etc. The Park Was Value For Money. The Restaurant Was Very Average. Snow Makes It A Good Experience – Though Real Snow Is Real Snow.

  • Midnight Hunger? Try Manek Chowk !

    Midnight Hunger? Try Manek Chowk !

    Manek Chowk is one of the most popular places of Ahmedabad. It is famous for its night food stalls, which give the place a unique energy and vibrancy. The place is crowded from late evening to early morning. The place to be for the midnight hunger !

    Manek Chowk is an open square in the heart of old Ahmedabad. It is a jewellery and vegetable market in the day time. However, its night food stalls have made it really famous. It is one of the must have experiences of Ahmedabad.

    I have been the guide to many tourist and gypsy souls visiting Ahmedabad. I often take them to Manek Chowk in the midnight. I tell my friends to treat this as a unique experience – it is not good or bad – it is a different experience.

    Try the following things:
    1. Gwalior Dosa @ Balan Dosa Centre – This is very soft dose. Actually this is butter with dosa. Extra layers of butter make it tasty and soft.
    2. Tez Dosa @ Balan Dosa Centre – The Tez is a bigger hit than Ajay Devgan’s Tezz. A spicy treat after the buttery Gwalior Dosa.
    3. Ferarri Sandwich – Pineapple and sandwich but cheese layer replaces the bread layer. Different !
    4. Cadbury Pineapple Sandwich – Another Manek Chowk experience! Some think it is a dessert. But it is a starter actually !
    5. Hyderabadi Biryani
    6. Pav Bhaji
    7. Kulfi @ Asharfi – The must have dessert.

    People can try HajmaHajam (digestive freshener), Farsan, Pani Puri, Ragda Pattice, Chat Items and Pizza as well.

    A week at Manek Chowk converts your 8 packs into single pack !

  • MoMo Webinar: Get Started With Blackberry 10 Apps

    MOMO Ahmedabad starts 2013 with an interesting session that focuses on Blackberry’s new OS BB10, which has already created lot of buzz and excitement in Mobile Industry, since its launch.

    More than its two flagship devices that were launched recently i.e. Z10 & Q10, Blackberry’s BB10 is more talked about by technology experts worldwide & sharing their views on how it compete with Google’s Android & Apple’s iOS platforms and what would be those features that will turn to be differentiators for BlackBerry.

    We are wrapping up all that in our next session @ MOMO Ahmedabad called as “Getting Started with BB10 Cascades Application Development”. It’s scheduled for 25th Feb 2013 at 6:30 PM @ Sunil Mehta Auditorium, CIIE IIMA New Campus, Vastrapur, Ahmedabad.

    Register Here

    Key Agenda:

    1. Introduction to Blackberry 10 platform
    2. BB 10 OS features
    3. BB10 Device features (Blackberry Hub, peak and flow, BBM, Blackberry World, Browser…)
    4. Development Options (Cascades, Webworks, Android runtime, Action Script)
    5. Cascades development Overview
    6. Developing a Hello World Cascades application from scratch
    7. Q & A

    Duration: 1 hour

    Speaker Profile:

    Mr. Amit Gupta

    Tech Lead – BlackBerry | InfoStretch Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

    Amit carries more than 6.5 yrs of experience in developing enterprise level mobile apps on Blackberry, Android & J2ME. He has designed apps catering to front line industries like Banking, Hospitality, Health care, Entertainment etc. Apart from his strong development capabilities, he is very good with analyzing, debugging skills, optimizing and refactoring code and mentoring and guiding teams for developing robust applications for clients.

  • The Eklavya Evangelist !

    Everyone of us make lot of important decisions in our life. Some turn out to be great decisions, some turn out to be lessons. I think one of the best decisions that we made was choosing Eklavya as Aditya’s school. Yes – Eklavya, the school.

    Eklavya School is one of the unique schools. To me, it represents a thought. It represents an experiment to create model citizens. It represents an idea to create smart, sensitive, aware, happy and well-rounded individuals. It is an idealistic fusion of values and life skills.

    The credit for creating Eklavya Institution goes to Shri Sunil Handa and his team. He is a genius and has created this vision and translated this into action. Equal credit goes to him team, who live and breathe his vision. The Eklavya way of life and values are noticed from the bus conductor, bus driver, watchman to everyone else in the school.

    Choosing Eklavya was a leap of faith for us. Everyone was against us. We got strong reactions which included the following:
    – You have a child just over three years and you are giving him such hardship?
    – A drive of 2 hours to and fro daily?
    – Are you mad?
    – Do not rob child’s free time?
    – You and your wife will not have any life!
    – Eklavya school is very strict?
    – Eklavya people are unreasonable and impractical – think twice?

    Even our both set of parents had some reservations. Our friends had reservations. Some still do. Primarily due to distance.

    However, we are very happy with our decision. No doubt, the distance involved is big – but every parent and child have to travel these days. If I was in Bombay and not posted in Ahmedabad, my son would have eventually spent same time in Bombay traffic.

    My wife has to spend a very good amount of time on my son’s education. I have to contribute as well. But we are happy about it. We want to be part of our child’s education process. We are not living in the ‘Child Slogs At School, Parents Live Own Life’ syndrome.

    We strongly believe that parents need to be involved with their child’s education. We cannot expect that once we enroll our child in school, our responsibility ends. It is like investing money blindly in stocks and mutual funds and expecting monthly cheques without using our intelligence and time. And every child is the biggest asset and hence their education is the biggest investment parents make! Children are our only real legacy !

    Eklavya has following good practices:
    1. Every child and teacher and educators have to travel only in the school bus. No student can drive on their own to the school. Parents cannot pick up the child from any other place.
    2. Any one parent has to attend the Parents’ Workshop every fortnight. The parent is updated on the child’s progress, the current curriculum in the class, the plan for the forthcoming fortnight etc. It is important that parents reinforce the school education to aid faster learning.
    3. Only home made food allowed in the school. Many schools have similar practice. Good for everyone!
    4. Eklavya has minimal holidays. Eklavya functions on independence day, festival days etc. I have seen that other school have frequent holidays. Eklavya ensures that festivals are celebrated in schools and children understand the rationale of festival, practices etc. A unique event is that entire household having a holiday while our son has the school. They make up for school events by working on saturdays. Some parents hate it. But this speaks of the commitment and effort on part of Eklavya school as well.
    5. Eklavya is strict on expected behavior at school.
    6. Every event and function at school is inclusive. All students participate in annual celebrations and sports. The senior students help the junior students in organizing and managing the event. (The sports days and Euphoria days are sight to see. You can see thousands of car around Eklavya. The Eklavya team does a phenomenal job at traffic management but the sheer volume of cars ensures that the highways are full of Eklavya parent vehicles. As soon the school gates open, parents run to grab the best seats to see the performance. For parents, it also becomes a good networking event)
    7. Parents have to attend the annual IPEM workshops twice a year. No excuses on that. It is required to review child’s progress and it is an opportunity for the parents to have a open discussion.
    8. Eklavya gives back to the society in spirit and action. It provides financial assistance to several students. It provides teacher training and shares best practices.

    There are many more things that they do and we love it !

    I am sure many others schools in India and Ahmedabad have been inspired by Eklavya now. Many other schools may have these similar ideas. But the key is the execution and living the values. The force behind success of Eklavya is Eklavya Team and Eklavya Founder Sunil Handa. Many people know him through his Entrepreneurship course in IIMA. He was also featured in the book ‘Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish‘. The principal with whom we interact is an epitome of humility, intelligence, care and discipline – all rolled into one ! Teachers are important role models for children and Eklavya is a good inspiration ground.

    I am called an Eklavya Evangelist at my workplace and I am accused of converting many parents. I can proudly say that we can have a Eklavya Group at our office now ! The idea is simple – the future citizens will excel only if the overall environment is re-enforcing and re-iterating the values and ideas that they value.

  • The InfoStretch Family !

  • Who Drained My MacBook Pro Battery? KiesViaWifiAgent !

    My MacBook Pro was acting very strangely. It was running very hot and fans were running constantly. The full charge on the battery was draining very quickly. In less than an hour !

    I thought it was my Outlook and Mail software – but it was not the culprit. Nor was my iPhoto. There was no fixed pattern when the fans would start blowing like a car engine – though after a reboot, things used to work fine !

    I opened the Activity Monitor. I caught the culprit today. It was a process called Kies Via Wifi Agent. I had installed Kies for sync with Samsung phone when I was trying an App on Samsung. It was using 90% of CPU and causing battery to drain. I deleted the App – no time to think ! Life is better now – hopefully !

  • 45 Life Lessons From A 90 Year Young Person !

    I came across this blog randomly on Stumbleupon. It was too good and I took the liberty to reproduce it completely here.

    45 Life Lessons From A 90 Year Young Person !

    1. Life isn’t fair, but it’s still good.

    2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.

    3. Life is too short not to enjoy it.

    4. Your job won’t take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and family will.

    5. Don’t buy stuff you don’t need.

    6. You don’t have to win every argument. Stay true to yourself.

    7. Cry with someone. It’s more healing than crying alone.

    8. It’s OK to get angry with God. He can take it.

    9. Save for things that matter.

    10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.

    11. Make peace with your past so it won’t screw up the present.

    12. It’s OK to let your children see you cry.

    13. Don’t compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.

    14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn’t be in it.

    15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye… But don’t worry; God never blinks.

    16. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.

    17. Get rid of anything that isn’t useful. Clutter weighs you down in many ways.

    18. Whatever doesn’t kill you really does make you stronger.

    19. It’s never too late to be happy. But it’s all up to you and no one else.

    20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don’t take no for an answer.

    21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don’t save it for a special occasion. Today is special.

    22. Overprepare, then go with the flow.

    23. Be eccentric now. Don’t wait for old age to wear purple.

    24. The most important sex organ is the brain.

    25. No one is in charge of your happiness but you.

    26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words, ‘In five years, will this matter?’

    27. Always choose Life.

    28. Forgive but don’t forget.

    29. What other people think of you is none of your business.

    30. Time heals almost everything. Give Time time.

    31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.

    32. Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.

    33. Believe in miracles.

    34. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn’t do.

    35. Don’t audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.

    36. Growing old beats the alternative — dying young.

    37. Your children get only one childhood.

    38. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.

    39. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.

    40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else’s, we’d
    grab ours back.

    41. Envy is a waste of time. Accept what you already have, not what you think you need.

    42. The best is yet to come…

    43. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.

    44. Yield.

    45. Life isn’t tied with a bow, but it’s still a gift.