vmohar98

[vmohar98]

Totem Pole Organizations

HR often defines totem pole organizations as those where one leader or manager has one person reporting to him/her, who has one person reporting, who has one person reporting and so on and so forth. I think there is a more critical and serious definition of totem pole organizations where everyone thinks that they have to include their one or two levels higher leaders in all communications. Under the disguise of keeping the boss in the loop, these organizations end up creating more communication churn. More often than not, this "keeping in the loop" is about CYA. This organizational mentality driven by the communication totem pole is often a symptom of more deep routed and potentially dangerous issues. 1 Are the leaders not enough in sync with what's happening one or two levels down that they need to be added to every cc line? 2. Are the organizational priorities not in sync with each other that the higher level bosses need to be brought in as show of force aka escalation? 3. Is the organization a spider where the head needs to know everything? 4. Is the organization pretending to be an octopus but the limbs have no power? Has empowerment just become a fancy word? 5. Do employees feel like they don't have decision making power? 6. Do employees feel like needing CYA which means is there a culture of punishment? Making sure your competent boss is not blindsided in front of his or her boss is a good thing but there is a fine line between communication and fear driven sycophancy. And it's the latter that should be a cause of concern. That's what makes an organization a true totem pole, fear of punishment driven organization.

[vmohar98]

Markdown in Tumblr

Dear Tumblr Staff Why does the markdown writer convert strings within * to italics rather than bold as is the convention? Strings within _ should convert to italics.

[vmohar98]

iPhone 7 vs Pixel - battle of the equals?

I have had an iPhone since the day the original iPhone went on sale. During all these years, I have also owned 3 Android phones remaining faithful to the Google brands Nexus and Moto X (when Google owned Moto). Several times I used the Android phone but finally went back to the iPhone for various reasons.

Recently my iPhone 6 fell in the Gulf of Mexico and even the rice bowl could not salvage it. So I pulled out my Moto X running 5.1 and this time since I did not have an iPhone at all, going back to iPhone temptation was not there. Given that Moto X is an old and now slow phone, I had to make a decision between iPhone 7 and Pixel. I will not buy any Android phone other than the Google brands since I don't want to be held hostage by the manufacturers.

I am not a rooter or jailbreaker

I have no music on my phone. I have no need for it.

I don't care about side loading the apps.

I am surrounded by iPhone 7 folks. I used my Moto X experience and the Pixel phone videos to make the decision. I finally did go back to iPhone 7 and here are the reasons

Email: I use phone for outlook exchange. The stock Email android app is pretty bad and has no support for threaded conversations. I. could use outlook app but quite a few exchange admins hate it. In addition, neither the stock app or the outlook app support VIP mailbox which is a must for me.

WhatsApp: WhatsApp on Android forces you to download and store the media before you can view it. Not that storage is an issue but it clutters my photo feed, and sometimes can be "dangerous" as I do have friends who send me media spicier than PG-13. And in case if my son looks at my phone, could be embarrassing. WhatsApp on iPhone just works beautifully and so much better.

Gboard: now that Google launched Gboard for Android this is a moot point.

Fingerprint Support I did not see fingerprint support for various apps that I use. Some of them do but not all.

Tap to scroll to top - scrolling in android is painful especially if you want to go to top. Not sure why android can't copy this from iOS.

Fonts: fonts and usable text area: try typing messages in WhatsApp or email or slack and you will see that on Android the visible area and content is much smaller than on iOS. I think one of the reasons android needs bigger phones is because of the fonts.

SMS - android sms situation is bad. Lots of options but nothing other than hangout has desktop companion - there are third party apps buy I don't want to use those. I would rather all my sms be between me and the receiver and apple/Google

Wallet - apple pay is easier to use but android pay is very close. Non issue.

Reader view mode - this is just amazing on iOS. Chrome reader mode leaves a lot to be desired even after turning the hidden flag on.

Swipe left/right: As the phones get bigger and bigger, swiping to go to the previous/next screen becomes even more important. There is a left arrow on Android but it does not always do the same as what the "app back arrow" does. This swipe gesture is very useful and commonplace on iOS apps.

So as you can see, it's not about iOS vs android but more of the apps that I use and depend on so heavily and how well they work

The biggest thing I will miss is voice detection and google assistant. Siri is a joke when compared with Google voice detection. Also Google assistant/ now has already become so good and is getting better by the day. There is a Google app on iOS but the integration is not there. On iOS, Now will always be a step child and on Android it's awesome.

I hope that when it comes time for the next iteration, Android will address some of these and maybe the choice will be different. Only time will tell.

[vmohar98]

iPhone - still an endangered species in India

3 years ago when I visited India, I commented that iPhone is an endangered species in India. Fast forward 3 years, and iPhones are still an endangered species in India. I think india and what the Indian marketplace is looking for in a smartphone is very different than what iPhone seems to bring to the table. I think for the majority of folks, smartphones are used for taking pictures, recording videos, watching videos including porn, relatively minor self content creation, storing media copied from other locations, Facebook and  WhatsApp messages that are filled with emojis or copy pasted from some other place. And for this use, there are plethora of options available that are way below the iPhone price point. There are Android phones available at 1/10 the price of iPhone 7. All of these phones work just as well as iPhone when the usage is largely centered around the activities mentioned above. So apple loses on price. For India, when it comes to form factor, size does matter and bigger screens are often preferred over more manageable ones. As for camera, most folks equate mega pixels to photo quality. I believe another big area where apple loses is lack of dual sim support. I don't know what's it about India, but dual sim phones are hugely popular and iPhone just does not support it. More and more people seem to be using laptops when it comes to financial apps thanks to perceived lack of security in Android apps rather than pay for apple. Thus features like fingerprints support does not matter as much. There are two big sectors of Indian mobile market. There is a price aware sector where iPhones don't compete and there is bigger, newer, latest craze sector and Apple's once in two years cycle does not cut it. Apple is spending a lot on advertisement and billboards but I just don't see iPhones when I walk around. Only folks who seem to carry iPhones are senior level IT  folks or others who use iPhones as status symbol and can afford to pay for it. Apple does not seem to be poised  to disrupt that marketplace and not sure if they actually care to be the single biggest manufacturer. 

[vmohar98]

Apple, Google, Microsoft and post-PC era

For quite some time now, we have been talking about post-PC area. The pundits have been telling us how post-PC area is going to see decline in the traditional computing and increase in non traditional devices including mobile. As the smaller form factor devices getting more powerful (iPhone 7 is faster then Mac book air) the lines and separation between what is pc and what is not has been steadily disappearing. This week, we saw Apple, Google, and Microsoft all release hardware. Apple has been a hardware company for quite some time so it's not surprising that they released an evolutionary step in their domain. But Google and Microsoft both have been making more firm statements and taking actions in becoming a hardware and devices vendor. While on one hand Microsoft seems to have given up on Windows Phone and related devices, they have certainly established themselves as the de facto company for Windows based tablets with tablets that can compete with pc. Google took a bold step further and solidified it's role as a hardware company with pixel phones and the Jamboard. Google has relied in Nexus line but finally realized that they need to control end to end experience just like Microsoft did. Among the three "innovations" that came out last week, I think the evolutionary Mac book pros with Touchbar and TouchID are the least exciting. I am not sold on Touchbar. TouchID is definitely useful and interesting. As online commerce continues to grow and more and more sites continue to integrate with Apple pay or Google pay, being able to make secure payments without providing credit card number and having to enter passwords would be huge. Apple pay is already doing so well and this just takes a great step forward. Question is as more and more commerce moves to tablets and phones, would we see the same level of growth thanks to last week's advances. Microsoft released a beautiful device in surface studio. But this is a desktop device. As our desktop usage keeps shrinking (I have not used my desktop pc in over 2 years), it feels like surface studio is a very limited market. Mainly the visual rich content creators are the ones who will find this awesome. For the rest of us, the richness of the interaction or the desktop nature provides very little value thus making this a very niche product. That brings us to the last innovation that came out this week. The Jamboard by Google. This in my opinion is the true innovation. For most of the enterprises as the workforce has already become geographically distributed, collaboration and that too interactive collaboration has become ever more important. We use several tools like WebEx, slack, lync, blue jeans, hangout and more and yet the collaboration is missing. The interactive part at best is about people sharing the screen and someone on the phone struggling to tell the presenter something to fix. Google docs and Office 360 have been the most interactive collaborative tools but they lack a lot. Jamboard promises to fix almost all of these issues and with the remote folks being able to control the board via a tablet just makes it so much more powerful. I have been asking for this level of interactivity in collaboration tools for a long time. It looks like finally we will have something that makes sense and delivers what we all have been missing. Thank you Google. This is a true innovation that is trying to solve a true problem. And that's what makes me most excited about the Jamboard - more than anything that Apple and Microsoft announced. Apple is trying to keep Mac books and the pc still viable through its minor innovations. Microsoft took a more bold step trying to keep it relevant and yet I think the world is moving away from these fixed devices. Google is actually trying to fix a problem thats only going to get worse even though it does nothing to contribute to the pc era either positively or negatively. Having said that, I think in terms of number of units sold, the revenue, and the profit - Apple will own all three categories out of the announcements that came out last week.

[vmohar98]

Potential conversation with digital assistant while driving

Yesterday I left home little early to catch an 8am meeting. Unfortunately, thanks to an accident, I was still in the car for that meeting. I had to pull over, look at the calendar, and dial into the meeting. This made me think how a conversation with a digital assistant (Siri/Now/Cortana) could have gone: 

Siri: Vinay, I see that you have a meeting coming up at 8. The meeting subject is <meeting subject> 

Siri: I know that you are driving, would you like to dial into this meeting? 

Me: Yes 

Siri: I see BlueJeans option available for the meeting. Would you like to dial in using BlueJeans app audio only? 

Me: Yes, 

Siri: Shall I send audio to car Bluetooth or Motorola Elite Silver? 

Me: Motorola 

Siri: Please put on your Bluetooth headsets. And please be careful while driving Siri: Dialing...

[vmohar98]

So its ok for the politicians to collude? That's not anti competition? Oh wait I forgot normal rules don't apply to these scumbags

[vmohar98]

Orlando needs to diversify

I lived in Dallas for over 20 years. There was a time when Dallas was totally vested in the telecom industry. US 75 used to be called telecom corridor. Everyone in north east Dallas metro seemed to work for a telco. And then things went bust. People lost their jobs. The one dimensional city suddenly found itself at a strange place. But then the metroplex on the west side added lots of new opportunities like Sabre, fidelity, American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, FedEx, chase, citi, and more. The metro diversified and saved itself. Now Dallas feels like a tech hub for various verticals from defense to transportation to finance to other high tech.

When we moved to Orlando, I would often ask people what they knew of Orlando and most of the time the answers were Disney and Universal. The slightly more savvy would mention Kennedy space center. But these are all touristy stuff. Other than hospitality and tourism, no body could mention any other industry.

That is not good.

Every city needs a base industry but then you need to be able to branch off from there and create other paths. Otherwise you remain too one dimensional and fail to attract talent. And Orlando needs new good young and skilled talent coming in. Without this competition, your existing talent starts becoming stale and complacent and take things for granted. Without strong industry, your student talent starts looking for things outside and the universities fail to attract good students.

Thankfully Orlando has lots going good for it thanks to the tourism industry but those benefits should be used for building other parts. Otherwise you become the North Dakota. The oil boom goes away and the bottom falls off.

There is a bit of tech scene going on with AMD, FedEx, and SAIC spinoff but it's still in very early nascent stage and more bigger and attractive players need to come to Orlando. The medical field is growing but that's mostly in healthcare management and elderly services, not so much in innovation and high tech.

Tourism is very recession susceptible. Let's learn some from Dallas and let's not become North Dakota.

[vmohar98]

Many Millennials are more interested in curating a positive online image than in having an "authentic" experience

Almost half (43%) of millennials said that whether people comment on their vacation photos is as important or more important than experiencing the authentic culture of the destination. This compares with just 16% of baby-boomers.

This is really messed up. If this is true, I truly feel sorry for this generation.

[vmohar98]

Scalia, Obama, and the Bullshit of Lame Duck Presidency

Antonin. Scalia. Is. Dead. RIP justice Scalia. Scalia held the view that Constitution is static and cannot be open to interpretation as the very society it is supposed to govern is changing. He was a constitutional fundamentalist. I believe Constitution was written by men who could not have foreseen how life will change 250 years in the future. I believe even the documents and scriptures written by so called gods should be interpreted in current state. So there is no love loss with scalia dying. I respect him but won't miss him.

So that brings up the whole question of should President Obama nominate a replacement and what should Congress do if he does nominate one. Republicans are making an argument that this President is now in a lame duck session and should not nominate someone. The question I have is should something important and critical happen, won't we expect the President to act even though supposedly we are in lame duck session? If we get attacked or our interests get attacked or economy tanks won't we expect the President to do something about it? Won't we expect the lame duck President to do somethjng, to protect us? So why this hypocrisy?

And for that matter, aren't all the Presidents basically lame duck when it comes to supreme Court nominations? The President walks away in at most 8 years as the term expires but the Justice nominated by the President does not expire in 8 years. They go on for decades, sometimes generation or two as was the case with scalia. So then if the President nominations are going to have impact way after the President is gone, should we treat the President as lame duck for nominations and not allow any nominations? Can we really afford to leave such an important position open on such an elite group that has the power to change the law of the land? I don't think so.

I think president Obama should fulfill his duty of nominating a person and the senate should fulfill its duty of confirming or rejecting the nomination. That would be the constitutionally right thing to do and that would be the perfect implementation of the constitution. And that's what the Justice Scalia would have wanted to happen.

[vmohar98]

Is Google losing our mind share?

Everyone uses Google. Period. And yet I feel like Google is losing our mind share. Saying anything negative about Google on G+ is like blasphemy but bear with me for a moment. Listen to the conversations you have with others and pay close attention to what people say. I have been listening to several of these conversations carefully and taking notes.

When taking about phone, people often talk about phone/smartphone/iPhone but not as much Android unless direct comparison with iphone is being done. When talking about tablets, people just mention iPad. When talking about watch, people mention Samsung gear or apple watch but rarely Android wear. When talking about cloud people mention just AWS and not Google cloud. At a cash counter people ask "do you accept apple pay" to mean do you accept mobile payments. When people talk about digital assistants they talk about siri and Alexa and sometimes cortana but Google now often does not get mentioned. Maybe Google now needs to be renamed with a female name like Marissa or Sheryl or something like that. Google class has taken a lot of beating and oculus rift and hololens have stolen the limelight, and even though hind sight 20/20, I would prefer Google glass over the super dorky rift or hololens.

When talking about movies, people mention Netflix or amazon prime but not YouTube even though YouTube has as good collection. When people talk about music they mention Pandora, Spotify, or apple music but rarely play music.

When people talk about travel they mention kayak and TripAdvisor even though Google flights and hotels is much better option. When people talk about notes they mention evernote or onennote. People mention Facebook messenger or WhatsApp when they talk about messaging but not Hangout. Social network almost always means Facebook, twitter, Instagram, or Pinterest but not G+. When people talk about photos, they mention picasa to mean Google photos or Flickr but not Google photos. Shopping and books almost always means Amazon and kindle but not Google shopping or play books.

Don't get me wrong. Google is still the king of search, maps, mail, browser , and productivity suit. People not talking about Android may not matter as they use Android if they don't use iPhone. But are there kinks in the armor with Facebook's post search, Facebook videos, Instagram or Pinterest for younger social generation, apple maps for maps on ios, apple pay for payments etc.

Thus as the competition in individual areas grows, do people start talking less about Google and does Google's influence on us and in turn our mind share go down? And does it matter to Google?

[vmohar98]

Do we buy more computer than what we need

During this holiday break, had an interesting, passionate almost heated discussion with couple of folks. One was a friend - an Apple fanboy, a relative - a Microsoft fanboy, and me - a Google services addict. The discussion started with post pc era etc but quickly turned into "what kind of machines do we really need"? We talked about 3 kinds of users - a gamer, a developer, and a surfer. We also talked about the haves and havenots - those who have internet connections and those who do not.

The discussion became passionate as I started making the point that most (and I did mention the 90% number) users really need what the web offers and especially with the cloud offerings you don't need something that's meaty with lots of storage space and able to work when you don't have connection. I was making a point that for most folks a machine like Chromebook is more than enough. Use cloud for all the storage, keep things always accessible and likely more secure than your own drive connected to the net.

The discussion switched to what about people in other countries and all. We talked about how most people are afraid of cloud and storing their stuff including photos and all in cloud and think that they need control and in an attempt to want more control, do we end up buying more computer than what we really need. I think just like wanting office instead of Google docs because word has more functionality - an argument that makes no sense for 90% of folks.

So not like we were expecting any conclusions but it was good spirited discussion about what kind of machines most people need and whether we end up buying more than what we truly need.

[vmohar98]

13 Reasons Why 2015 Has Been the Best Year to Visit Disney Parks . . . So Far - POPSUGAR

[vmohar98]

Has technology made life simpler

Technology is supposed to make life simpler, easier, and faster. And often it does. I don't have to stand in line at the bank to deposit a cheque. I don't have to talk to a travel agent who does not know where Guam is. I can book it online. I can almost instantaneously know what my friends' kids had for dinner even if I don't really want to know about. But I can keep in touch and pretend to enjoy the information barrage.

But often it feels like by giving choices and often multiple of them for a single purpose, technology has made life more complex, harder to remember and keep track of.

Most of us have multiple social networks, multiple email addresses, multiple online shopping accounts each with its own loyalty program and purchase card, multiple places to store docs and photos and albums, multiple gmail accounts - work and personal and the list continues. Use gmail address for this purpose but yahoo for something else, box for something and Google docs for something else, Flickr for some specific albums and shares whereas Google photos for some other purpose and it goes on and on.

Some teachers use edmodo, some khan academy, some remind, some moodle, some their own web site and some just text a link to the pdf file that has the homework. And to make things more complex some teachers will use multiple - one option for homework and something else for projects and reports.

Now you have to go to multiple places to make sure you paid the bills, you responded to queries, you liked or starred someone's post, you checked all the "online resources" to find homework due tomorrow, and all the while paying attention to make sure you are doing the right thing on the right channel and not mixing them.

Strictly speaking technology has not created this problem but technology has allowed to have multiple options, make multiple options easily available and often our pseudo schizophrenic online existence trying to compartmentalize our lives in a futile manner has caused the problem and technology has acted as a catalyst.

Toys and tools galore and yet we seem to be working for them rather being the other way round.

[vmohar98]

Maybe Steve Jobs Would Have Liked the iPad Pro With Pencil

http://recode.net/2015/09/16/maybe-steve-jobs-would-have-liked-the-ipad-pro-with-pencil/ There have been lots of jokes and memes and "what would Steve do" questions about the new pencil. If you ignore the cost for a moment, I think pencil is trying to address a very different problem than the one that jobs hissed at. Jobs did not like stylus for things like data entry a la palm pilot style. Looking back, those stylus were hideous and needed to be killed and iphone did that very well. However, now that technology has improved to the point that you can actual use an iPad like touch device for art creation and beautiful document creation and more, a more natural tool, a tool that artists think with - a pencil is what's needed. The Microsoft use of pencil to edit the excel document is fine but that's not the primary purpose that Apple pencil has in mind. If pencil make me OCR happen and makes writing on glass easy, it could be even better especially for students and for note taking. 

[vmohar98]

Sugar in Milk

My 10th grade teacher Mr. Mhala put his arm around my shoulder and told me a story when I told him I was going to US for higher studies. "Be sugar in milk," Mr. Mhala said. He continued the story - a folktale about Parsi (Zoroastrian) community. Apparently when the parsis landed on India's west coast, the Parsi leader was taken to the local king. After interrogating the leader about social, economical, cultural values etc the king was worried that these folks were so different from his people that accepting them will drive tension leading to braking up his kingdom. The Parsi leader asked for a cup of milk with a spoonful of sugar. He stirred the sugar in the milk and served the milk to the king. The king accepted the parsis.

Parsi community has become an integral part of the Indian community and have enriched the culture, business, art and more. Similarly when hundreds of thousands of Sindhi were pushed out of Pakistan during partition, they became part of India and helped Indian community grow through their tremendous contribution in every walk of life especially business. They became the sugar in milk.

Mind you, sugar in milk is not a one way story.

Fast forward seventy years and today 800,000 refugees from Syria, Libya and other troubled nations have landed in Germany. The refugee crisis is much bigger than any nation, society or the the continent border. It's a humanitarian crisis. Majority of these refugees follow Islam, and have culture that's very different from the German society. With this influx, the Muslim population in Germany has grown from 5.4% to ~6.5%. The population of Germany increased by ~1% overnight, an economy that's barely growing 2% every year. It will be interesting to see how these new visitors become sugar in milk. Can they, will they become an integral part of the society enriching it through their positive contributions the same way parsis and sindhis did for India? Do they owe their allegiance and loyalty to the German society and to the Europe at large? Should they? Or will they always feel on the fringes of the society, disenfranchised, disillusioned, disenchanted leading to disgruntled behavior potentially opening a very slim opportunity for future radical forces?

Lots of questions to be answered that cannot be imagined at this point but in a generation or two will become more apparent. At that time, the hindsight will be 20/20 but will the human society especially those seeking asylum and acceptance rise above the national, cultural, social barriers and become sugar in milk?

[vmohar98]

Technology proliferation, micro moments and the implications*

Technology proliferation has allowed us (life, search and other things) to be more of a collection of micro moments rather than a linear specific period based activity. The quick bursts of search, post, share find an answer are these micro moments when we go in and out of the virtual life in an almost seamless manner.

This has implications for businesses. This whole thing about catching an eyeball does not happen as much unless you are on YouTube and then one cat video leads to another and before you know the Caturday is over. Businesses such as social media and businesses that depend on that quick ad on social media both could be at the receiving end of this.

There are bigger consumer implications that I am more interested in and I hope technology will allow us to get there. Often you are in discussion and a topic comes up, someone makes a claim that you don't agree with but don't have time to check it out. Marissa Myers at one time had talked about this silent assistant that listens, understands the questions that need to be searched for and keeps them ready for later. Sometimes these micro moments happen at the most inopportune time and you need technology to help you re-live those micro moments later. 

http://searchengineland.com/shifts-consumer-behavior-driving-googles-maturation-227390