As promised here is the video of the talk (Must say I look terrible 
):
Social Media and Crime from SMC Mumbai on Vimeo.
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Is iPad a game changer for e-books?
Posted in Technology on January 30th, 2010
Apple’s iPad which released a few days ago promises to change the way we read digital books. Armed with a 9.7” touch screen display, it certainly looks capable of doing so. In comparison, the e-ink powered readers, like Kindle, look like black and white silent films in a color talkie era. But will the iPad really deliver on its promise?
Well there is no easy answer to that. I think it falls somewhere between yes and no.
While a number of commentators and analysts have been raving about how the color screen is what e-books have been waiting for, I think they are missing the point that most of the books published are predominantly black and white. So having a color screen isn’t really going make that much of a difference for standard fiction and non-fiction books. It’s true that you are going to get fabulous 3-D page turns, page backgrounds and all that other jazz, but given a choice between charging a device after reading say a book or two (10 hours) to practically charging the device once or twice a month, I think I would prefer e-ink any day, more so if I was going to use the device only as an e-reader. (In spite of the perceived shortcomings of e-ink devices that the press keep raving about) .
What’s going to really matter is readability – meaning how long can you read off the screen before your eyes tell you it’s time to do something else. Having read extensively off LCD monitors in the past, I know how painful it can be to read for long on normal screens. E-ink on the other hand remains a pleasure to read from, and so far I have had very low eye fatigue. So what remains to be seen is if the iPad’s LED display will match up to e-ink in terms of readability. Read the rest of this entry »
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The Rise of the 419′ers
Posted in Technology on January 30th, 2010I gave a short talk on the prevalence and propagation of 419 scams through social media at the Social Media Club meet yesterday. The talk also covered a few examples of about how the police were leveraging social media. The slides from the presentation are there below:
I know the slides don’t make much sense, so watch this space for the video for the event. I promise I’ll post that soon.
Also those of you that did make it to the event, please do feel free to comment and let me know what you liked or didn’t like about the talk.
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My take on the iPad
Posted in Technology on January 28th, 2010Apple displayed its “latest creation” at the much talked about “event” yesterday. The device dubbed iPad (wonder which genius came up with that name), is basically a very large iPhone, without the phone of course. The device sports a 9.7” display capable of displaying a resolution of 1024X768-pixels. It’s got most of the iPhone’s features like capacitive multitouch, accelerometer, compass, flash memory storage as well as a speaker and a microphone. It supports Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 3G (3G plans from Apple’s beloved AT&T). Under the hood, it runs on a new custom, 1 GHz processor (the A4) that Apple developed and has a rated battery life of 10 hours with a standby time of about a month. And the non 3G version starts at $500. So with that price point it seems like a sweet deal.
Here’s my take on the device – Appearances aren’t everything!! Read the rest of this entry »
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Movie Review: Supermen of Malegaon
Posted in Movies on January 12th, 2010This fortnight’s Time Out Mumbai highlighted a documentary titled “Supermen of Malegoan” which aired on NDTV 24X7 over the last weekend. It seemed interesting so I decided to give it a watch. And it sure turned out to be a gem of a documentary.
The documentary is set in Malegaon which is a small town about 175 miles from Mumbai. The town is based around the power loom industry and the town cinema hall provides a much needed escape from the drudgery of everyday life to the people residing there. Nasir, a videographer who helps run the cinema decides to shoot his own movie in Malegaon. Having previously shot such masterpieces like “Malegaon ke Sholay”, he wants to go all Hollywood this time. He decides to remake Superman into “Malegaon Ka Superman”. From here on the film follows the mad cap antics of the film crew as they go about bringing their dreams on to the silver screen.
He ropes in Shafique, who works in one of the local looms to play his “Superman”. Nasir explains that his “Superman” will be different, and will suffer from a variety of disease like asthma from flying in the polluted skies. So he chooses Shafique, who looks like anything but Superman. And he chooses Akram to play the bald villain with a penchant for filth. (Excellent dialogue delivery by the way) As the movie progresses, you begin to see the joy that the simple act of making a film brings into their lives. They shoot with makeshift gear, green screens, a handy cam, a bicycle for a dolly and have many accidents on the way to completing the movie. And the local newspaper keeps referring to their production as “Spider-man”. At the end of it you are convinced that even that scrawny set of bones playing “Superman” can fly! Such is the magic of cinema!!
The film crew is uniformly funny, from their attempts at green screen magic (quite successful actually), to the leading man playing Superman to the mishaps on set. The movie is darkly comic at times, and brings about the aspirations of simple people beautifully to the screen. It also highlights some of the problems that small town India faces like lack of power, clean water and other facilities. But most of all, the movie’s sheer brilliance lies in the manner it brings the joy of movie making to the audience. Highly recommended stuff.
PS: The film has one kick-ass theme song :)
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Incentives and Auto-Rickshaws: Economics everywhere
Posted in Economics on January 11th, 2010I was reading this fascinating article on Visa, which showed how incentives along with competition can actually raise prices instead of lowering them. I was wondering about how incentives may work in everyday life, when I realized that I see one such example in action every day.
Of late, I have had to change the route that I take to get home from work in the evenings, because of heavy traffic and work on the Mumbai Metro. So I usually walk a short distance to a point where I can catch a Bus or Auto-Rickshaw to Jogeshwari station.
Now, there are two primary routes to the station. Route A is about 2 km long and the fare usually comes to Rs.16-20 on this route. Route B is about 1.8 Km long and the fare usually comes to about Rs12-15. See the Google Map below for an idea of how the routes run to Jogeshwari station (Route A in Red and Route B in Green).
Routes to Jogeshwari
Now you have two options to get to Jogeshwari station, besides the bus – hire an auto-rickshaw or share one. There are two perspectives in the transaction of hiring an auto-rickshaw. From your perspective you would like to get to your destination in the least possible time and running up the least possible fare. From the driver’s perspective, he’s in the business of maximizing his revenues, so he’d like to extract the largest possible fare from you for the distance. So, you will find that more often than not, the driver has a tendency to take you along Route A. In fact there are several instances where I’ve had to correct the driver and insist that he go along Route B.
On the other hand, when you share an auto-rickshaw, incentives and behavior change for both parties. Usually an auto-rickshaw seats three people, and generally you pay Rs.5 per head when sharing the auto-rickshaw. Now, as your costs are fixed, you are indifferent to which Route the driver takes as long as he gets you there quickly.
The driver however is in a bit of a fix. His revenue from the trip is Rs.15. If he takes Route A, then he doesn’t even break even on the trip (as compared to the usual fare). So his only hope of earning something is to take Route B. Hence, I’ve found that when you are sharing an auto-rickshaw, almost no driver will attempt to take route A and everyone takes Route B. In order to maximize his revenue, the driver will also try and fit in an extra two people into the vehicle taking his total revenue to about Rs.25 for the trip. But he will still prefer taking the shorter distance.
I think this small example goes a long way to show how behavior can change when incentives change. After all, people respond to incentives.
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Sherlock Holmes
Posted in Movies on January 9th, 2010
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes hasn’t seen many big budget movie adaptations in recent years, and when I heard that Guy Ritchie (of all people) was making a Sherlock Holmes movie, I was particularly intrigued. It came out in theaters here in India on 8th January, and I managed to catch a show yesterday. To put it in 140 characters: Conan Doyle’s Holmes it ain’t, but thank you Guy Ritchie for giving us a new action franchise 
The movie opens with Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr) and Dr. Watson (Jude Law) stopping a black magician called Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong). Blackwood is put behind bars and sentenced to death. Meanwhile, Holmes is in a bit of a rut, with no new cases and long time pal Watson getting ready to move out of 221B and into the marital home. Blackwood is executed and he shortly rises from the death and begins his reign of death and terror, leaving Holmes with one big mystery to solve. In the middle of this, enters Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams) who wants Holmes to track down a man for her mysterious employer. What follows is a roller coaster ride of pure action with Holmes displaying the customary use of “ze little grey cells”. Read the rest of this entry »
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Trust Agents – A review
Posted in Books on January 4th, 2010
I learned about this book from Amit Klein, and was curious to know what it was about. So I borrowed his copy about a week back, and I must say it has been an entertaining read. Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith explores the concept of trust on the Internet. They do a very good job of explaining how trust is created or earned in online social communities and how a brand can successfully leverage this trust in its favor. They go on to present a series of cases that illustrate how businesses can build relationships with online communities or even other people and utilize them to build better products.
Both Brogan and Smith are established bloggers. This shows in the light, almost conversational style that the book is written in. It makes reading the book a breeze and you almost never find the text becoming drab or boring.
While I don’t think the concept of “Trust Agents” is particularly new, with Malcolm Gladwell doing a good job explaining the power of trust agents or “Mavens” in his 2000 book Tipping Point, Chris and Julien do a fantastic job in explaining and fleshing out the concept in the context of the web.
I think anyone who wants to know more about how trust in the digital tribe functions and how it may impact their business, should give this book a read.
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Goodbye 2009 – What a year!!
Posted in Rants on December 31st, 2009Today is the last day of 2009, and looking back I can’t help but think about what a roller coaster of a year it has been. I can’t help but smile at some of the memories I have of the year, while others are bittersweet – evoking joy and sadness in equal measure. Here is a quick rundown of the year that was: Read the rest of this entry »
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Avatar Review
Posted in Movies on December 25th, 2009Every once in a while comes a movie that changes the way we perceive the entire business of movie making. Avatar is one such movie. At the surface it’s an overly simplistic tale of the evils of our ways and the consequences it could have, told with the subtlety of a jackhammer. But once you look beyond that, you see Avatar for what it really is – a bold look at what movie making could become in the near future.
Avatar follows Jake Sully, a paraplegic ex-Marine, who is flown in to Pandora – a distant moon of a gas giant – as a last minute replacement for his brother. Here he takes part in the Avatar project that links his mind with a bio-engineered eight foot humanoid alien, designed to resemble the Na’vi, the natives of the planet. The idea is to infiltrate the natives and learn more about them. As Jake integrates with the natives, he finds his loyalties are increasingly being tested and he wonders about whose side he really should be on.
Avatar’s story isn’t its strong point, with Cameron weaving in everything that’s “wrong” with this world, with the least possible subtlety. Maybe that was his intention, to make us sit up and take notice, but it doesn’t really work and the sermonizing detracts from an otherwise fine film. What he does succeed in doing is create an immersive world, populated with strange creatures, both deadly and fascinatingly beautiful. Brought to life in glorious 3-D, Pandora looks like no world you have ever seen on screen. It’s hauntingly beautiful, and is guaranteed to stay with you for a long while.
So if you haven’t seen it as yet, go and see it in 3-D (preferably in an Imax). I liked it so much that I’m headed out watch it again tomorrow.
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I'm Elroy Serrao, a technologist, photographer, and part time blogger from India.
I love to design web sites, program in php and rails in my free time and of course go trekking and clicking pictures in the great outdoors.
I'm from Mumbai, and am an alumnus of Mumbai University and NMIMS.