Arth'aath

Last year I discontinued Netflix for various reasons nothing to do with the service itself. When the covid-19 lockdown started, the thought of renewal crossed my mind. Though one day while ordering on Amazon prime, I realized about Prime video. This is how the Prime Video started for me. TL;DR : Bundled with Amazon prime, It is a damn good video service. With Amazon prime becoming an absolute must now (and in future) due to the current covid-19 situation, Prime video would get viewers mind-share automatically. Personally after 5 months of “binging” it, I probably need one more video subscription soon! What could be better - just some examples: User interface - it is good enough though not the best The “online marketplace” type search does not work for video. Lot of screen space is wasted as white space, relevant information is often missing and there are not enough results on one page.  You can see a title repeating itself across multiple categories, which is fair but the extent of...

Data data everywhere.. The title of this post is adopted from lines of the poem “ The Rime of the Ancient Mariner . The poem is about a sailor on a becalmed ship in the sea. His dilemma: he is surrounded by salt water that he cannot drink to quench his thirst. I feel pretty much the same about the flood of personal data that we have in today's digital world. This is not about privacy. The digitization of human life has made it easy to collect personal data, and a lot of it.  We have apps which collect fitness data. Some collect our meals data and few collect health records. Apps can now connect to our bank account and provide automated spending reports, others can manage investments or some other taxation. Even an electric toothbrush is fairly digitized. It can sync brushing data, using bluetooth with a mobile app.  A great deal of effort is being carried out to make the data in these apps actionable. For example, a fitness app can suggest work-outs, remind us to walk to reach...

India is growing by leaps & bounds, not only in terms of economy, but cultural & politically as well. There is an urge of the nation (at least the government) to grow beyond the 7-8% GDP growth and to be a double digit growth economy. The telecom industry can contribute to this dream, by making internet of its avatar “broadband” more ubiquitous. India is a known laggard in internet & broadband services. Broadband services are not only necessary for the information age, but also it adds to the GDP growth (10% increase in broadband penetration leads to 1.2% of GDP growth), which is the increase needed to realize the double digit growth dream. Sadly, government has been indirectly responsible for the delay of broadband in India for long. First, it gave India a state monopoly which was never helped in proliferation of telecom services in India, even while sitting on the largest wired network in the country. Then, years of delay in 3G spectrum auction and finally a fiercely comp...