thinking simple

Democracy and Technology

2011-07-31T10:32:00.000-07:00

In the earlier days of American Democracy, each public representative represented tens of thousands of people. He could find the opinion of the people on any topic by holding a few town hall meetings.

As populations grew, it became difficult for them to know the opinion of people on specific topics.

Now, technology and biometry has made available the tools where representatives can get an opinion and get a vote from their constituents using internet or text messages, before casting their own vote. They still might make their own decisions but can get a feeling of what the constituents feel about a topic.

I suspect many internet based companies to come up with such tools.

replacement of QWERTY keyboard

2011-07-01T21:02:00.000-07:00

The original QWERTY keyboard was designed for mechanical printers. It was designed to keep the vowels away from your index fingers and closer to your pinky fingers, so you are forced to type slowly, thus avoiding any mechanical jams from overlap of typebars.

With Electronic keyboards of personal computers, alternate more ergonomic keyboard layouts can be made popular with software to switch between the 2 keyboard layouts.

These would be more efficient and might help in alleviating carpel-tunnnel type syndromes.

Wet Umbrella Wrapper

2011-06-05T17:10:00.000-07:00

On one of the rainy days in New York, I saw a beautiful new product at the entrance of a company - it is a "Wet Umbrella Wrapper":

from Hibernate to Normalized or OLAP database structure

2011-06-05T08:50:00.000-07:00

In the IT world, for a long time, data was organized in a normalized form - for easier access and update operations. Later, for Business intelligence projects, the data was de-normalized (for OLAP) for faster reading and data mining purposes.

Java Programmers had to rely on the experience of database experts for database designing.

However, Hibernate software changed this scenario as data could be stored and self-managed by a middle tier between the Java-engine tier and database tier.
Hibernate organizes data in an object-oriented-structure. With Hibernate, a java programmer does not need to take the help of database experts for designing data in the database.

This type of Object-Oriented-structured data is difficult for traditional database designers to understand, as the data is neither normalized nor de-normalized.

It has created a need for a a tool which can convert Hibernate based data to either normalized or de-normalized data to be used with traditional business intelligence tools.

Alternatively, new business intelligence tools are needed which can understand this Object-Oriented-structure data.

Fresh Juice Vending Machines

2011-06-04T20:03:00.000-07:00

The weather in NY Metro area last week was hot - above 90 F on many days.

While traveling around the metro area by public transportation - there is limited choice for soft drinks - you can get packaged soft drinks, water and juices from vending machines, but if you want fresh juice it is generally not available.

A few specialty stores do offer fresh juice, but it is very expensive due to the labor costs.

All the technology to make fresh juice making vending machines is available, and I do see some online ads about it in other countries - but is yet to be commercialized in US.

Cinemas with Beds

2011-04-07T21:08:00.000-07:00

The first time I saw a cinema theater with beds, pillows, comforters and side tables was in a smaller city in India, many years back. Here, waiters could bring you food and soft drinks on your side table. The beds could be adjusted to suit your comfort while watching the film. The ticket for this homelike-comfort was 5 times the regular price.

Also, very recently saw an ad by a cinema theater in US. It has dinner tables and they can serve you food and drinks while you watch the movie.

Perhaps, altering the level of comfort in any service can be utilized to charge higher pricing.

Suburbs of America

2010-09-25T17:21:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, I went to a suburb in New Jersey where a friend lives.

This is a small town in the middle of no-where, and it takes almost 2 hour each way for my friend to commute to New York city for work.

The town has no public transportation and you need to drive for every single thing. Children cannot go too far from homes as there are hardly any footpaths/roads for pedestrians.

It is a 'Good School district town' and almost every body in the town goes to live in the town during the school years of his/her children and leaves once children go to college.

Here, children from the neighborhoods, go to same school, come back from school and play together. They do their school projects together in the afternoons/early evenings and plan for sports during weekends together. Children have many after-school activities and they do it in groups with support of at-home moms.

Probably, this is more like an extended Hostel where parents are allowed to live with their children.

Winter Goggles

2010-03-06T17:19:00.000-08:00

Some days in Winter, the temperature goes below 20 degrees F and cold wind is blowing fiercely. You want to stay inside, but still are forced to walk, specially in a city like New York.

Most people wear 4 layers of upper body clothing, 2-3 layers of lower body clothing and may be two layers on their head. Some people even resort to wearing monkey caps to cover their face.

But what about the eyes ? Cold dry air touches the eyes and gives teary and red eyes to many people.

A normal pair of goggles has too much gap on the sides and does not protect the eyes enough.

A pair of Swimming goggles could have been a solution except for the fact that it has to be tied on the back of your head, is too tight on the eyes and looks odd.

Another solution could have been a set of ski-goggles as it has a foam rim to protect the sides, but it has also to be tied on the back and looks too big to look normal in a city.

A third option I identified as suitable and bought are the extra-sized UV-protection goggles made to cover and wear over spectacles. These are only slightly bigger than spectacles and cover the sides.

These could have been perfect, if only the glasses were non colored/clear and the rims had a thin foam cover, like the ski-goggles to cover the cold air from the sides.

This Radiator

2009-12-13T08:05:00.000-08:00

Yesterday night, I woke up to change the temperature control setting in the device situated in the living room.

I noticed that if I set the temperature in the living room to 60˚ F, my bed room temperature becomes 64˚ F, but when I set the living room temperature to 62˚ F, the temperature in the bed room goes up to more than 70˚ F, which is uncomfortable. Ideally, I like the temperature to be 68˚ F.

This is because the radiator's size in the living room is the same as the radiator's size in the bedroom, while the size of the living room is more than two times the size of the bedrooms.

While 62˚ F is not warm enough for the living room, the temperature in the bed room becomes uncomfortably hot.

During the day, if the living room temperature is set to 68˚ F, the bed room temperature becomes unbearably hot and we either sometimes shut down the valve to the radiator, or open the windows slightly.

Most American homes are heated with indirect heating thru radiators. Hot water or steam comes to the radiators from the water boiler, usually located in the basement. These homes are single heating zones controlled by a single thermostat/temperature control device, mostly located in the living room.

The raditor sizes in the home can be changed to keep the temperatures in all rooms more or less the same. However, that would still mean loosing energy costs to keep the living room warm enough in the night , when it is not being used.

Probably, there is a big market to replace the existing heating systems with systems that can save energy costs by keeping the rooms not being used at slightly lower temperatures.

Gurgaon

2009-08-28T02:15:00.001-07:00

A seemingly ultra-modern city has come up on the outskirts of new delhi, called gurgaon.

It is full of skyscrapers ( the attached picture was taken on the evening of 27th July 2009) and parts of it look like downtown manhatten.

It has a population of a quarter million people, and many more come from New Delhi to work here.

Though the city shows the zeal of private Industries in India, it is a good example of the result of lack of regulation and government support.

A city this large and seemingly modern does not yet have municipal water or drainage/sewerage. Everybody in the town is using ground water for consumption (along with Reverse Osmosis machines for cleaning it) and septic tanks are used for sewerage.

There have been cases of polluting factories putting used water back into the ground.

Concoction of medicines

2009-08-25T02:40:00.000-07:00

This comes due to a personal tragedy recently.

Though medicines are exhaustively tested for all side effects, before these are allowed by government authorities (like FDA), I do not think they are tested thoroughly for side effects when taken in combination with other medicines.

Further, how much and how many medicines should be given together should be based on the health and medical condition of a patient.

In the absence of either the ‘experience’ or readily accessible data, patients are many times given too many medicines at the same time.

What could be improved in this bottle ?

2009-05-18T20:45:00.000-07:00

Commodity products like bottled water have fierce competition. Besides taste, quality and nutrients, packaging plays an important role in the brand positioning of such products.

The 1 liter plastic bottle for water has been there for many years, along with bigger and smaller versions.

However, these bottle designs miss a few things:

For the 1 liter version, either you have to drink the full bottle during a short time or the water becomes stale/warm after opening it, so you do not feel like drinking it later, specially the next day onwards.

You can buy the smaller versions of this bottle and carry them in your car easily. However, if you are traveling by public transportation, you have to manage carrying many of these, which feels cumbersome and is not sleak.

If you have a 1 or a 2 liter bottle while you are traveling with friends/family, it is difficult to share the water unless you have glasses.

One more issue is that you are forced to gulp the water from the bottle, instead of sipping it , which you could do if the bottle had a built in straw.

An alternate design for this bottle could be a small (half pint sized or smaller) bottle, with a modified base which allows another similar sized bottle to be connected to it. This could be achieved by putting grooves/threading on top of the plastic cap to screw/connect the bottle to the bottom of this modified bottle base. Connecting 3 to 4 of these together would make it easy and sleak to carry. It would keep each unit separate from the remaining ones, water could be shared with friends easily, and would keep the water fresh(since all bottles do not have to be opened).

Another degree of improvement can be achieved by changing the design so that the water can be kept cool for a long time. Will leave that for another day..

DVDs: a Jacket would do it

2009-01-12T03:57:00.000-08:00

I have been throwing away my old movie DVDs recently. Not because I do not like these old movies, but because these old DVDs collect dust and marks and start affecting the lens of the DVD player.

However hard one tries, the DVDs would go bad at the slightest level of mishandling or would start impacting the DVD player.

The video cassettes /tapes for VCRs had a nice plastic cover where the tape would be hidden from all pollution and would be uncovered only after the tape is inserted in the VCR.

However, the DVDs are open and ready to attract dust and scratches at the first opportunity.

I wish some company recognizes this and starts creating DVDs with plastic covers, along with DVD players, so that the DVD gets exposed only after being inserted in the player.

Ideally, if one can buy a DVD of today and insert it in the jacket to be used with this new DVD player, this could become popular.

Ditto would work for the camcorders with DVDs.

Alternately, once the price of read-only Pen-drives go down, these could be used for selling media.

In today's scenario, a machine with hundreds of usb-drive slots where customers insert thier pen-drive and download media for a charge could be of some use.

electronic solutions for corporate governance

2008-12-19T06:45:00.000-08:00

A recent news in India where a leading IT company announced its plans of acquiring a money-losing real estate company owned by the promoter's family created waves of questions about corporate governance in India.

It is known that promoters/managers have been taking the rest of the shareholders for a ride during board decisions, most of the times by using the 'independent' board members.

Numerous times, the managers have been either not disclosing the full agenda before the board meeting, or manipulating the minutes of the board meeting as per their own requirements.

An electronic solution where all shareholders can access and vote for a board agenda before the board meeting in a secure way could be helpful to organizations.

A weighted average of shareholders' opinion once accessible to the board would put an onus on the board members to take more responsible decisions.

Need for a drowsiness causing gas

2008-11-30T01:34:00.000-08:00

A family friend works for the special cell of Police in India, involved in fighting with terrorists and underworld.

I talked to him about the Taj Hotel incident and asked him if they could have used some gas to make all people inside the hotel unconscious, thus making it much faster to catch the terrorists and rescue the hostages.

He conveyed that the police does not use any such gases; though there are chemical gases like Chloroform, Carbon monoxide, Methane which can make people unconscious, these gases can kill people with their overdose.

A gas which would instantly knock-down people by making them drowsy/unconscious, in a medically safe manner could be useful in such operations.

‘Free Put options’ - catalysts to Mortgage Mess

2008-09-23T09:10:00.000-07:00

Despite constant efforts for the last one year, the FED is now forced to offer a $ 700 B plan to purchase the 'toxic-debt', a term for under-performing loans mostly mortgages in different forms. Also, the size of the prime mortgages defaulting now is higher than the sub-prime mortgages.

Analyzing the problem with a bottom-up approach, the underlying cause of the problem is what I call borrower’s 'free put option'. A homebuyer in America gets a ‘free put option’ when he takes a mortgage. He can walk away from the property leaving it to the bank, as the collateral is the property itself and nothing else. Most states will not allow the banks to go after the home buyer's other assets or future income.

Further, banks now are offering short-sale opportunities where even the credit-histories of home owners are not affected.

In the last decline of real estate market, in the early 90s, borrowers displayed patience thru the downturn and did not use these options, probably because their down-payment was higher at that time.

If the decline in home prices continues, more homeowners – even those who can afford to make payments - would like to use the option, thereby increasing the size of the 'toxic-debt', creating a vicious cycle.

Key to a successful M-Commerce transaction

2008-09-11T08:52:00.000-07:00

Besides the ability to carry your mobile phone across the countries like Visa, the process for an m-commerce transaction needs to be much easier than what it is currently.

Currently, you have to send a text message to a particular shortcode. For eg you send a text message/SMS with details of the merchant code and $ amount.

Thereafter a few more steps are required to confirm the transaction.

However, the process should be much easier for eg pointing your phone's camera (used as a reader) to the BarCode chart of the merchant, and pressing an authorization code and amount on the phone.

Or it could use the bluetooth capabilities of the phone to identify the merchant's bluetooth equipment connected to a wired network, and paying directly - rather than thru the text messages/SMS.

Need for a single phone device

2008-09-07T03:26:00.000-07:00

I still need the following phones at my home: a fixed internet phone from zingotel, a usb-drive based internet phone from magicjack which I carry with me when I travel, my cellular phone and an intercom phone for the building security and other residents to contact us.

I have not mentioned our landline and my family’s other cellular phones here.

Altogether, these are a lot of phones and sometimes we have to run around between the different rooms to reach these as we hear a ring.

A cordless / blue-tooth protocol and equipment to receive calls from all these to one phone device would probably be helpful.

Credit Card companies vs Mobile Commerce

2008-09-02T11:34:00.000-07:00

Mobile Commerce has started picking up in Asia now, though still selectively. Here you are able to pay on vending machines and automated ticket counters by sending text messages from your cellphones. Your cellular phone companies act as the creditors / intermediaries between you and the vending companies.

This process of payment would become more popular once you are able to carry your mobile phone to other countries. As the telecom Industry worldwide consolidates, you would be able to use your mobile phones in different countries without changing a SIM card and seamlessly without needing your telecom company's help.

That would be a time when many more vendors would start accepting mobile commerce based payment systems.

Also, upcoming technologies like Vanu would make telecom transmission being done thru the software in your handsets. Eventually, it would lead to changing telecom companies a matter of downloading an exe file, rather than changing a SIM card or changing the handset (from GSM to CDMA network).

Greening of Home Cooling

2008-08-31T10:00:00.000-07:00

When you ask for water in a United States restaurant, they serve it chilled, usually with ice. However, in Asia and some places in Europe, they ask you if you want the water at room temperature or cold.

Similarly, the cooling temperature at which people set their air-conditioners also changes from Individual to Individual. I like to keep it at 29 C, whereas some of my friends like it at 20-24 C.

This conveys the requirements for convenience change from person to person.

In India, people have been using earthen pots, like the picture I am attaching here for cooling water. It works on the principle of water evaporating from the pores of the earthen pot utilizing latent heat and making the remaining water cooler. In fact the higher is the outside temperature, the lower is the temperature of water in the earthen pot. My family prefers to use drinking water from an earthen pot, rather than from the refrigerator, as the temperature is much cooler than the tap water but warmer than the refrigerator water.

The electricity which is used in traditional air-conditioning systems is 3 to 4 times higher than the electricity being used by desert coolers or evaporative coolers.

These evaporative air cooling systems work on the basis of air being forced thru wet evaporative pads. Due to the latent heat being utilized for partial evaporation of water in the pads, it makes the air passing thru the water-soaked pads very cool. However, the humidity of the water goes up in the process and therefore these systems can be used only in relatively dry places and weather.

Wiki explains the process well at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporative_cooling#Evaporative_cooling

In order to reduce the humidity, 2 stage air-cooling systems have been recommended. Frankly speaking though I have seen many single stage air-cooler systems, I am yet to come across any installation of a 2 stage air-cooler system. Here the air being forced thru water-soaked pads, is first pre-cooled thru a heat exchanger thus reducing the moisture carrying capacity of the air.

However, these 2 stage air-cooler systems still produce air with 50-70% humidity.

While thinking about how to make an efficient condensing process/reducing the moisture-holding capacity of air while still keeping the electricity requirements low, I came across the idea of a a marriage of the water-cooling earthen pot systems with the 2 stage air-cooling systems.

Essentially, the heat-exchanger system could utilize the cool water from a Large earthen material Tank in the first stage of the 2 stage air cooling systems.

I do not think that this design would be acceptable to all people in advanced western countries, but there are chances of it becoming popular to most cost conscious people of the developing world.

Registered email service

2008-08-05T10:59:00.000-07:00

Nearly 30 years after PCs started becoming popular, paper still rules the corporate world.
With ‘green’ becoming popular and fashionable, something could be done to reduce the paper work.

Some organizations/people print agreement documents, sign, then scan and send it as an email attachment. The receiver also goes thru the same process.

IT guidelines from some government organizations and world bank require biometric authentication for document approval from officers.

Due to people leaving the organizations and their email accounts getting deleted, an exchange of email between organizations is still not considered good enough, though it has been approved legally in most countries.

A cayman islands company is coming up with a registered email service but it did not appear to be a complete solution.

A third-party service providing a secure place to save the electronic documents exchanged between organizations would be useful in reducing the paperwork between them.

It could be done with the a simple protocol:

- All organizations agree to a common box for cc of emails eg: ccbox@us.xyz.com

- All internal employees’ emails and their managers’ emails are arranged in a hierarchy. An automated process forwards emails received on ccbox with a copy to a particular employee to that employee’s manager.

- Company A’s officer sends an email to Company B’s officer with a copy to the registered email service provider eg: regmail@regmail.com

- The regmail@regmail.com creates a unique mail # for the mail and forwards the mail with the unique mail # to the sender, receiver and the ccbox@companyA.com and ccbox@companyB.com.

- The automated process running on ccbox email id in each company forwards that email to the employee’s managers.

The registered mail service would make money firstly by putting banner ads at the bottom of these emails, and secondly by charging cash in case any company wants a copy of the email to be presented in a legal dispute from the registered email service company.

Finance work aggregation portal

2008-07-12T12:32:00.001-07:00

I met Khanan Grauer, promoter of financial portal http://fingad.com/ during a guest speaking event in New York in May.

Despite so many financial portals in the market, he is trying something unique - though still at an early stage.

His pitch:
"Benjamin Graham, the father of value investing took five years to identify the talent and offer a job to Warren Buffet - the next greatest value investor. Most investment professionals are hired on wall street in less than 5 hours.
Fingad will aggregate the work of people doing investment to find top talent in the marketplace"

Besides aggregation and collaboration among his users for financial strategies, he will be working on providing tools on his portal which the financial Industry insiders use for analysis.

With so many scandals and bubbles bursting on wall street, there should be some new demand to utilize this website.

Domino's of Indian Food

2008-07-12T11:52:00.000-07:00

I came across a unique and stylish Food Pack in Ahmedabad, India. It is delivered by a popular local restaurant chain. The Food Pack is in Domino's style Cardboard box. It is a pack of 2 Paratha breads, Rice, 3 Side dishes, One lentil, dessert (warm Gulab Jamun) and pickles packed nicely in a silver foil.

There was also a plastic spoon and some after-food 'mukhwas'.

The Food was very tasty and remained warm nearly 2 hours after it was packed.

The food was delivered within 30 minutes after I called the restaurant. The price was extremely reasonable (less than $2 per box).

This pack solved the major issue of finding quality Indian food, in right quantity, prepared and packed in a hygenic way, supported by a known brand, delivered to your doorstep in 30 minutes and another alternative to Pizza on Friday nights.

The concept looks very attractive - with right execution and management - it could be used for the making of a Domino's of Indian Cuisine.

PE or VC: What's in the name ?

2008-07-12T11:47:00.001-07:00

Before working at a venture capital company, I tried for years to figure out how to quickly determine if something is a venture capital investment or a private equity investment.

Some suggested that private equity is a super-umbrella term that is called venture capital when the investment is at an early stage. However, some companies have operated for 6-10 years before they come for venture funding.

Others conveyed that Venture capital is the original term which became popular after the 2nd world war and private equity is the term coined in the 80’s after famous people like Henry Kravis invested in bigger companies.

Determining by size of the company also gets tricky, as revenue of $2 million might be considered small in a developed country but large in a developing country.

The size of the investment doesn’t work either if you base it on country. An investment of $10 million in a US based company would be considered a venture investment, but might be considered a private equity investment in the developing world.

Some professionals strictly define private equity as an LBO activity. But in developing countries like India, there is almost no LBO activity due to banking regulations, and yet billions of dollars are invested in large corporations by private equity players as equity or convertible debt. This sure looks like private equity investment, but does not fall under the LBO or MBO category.

There is also a conventional wisdom that says if a company is not yet successful but the promoter is very confident, it is a venture capital investment. Vice-versa, If a company is successful but the promoter is not that confident and wants to cash out or exit with restructuring or LBO, it is for sure a private equity investment.

Though there may be some truth in that, it’s not quite scientific enough and does not cover all investment scenarios.

So here’s my own litmus test: if a company has no additional debt (bank-debt) carrying capacity due to its current financial state, an investment in it should be considered a venture capital investment. Otherwise, it should be considered a private equity investment. This should work for companies of all size, stage and in any country.

Is Reducing Principal a good principle ?

2008-07-10T12:03:00.000-07:00

Ben Bernanke announced on 5th of May in New York (http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/Bernanke20080505a.htm) that in order to reduce the number of foreclosures, he would encourage banks to reduce the principal amount from the under-performing mortgages or which are behind payments.

In a way this was already happening in two ways:

Hedge Funds are buying under-performing notes from banks at 40-50 cents on a dollar. They then negotiate with the homeowners and reduce their principal if they start making payments on time.

Also, Banks are allowing homeowners to do short-sale of their properties. In this case, a homeowner who is falling behind in his mortgage payments is allowed to sell his property at a very low price, with the bank agreeing not to go after the balance amount of the mortgage.

With the Fed also stepping in and with so many options to take advantage, it seems that homeowners who are falling behind their payments have not only a secure financial future, but a bright financial future.

The brightest among them are those who maxed out their home equity lines buying cars and other capital goods.