Sixth Sense – an invention by Pranav Mistry @ TED

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment & Design (think of it like a group of guys with great innovative brains coming together to demo their inventions).

If you have seen Mission Impossible and Minority Report then you will easily relate this gadget to those.

If you thought iPhone was so cool, just wait to see this video.

Pranav is a PhD student in MIT, Mass.

Let this gadget come to market i will be waiting in queue to buy it :)

I was amazed by the list of practical, day-to-day scenarios explained in this video, the video starts slowly and please wait to see the entire one and then you will realize how cool this invention is.

Credit Crisis explained (video) …..

We all know that the current situation in US was caused by failing mortgage payers and sub-prime mortgage crisis, but how did this all happen, this is explained so clearly in this video.

Houses were considered as an assets whose value would never decrease but that myth has been busted but how did this all happen?

Spend few minutes to see this video and you will understand the root causes….. and why are all the banks going nuts and getting bailout money…….

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

President Obamas interview on the Jay Leno Show - watch Full episode

This is a great episode not to miss for sure. He is so cool inspite of all the pressure.

He is in such a great position that every word he utters is being watched closely by everyone. In the video he made a mistake (ofcourse jokingly) saying his bowling skills are like special olympics, which has offended many physically challenged folks, and even before the show got aired on the TV he sent a apology to the head of special olympics.

So the lesson here is "Think before you speak !!!!"

Video Recaps Full Episodes Webisodes

I am back - Start with a joke (Bush & Queen Elizabeth)

Well it has been a long time and time to get back to blogging. So let me start with a nice joke. I read this somewhere on the net (no offence to any country, just smile and your day will be good).

Joke (Bush & Queen Elizabeth)

Heathrow Airport in England, a 300-foot red carpet was stretched out to Air Force One and President Bush strode to a warm but dignified handshake from Queen Elizabeth II. They rode in a silver 1934 Bentley to the edge of central London where they boarded an open 17th century coach hitched to six magnificent white horses. As they rode toward Buckingham Palace, each looking to their side and waving to the thousands of cheering Britons lining the streets, all was going well.This was indeed a glorious display of pageantry and dignity.Suddenly the scene was shattered when the right rear horse let rip the most horrendous, earth-shattering, eye-smarting blast of flatulence, and the coach immediately filled with noxious fumes. Uncomfortable, but maintaining control, the two dignitaries did their best to ignore the whole incident, but then the Queen decided that was a ridiculous manner with which to handle a most embarrassing situation.She turned to Mr. Bush and explained, "Mr. President, please accept my regrets. I'm sure you understand that there are some things even a Queen cannot control."George W., ever the Texas intellectual and gentleman, replied, "Your Majesty, please don't give the matter another thought. You know, if you hadn't said something I would have assumed it was one of the horses."

Ok enough get back to whatever you were doing :)

It is a phone, no it is an ipod, no it is iPhone

This week Apple's share prices rose by 40%, people are standing in queue in Newyork City 4 days before it is going to be released, what is happening ?

Yes the new I-Phone is going to be released tomorrow Friday June 29th 2007, it is very impressive and has deadly features.

• It is an IPOD with 4GB & 8GB storage along with phone, address book, photos,
• It can be operated with your fingers (just scroll by rolling, scratch free operation, expand an image by using two fingers and expand - similar to the microsoft tablet)
• Browse internet on the same
• Have a look at the interactive demo - http://www.apple.com/iphone/phone/
• It is available only for AT&T customers (good that i ditched T-Mobile and moved to AT&T)

Did you know?

• You can buy an iPhone only at an AT&T store and you cannot buy one at the Apple store because it comes with plan and hence at the apple store they dont sell it.
• You can play with a real iPhone in an Apple Store (my city has one and I am going to see it soon)
• Price for 4GB storage is $499 and 8GB storage is $599
• You can purchase it after 6 PM on friday and one person can buy only 2 iPhones.

Few surprising information:

• Steve Jobs in a conference said they will release SDK for iPhone developers but it was a false promise, iPhone does not have any SDK yet, it has only a normal mobile browser and you can launch the browse and literally browse any website.
• IPhone uses EDGE network when it cannot find a wifi which is very slow like a dialup for browsing. (Need to see how well it works)
• For making use of all features other than sync you need to have an Apple computer (meaning not all features work well with a PC) - need to confirm this though !!!
• You cannot reuse the battery, you got to go to manufacturer to change it
• You cannot use MP3 ringtones
• Ahhhh ok i am going to wait till they increase the storage because right now my iPod itself has 80 Gigs of storage.
• Well right now i am looking for a device which has copdetector, gps, phone, camera, handycam and which can show suntv and also which can cook me breakfast !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Google goes on and on and on............

I am a very big fan of google docs & spreadsheets and use them daily for personal use. I read few days ago that google has acquired Zenter a company which provided online web based presentation (or slideshow) creation (something like microsoft powerpoint).

This was the only missing piece in google office since documents and spreadsheets were already available.

Google is growing based on acquisitions (we all remember the huge You Tube acquisition for $1.65 billion) but still google has not stopped there it is acquiring more products.

A quick look at some of my favourite products which were acquired by google:

1) Product: Blogger
Use: To create dynamic on the fly blogs
Company: Pyra Labs
Current: http://www.blogger.com/
I was using blogger and google provided a seamless transfer and allowed usage of google username password.

2) Product: Picasa
Use: Online photo management
Company: Idea Labs
Current: Picasa - http://picasaweb.google.com/home
Though picasa is popular it has certain bandwidth upload and size restrictions (1 GB) and blog images are basically stored in the picasaweb hence i don't like to use picasa and instead use Kodak Gallery - http://www.kodakgallery.com/Welcome.jsp

3) Product: Urchin
Use: Web analytics (like web trends, google analytics)
Company: Urchin Software Corporation - http://www.urchin.com/
Current: http://www.google.com/analytics/
Google analytics has a great new look now and is very helpful for a person managing a blog or a website to know about the visitor trends.

4) Product: Feed Burner
Use: Collect statistics about RSS & Atom Feeds in a blog or site.
Company: Feed burner - http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/home
Current: Not yet merged
Right now analytics does not provide any extra service to track rss feeds but it would be great if feed burner is linked inside google analytics.

5) Product: Writely
Use: Create word documents on the fly on the internet.
Company: Upstartle - http://www.writely.com/BasePage.aspx
Current: Google Docs & Spreadsheets - http://docs.google.com/

6) Product: Jot Spot
Use: To create pages on the fly and update content (WIKI)
Company: http://www.jot.com/
Current: Yet to come (it has been a long time since it was acquired)

7) Product: You Tube
Use: To stream & see videos online (like google videos)
Company: http://www.youtube.com/
Current: http://www.youtube.com/
Here though google has competing product google videos it still purchases you tube and continues to maintain both.

8) Product: Tonic Systems - http://www.tonicsystems.com/
Use: Presentation software on the web
Google is yet to merge it into its suite of products but recently last 2 weeks ago it bought another online presentation making software Zenter - http://www.zenter.com/

So google goes on and on and on with its list of acquisitions each time scaring microsoft who watches silently :)

Here is my wishlist for which other companies, google can acquire and bring in to its suite:

1) Del.ici.ous - a great bookmarking tool.
2) Skype - too late taken by ebay now but skype provides conference facility which google talk lacks.
3) Linked In - a useful job networking site
4) Go To Meeting - Microsoft has live meeting why not google acquire go to meeting. Note: Vista comes with inbuilt netmeeting software thus making WebEx & GotoMeeting to run out of business.

We never know soon we may hear google coming up with such competing products.

What happens if you put Bill Gates & Steve Jobs in a conference !!!!

I actually missed seeing this conference (due to my memorial day weekend plans) and was happy to find the entire conference and its transcript and its video on wall street journal.



Here is the entire video of the chat,


The video starts with a video from the past (bill gates is so young) and then has several parts of the new D5 conference.
Part 1 of 7



Part 2 of 7


Part 3 of 7



Part 4 of 7



Part 5 of 7



Part 6 of 7



Part 7 of 7



Following is a transcript of the interview Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg conducted with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Apple CEO Steve Jobs at the D5 conference on May 30, 2007,
The transcript of this entire show is provided on,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118063909956120356.html