Why humans raced ahead! - WSJ Editor's Pick

This is a very very interesting article from WSJ. It is an Editor's Pick article.

Evolution and Creativity

The article argues that collective intelligence or innovation of the species helped the human beings race ahead of the rest of the species. This is similar to the argument of wisdom of crowds in capital markets.

Read it!

Telecom News / Views - 22-May

Bidding Strategies - Analysis by Business Standard

FCC Report on wireless and competition

Lightreading BWA Spectrum Bidding

Telecom / ICT News / Interesting Articles

Indian 3G Auction Details: http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=192180&

India Telecom Story : Post on WSJ

HBR's 2 articles on Ethics

Something different - Theft worth Euro 500Mn!

Rise of e-Governance

So New York Times reports close to 80% users of net accessed at least 1 Government Service.

This is interesting because it shows the trends of internet users is moving towards using it to more effective uses. It also means that Governments worldwide are now getting closer to citizens through internet.

For  nations like India, eGov services are fast rising.

The worry is that a majority of Indian population is still not having internet literacy or internet access. That is one that may get partially taken care of by mobile broadband. Yet, my opinion is that landline broadband is the way that most of the nation will be covered.

IPL vs. T20 World Cup

Major differences between IPL and the T20 World Cup...

1. World knows all officials of IPL (The famous LM & Co.). No one knows who runs T20 WC.

2. TRP IPL > TRP T20 WC

3. TRP IPL related off-field news >>>> TRP T20 WC related news

4. TRP of Deepika Padukone in IPL >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Nothing to compare! (Divide by zero error if fed in computer)

5. IPL lasts for one whole year or is it 2? T20 WC completes in a week. (Or is it relativity?)

6. IPL has fields as large as tennis courts. T20 WC has grounds that are as large as a the Pacific Ocean (At least that is what Indian Players like Ravindra JAdeja feel!).

Mobile Mania and Music Quality - Net Gain!

The New York Times is running an article that discusses how the spread of mobiles as music devices has brought down the quality of the music being reproduced. What the article misses is the service that these devices are doing to artists across the world. 

Consider the dynamics of the previous era of music:

1. Gramophone Disc and Player

2. Audio Cassette and Player - Smallest Size - walkman

3. Compact Disc and Player - Smallest Size does not fit in a pocket.

All the 3 above are oversized, they have limited song carrying capacity but each had reached good sound reproduction quality. Now, consider the mobile phone that fits in your pocket and can carry theoretically hundreds of songs in a small chip. 

Mobile phone is a device that is almost omnipresent. So the number of music fans who can access music has increased manifold. Earlier it was restricted and mobile phone has brought about this change.

It is like that classical question of recent times - who sold most cameras in India? Not a camera manufacturer but a mobile phone manufacturer.

So yes, I am sad for the loss of quality but am happy for the music lovers and for the artists. Especially the artists, who otherwise had a much smaller audience. 

From Do-Not-Call to Do-Call

Moving from Do-Not-Call to Do-Call will suddenly create tectonic shift in this important market.

What it does is it empowers the phone users to prevent the marketing companies from calling them. Interestingly, the do-not-call was supposed to help the mobile users but it has been read that it is not as effective as it was hoped to be.

Would be interesting to learn if the do-call registry model has been used in any country other than India.

455 mobile connections per minute!

Interesting statistic from lightreading here : 455 new mobile connections a minute!

NYTimes blogs : Agriculture 2.0