TED is a confluence of ideas that is unparalleled in my opinion, in its breadth of topics, its strength of discussion, and the intellectual power of its participants. And most of all, in its purpose. Of spreading ideas that are worth spreading.

TED is a yearly congregation of many fantastic minds who discuss and showcase anything that inspires; may it be origami or climate change or quantum physics. Definitely worth a visit.

Here I give you one of the many speakers: Malcolm Gladwell of Blink and Tipping Point fame talks about an important turning point in consumer understanding in the food industry. From the TED website:

In this witty monologue, Malcolm Gladwell follows the career of a food industry consultant who uncovered a key secret to what eaters like. Running huge focus groups to find customers’ truest tastes, Gladwell’s hero draws a radical conclusion, an epiphany that has defined food marketing ever since. Note: The theme of the 2004 conference was “The Pursuit of Happiness” — hence the talk’s quirky presence.

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Put together Firefox and Facebook. And Twitter, Flickr and a few other social networking websites. And a few media sharing applications while you are at it. You now have Flock, the social web browser.

Still a long way to go, in terms of customisablity and features. But a fantastic concept, nevertheless. I am typing this post in its ‘Blog this’ feature. Lets see how it turns out :)

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Today a friend’s friend Y was telling us about her 5 year old nephew. Apparently this loveable kid was being remonstrated at home, and guess for what. He bought the same X-box game twice on eBay. (He just won the bids, he didn’t pay for them, Y tells me amusedly.)

Now lets wait here for a frickin’ minute. This is so wrong on many counts. What’s a 5 year old doing on eBay? Wait a frickin’ minute more. How the hell does he even know what eBay is, let alone how to BUY stuff on the site?

I didn’t know what a PC was until I was 10. The internet didn’t exist. I walked to a neighbour’s home to make phone-calls. I first used a mobile phone when I was in college. I was doing a research paper on Google in my Engineering college, when it was just registered as a company, and people were just discovering search engines. Wikipedia and Web 2.0 is still WOW.

And there’s this new bunch of kids, for whom Google, Wiki, mobiles, broadband, wireless, eBay, cash cards, Pentiums are a given. Like TV was for me. Like radio was for my parents.

Goddamit. I’m already feeling old. And I’m just frickin’ 25.

(1 votes, average: 3 out of 5)

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Music lovers all over the world, lend me your ear. For just this post, I mean. I had a tough time locating good freeware for the pod, and now that I have a set of good open source software/ freeware, I share with you, thus reducing some of your googling time.

Tux on the Pod

ipodlinux. Linux for the iPod. Already completely ported for the first 4 generations of pods, expected soon for 5.5, Classic, iTouch et al.

Features: Linux ported to the pod, File explorer (Podzilla), Themes, Applications, Games, Emulators, and yes of course, Media Player for your music and videos. Online support.

Saywha?: Make your older Nano models play videos. Too bored? try a game of Chess or lets say, Doom on the pod. Or maybe use the Metronome for your guitar practice. It’s open source, so a thousand applications continuously being developed.

Juke it up

Rockbox. The open source jukebox for the ipod. Available for 1st through 5.5th generation iPod, iPod Mini and 1st generation iPod Nano (not the Shuffle, 2nd/3rd gen Nano, Classic or Touch), and a variety of non-Apple music players as well.

Features: An awesome media player (includes gain level, next track info, incredibly loud output, detailed equalizer), access songs stored through iTunes in the pod database, Themes, Applications, Games. Copy-paste music into the pod (without iTunes) and play music from directory directly. Again, open-source, hence a never-ending resource of applications being developed.

Saywha?: No more conversion of your mp3s. Copy and play. Quite an intuitive interface and the sound quality, according to me, easily gives the iPod OS a run for its money. And add to that many other apps and games. I’m currently using it, and am thoroughly impressed.

Goodbye iTunes

Yamipod / Floola. Freeware replacements for iTunes (which is also freeware, I know). Run a lot faster. Look the same, behave the same, (I’m inclined to believe Yamipod and Floola are different brands or versions of the same product. Dunno for sure) and make updating, syncing and loading the pod a breeze.

Features: Copy music to and from the ipod. Update artwork, lyrics and pretty much do everything one would do with iTunes on a day-to-day basis.

Saywha?: No installation required. Standalone software. Very light freeware that does what it says. Easy extraction of music from the pod.

Will keep you updated as I discover more such wonderful programs.

(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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Chanced upon this interesting video. Thought, provoking, yes. Inspiring, no. But the statistics are some that need no reassuring from our generation. The change is already underway, and will be the definition of what the next generation will look like. Interconnected, collaborative, interdependent, but still fiercely individualistic.

Micheal Wesch & Kansas State University.

(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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What’s common between the QWERTY Keyboard, Orkut & Windows?

They all zark the theory of natural selection right up its own behind. They are examples of mediocre innovations prevailing and becoming market leaders in the face of better, kickass competition.

It is public knowledge that the QWERTY keyboard is one of the worst designs that one could make for the English Alphabet (The QWERTY layout was designed so that successive keystrokes would alternate between sides of the keyboard so as to avoid jams on the typewriters. Or so says Wikipedia). Even as I am typing this, my fingers are being unnecessarily pressurized and my tendons worn out one keystroke at a time, when there are more scientific, more efficient ways of placing the keys on the board. The most frequently used ‘e’ and ‘a’ and all other letters are not optimized to reduce chances of the eventual carpal tunnel. But still none of us use the better, healthier DVORAK keyset.

Friendster, Hi5 and Facebook. Many more features, easier interfaces, many more user created applications, much more technologically advanced than Orkut. They don’t even screw up often, no ‘bad server, no doughnut’ cow-crap. But still, every teenager and every gen-x leftover worth his cool avatar is flocking has already spent uncountable hours on his Orkut scraps, writing testimonials and checking out profiles of strangers.

And don’t even get me started about Windows. Known in the 90s for its Blue Screen of Death, I must say it has come a long way with NT and XP as an operating system, but yet, it’s nowhere even close to Open source competitors. Redhat, Fedora, Ubuntu, and hajjar other options. No security holes ever, no virus attacks, no SP2 updates, no exposed vulnerabilities, no trojans, no worms, (or atleast, lesser trojans and worms) and best of all, many of them don’t cost a frickin’ penny. But yet, I look at the market share of Windows, and I want to wake Darwin from his grave, whack him on his head, and ask him if he had any clue as to what he was talking about.

The common thread that runs across these examples is: Adoptability. Sometimes it is caused by the lack of options or the first mover advantage (Qwerty). Sometimes it is because of ease of use and simplicity (Windows). Other times it is the peer group and portability (Orkut).

Whatever the reason is, if it makes users adopt an innovation, and stick to it, we have a winner! But how does one use this quirk of markets to one’s advantage? Combine all of them and make them your strategy.

Move first, make it usable, influence the peer group, leave it to the community. And watch any innovation spread like wildfire.

And, if you have an innovation that is actually one of the best in the market, combine these strategies and you can kick anyone’s butt. Including entrenched behemoths. (Firefox vs IE, Wordpress vs Blogspot).

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