The Internet gets a heavy tail

(Click to enlarge)

The above plot shows the growth of the Internet in the World, again from UN data. There are 3 histograms (2004, 2001, 1998) of the number of countries (Y axis) vs. the size of the Internet population in the countries (X axis). I have left out the countries with less than 1m users because they are the vast majority in the data - partly due to low Internet adoption in backward areas and partly due to small populations.

The key points seen immediately

1. The number of Internet users is (surprise surprise) growing rapidly over the years.
2. USA leads every other country, but since the total US population is only about 300m (see my previous post), US Internet users' growth is saturating.
3. On the other hand, China is growing very quickly. I suppose by 2008 (present) the number of users there must have got close to the US number (if not ahead).

But lets look at a more holistic trend here. This is the "long fat tail" that shows up in the 2004 data - the bars concentrated on the left hand side have started spreading out to the right in the 2004 histogram. This means that the Internet is increasingly becoming multinational with a significant representation of people from many countries, bringing up these questions

1. Where is the Internet content suitable for people from different cultures and not just western cultures?
2. Are we doing enough to localize Internet applications for these large multicultural groups joining the Internet?

Finally, for those interested, here is a table showing the number of Internet users, as reported by the most recent data from UN Statistics (2004). I have ranked the countries based on the number of Internet users in the rightmost columns of the table. Again, if you look at the top 10 countries in this table, only 2 have a high number of English native speakers. In addition, 5 out of the top 10 countries are not "Northern hemisphere western countries".

Please use this data only after citing the UN source.

Country	#Internet users	Rank (2004)
United States	185000000	1
China	94000000	2
Japan	64160000	3
United Kingdom	37600000	4
Germany	35200000	5
India	35000000	6
Korea, Republic of	31580000	7
Italy	28870000	8
France	25000000	9
Brazil	22000000	10
Canada	20000000	11
Russian Federation	16000000	12
Indonesia	14508000	13
Spain	14332800	14
Mexico	14036500	15
Australia	13000000	16
Turkey	10220000	17
Netherlands	10000000	18
Malaysia	9879000	19
Poland	9000000	20
Thailand	6972000	21
Sweden	6800000	22
Argentina	6153600	23
Viet Nam	5870000	24
Iran (Islamic Republic of)	5500000	25
Czech Republic	5100000	26
Romania	4500000	27
Philippines	4400000	28
Chile	4300000	29
Belgium	4200000	30
Colombia	4050240	31
Austria	3900000	32
Egypt	3900000	33
Ukraine	3750000	34
South Africa	3566000	35
Morocco	3500000	36
Switzerland	3500000	37
China, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region	3479700	38
Finland	3286000	39
Peru	3220000	40
Israel	3200000	41
Portugal	2951000	42
Denmark	2725000	43
Hungary	2700000	44
Belarus	2461090	45
Singapore	2421780	46
Venezuela	2312680	47
Slovakia	2276060	48
New Zealand	2110000	49
Pakistan	2000000	50
Greece	1955000	51
Norway	1792000	52
Nigeria	1769660	53
Saudi Arabia	1586000	54
Serbia and Montenegro	1517020	55
Kenya	1500000	56
United Arab Emirates	1384840	57
Croatia	1303000	58
Bulgaria	1234000	59
Ireland	1198000	60
Sudan	1140000	61
Jamaica	1067000	62
Costa Rica	1000000	63
Lithuania	968000	64
Slovenia	950000	65
Uzbekistan	880000	66
Puerto Rico	862000	67
Tunisia	835000	68
Zimbabwe	820000	69
Latvia	810000	70
Dominican Republic	800000	71
Syrian Arab Republic	800000	72
Guatemala	756000	73
Uruguay	680000	74
Estonia	670000	75
Ecuador	624579	76
Jordan	600000	77
Kuwait	600000	78
Lebanon	600000	79
El Salvador	587475	80
Algeria	500000	81
Haiti	500000	82
Senegal	482000	83
Azerbaijan	408000	84
Republic of Moldova	406000	85
Kazakhstan	400000	86
Ghana	368000	87
Bolivia	350000	88
United Republic of Tanzania	333000	89
Malta	301000	90
Bangladesh	300000	91
Panama	300000	92
Cyprus	298000	93
Sri Lanka	280000	94
Luxembourg	270810	95
Kyrgyzstan	263000	96
Oman	245000	97
Cote d'Ivoire	240000	98
Zambia	231000	99
Iceland	225610	100
Bosnia and Herzegovina	225000	101
Honduras	222273	102
Togo	221000	103
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya	205000	104
Mongolia	200000	105
Reunion	200000	106
Uganda	200000	107
Mauritius	180000	108
Yemen	180000	109
Georgia	175600	110
Angola	172000	111
Papua New Guinea	170000	112
Cameroon	167000	113
Qatar	165000	114
Occupied Palestinian Territory	160000	115
Trinidad and Tobago	160000	116
The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia	159000	117
Bahrain	152721	118
Armenia	150000	119
Barbados	150000	120
China, Macao Special Administrative Region	150000	121
Cuba	150000	122
Paraguay	150000	123
Guyana	145000	124
Mozambique	138000	125
Nicaragua	125000	126
Nepal	120000	127
Ethiopia	113000	128
Martinique	107000	129
Benin	100000	130
Bahamas	93000	131
Madagascar	90000	132
Guadeloupe	79000	133
Guam	79000	134
Namibia	75000	135
New Caledonia	70000	136
Myanmar	63688	137
Fiji	61000	138
Botswana	60000	139
Brunei Darussalam	56000	140
Saint Lucia	55000	141
Burkina Faso	53200	142
Democratic Republic of the Congo	50000	143
Eritrea	50000	144
Mali	50000	145
Gambia	49000	146
Malawi	46140	147
Guinea	46000	148
French Polynesia	45000	149
Lesotho	43000	150
Cambodia	41000	151
Gabon	40000	152
Bermuda	39000	153
French Guiana	38000	154
Greenland	38000	155
Rwanda	38000	156
Congo	36000	157
Iraq	36000	158
Swaziland	36000	159
Turkmenistan	36000	160
Belize	35000	161
Chad	35000	162
Faeroe Islands	32000	163
Suriname	30000	164
United States Virgin Islands	30000	165
Guinea-Bissau	26000	166
Burundi	25000	167
Cape Verde	25000	168
Aruba	24000	169
Niger	24000	170
Liechtenstein	22000	171
Lao People's Democratic Republic	20900	172
Dominica	20500	173
Antigua and Barbuda	20000	174
Bhutan	20000	175
Sao Tome and Principe	20000	176
Seychelles	20000	177
Grenada	19000	178
Maldives	19000	179
San Marino	15000	180
Somalia	15000	181
Mauritania	14000	182
Micronesia, Federated States of	12000	183
Andorra	11000	184
Saint Kitts and Nevis	10000	185
Sierra Leone	10000	186
Central African Republic	9000	187
Djibouti	9000	188
Comoros	8000	189
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	8000	190
Vanuatu	7500	191
Gibraltar	6295	192
Samoa	6000	193
Equatorial Guinea	5000	194
Tajikistan	5000	195
Palau	4000	196
Solomon Islands	3000	197
Tonga	3000	198
Tuvalu	3000	199
Kiribati	2000	200
Marshall Islands	2000	201
Netherlands Antilles	2000	202
Cayman Islands	1300	203
Liberia	1000	204
Nauru	300	205
Korea, Democratic People's Republic of	0	206

Digital content guzzlers

I learnt of a superb data-resource posted recently by the UN on the Internet - from where you can get nicely formatted data about all sorts of statistics from different countries of the World. I wrote up a dirty Python script to parse out the estimated and projected population between 1950-2050 of 4 major chunks of the World: India, China, USA, and Europe. I have plotted these above.

It is obvious that the biggest markets by volume in this century will be in China and India. This does not say anything about margins off course. But we are are limiting this discussion to volume only.

Why? Because I want to get an idea about what sort of digital content is needed for the future. My assumption is that by 2020 or so, most media delivery technologies would have matured and moved out from the premium segments (video capable mobile phones, high speed broadband Internet, computers etc.) and into mass markets where the sheer volume pushes down the price of technology enough for everyone to afford. For example, this has happened recently in cellular voice and SMS services.

So, assuming every John Doe in China and India has a content-capable receiver (e.g. a mobile phone, or whatever they call them in 2020), where is the content?

CaN sOmEoNe PlEaSe TeLl Me WhErE tHe CoNtEnT iS?

I mean content for the masses of non-westernized people in China, India, and other parts of the World.

The people who invest in making/acquiring content for these mass markets right now would land a huge windfall in 15 years. Best medium term investment I can think of!

Mobile phone technology and impact (from WSJ)

There was a nice feature in last Tuesday's WSJ (Feb 12th) about the mobile phone industry and its impact on the World. I highly recommend people to read these articles and present a bulleted list of highlights from this material because it is quite interesting.

1. Apple and Google are using their software expertise to turn phones into small computers. This means that users may finally emerge from the limited and locked-down applications provided by the hand-set manufacturers and service providers.

2. Mobile phone advertising is a high growth segment, with evidence of higher click through rates (e.g. 2% as compared to the 0.4% on the Internet). Moreover advertisers can reach the young demographic on this medium. However, significant problems remain. One is that service-providers are not forthcoming in providing subscriber information owing to privacy concerns. Another is the sheer heterogenity of devices which makes it technologically difficult to deploy universal marketing schemes.

3. Mobile TV is still in its infancy and growing slower than previously projected. Part of the problem is that it is expensive to use 3G for video delivery. There is DVB-DMB sort of broadcast technology in the horizon, but significant legal hurdles remain.

4. "Mobile-phone as your wallet" - near-field wireless technology that lets you swish your mobile phone at the checkout counter to make payments - seems to be taking off. But again, there is the issue of standardization. Should be sorted out in the next couple of years or so.

5. SMS-based money transfer is catching on in developing countries to transfer cash. Apparently some banks are investing in pilot services to see if this technology is viable in other countries as well.

6. There are other efforts to harness mobile phones for delivering market information, agricultural information, etc. in developing countries. However, these are still on the pilot stage. The most important aspect is that the content collection for such applications is highly labor intensive. As I mentioned in a post last year, ICT technologies are going to be less useful to the poorer and non-westernized people because there is a paucity of content. This could also be a very important growth area for media companies.

Y-2010, Microsoft-Yahoo vs. Google?

A few days ago Microsoft made a unsolicited bid for Yahoo for about $44B at a 60% premium over the trading price of Yahoo. Yesterday the WSJ reports that Yahoo has rejected the offer. This rejection is partly due to resistance within Yahoo to merge with the "evil" Microsoft and partly because Yahoo's board knows the game of trying to elicit a better price from Microsoft.

Steve Ballmer is certainly not going to leave it at that. I remember his energy when he spoke to us interns back in the Summer of 04'. The guy was so passionate about work that he said he is thinking about work right from the time he wakes up and shaves and through every possible time of the day! Steve is certainly going after Yahoo the best he can.

So let us assume, for the sake of simplicity, that Google and MS-Yahoo are left as the two juggernauts of the online world in 2010. While the Internet industry is highly unpredictable in that there may be another (other?) dominant players, I think it is safe to assume that Google and MS-Yahoo could acquire any rising stars before they grow to threaten the duo-poly - like Google acquired You-tube last year. The story from 2010...

For Microsoft, the key to dominating the desktop software business over the past 20 years has been a standardized and affordable platform (MS-Windows) and widely accepted applications and document formats (MS-Office) that funnel users towards adopting Microsoft products. Can Microsoft (or Google) repeat this mantra on the Internet? I don't think so. On the Internet, the platforms (web browsers and their plug ins) and the document formats (HTML and its derivatives) are heterogeneous and in some sense open - you have a choice of web browsers, media players, etc. There is even a server side open source suite available that can run all web services seamlessly (e.g. L.A.M.P - Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Perl).

Lets think about that cliche about the Internet- "Content is king". In my opinion, this is mostly true. Thats why 70% of all Internet traffic is Peer-to-peer (illegal?) content being swapped among users, and thats why Google paid $1.4B for You-tube last year. I mean, Google did not buy You-tube for the technology - Google already had Google Video. But Google didn't have the vibrant You-tube community contributing content. Worth $1.4B back then...probably worth much more today.

So its about the content. Now lets see who pulls the strings in the content arena. Obviously, the content providers! And what is their primary objective? Monetizing their content offerings. Large content providers can set up their own content portals and may not depend on MS-Yahoo or Google. But if you think about the long tail content-providers (user-generated content), MS-Yahoo and Google provide them with the platform to deliver content, and monetize it through ad-revenue, to the large Internet audience. Thankfully, these small content providers have a choice-MS-Yahoo or Google.

Round 2010, MS-Yahoo vs. Google. S/he who can provide the more compelling content-syndication service, will knock out the other.

How to create value using the Internet

I learnt of a convenient photo-printing service offered by Media Markt, a German version of Best-Buy. I know there are plenty of these services around now. But lets take the Media Markt service as an example.

This service installs an ActiveX plug-in in your (IE) browser that lets the user browse and upload pictures to Media Markt servers, along with specifying options for print photo sizes, number of copies, etc. Given that a small (10 x 15) picture costs 9 Euro cents, and also given that these sort of photo-printing services are pretty popular in Berlin, lets try to do a simple analysis of how value is created, and what is the inflection point of value at which users are willing to actually spend any real money on the Internet.

First, lets look at it from a user's point of view. Consider the "do-it-yourself" cost of printing pictures (based partly on this post on Slate)

1. Color photo printer (e.g. Canon Pixma) = €100
2. Cost per print (paper, ink) = 20 Euro cents
   

Power User
Let us amortize this over 3 years of the typical lifespan of the printer for a power user, i.e., more than the casual photo printer. So lets say the user fills up his 1GB camera memory 12 times a year (printing 12 batches of pictures) , with each fill comprising 200 pictures.

Total pictures printed of 3 years = 3 * 12 * 200 = 7200
Total cost = CAPEX + OPEX = 100 + 0.20 * 7200 = 100 + 1440 = €1540.

Causal User
For the casual user, who may print 100 pictures in a year in 2 batches, we have:

Total pictures printed of 3 years = 3 * 100 = 300
Total cost = CAPEX + OPEX = 100 + 0.20 * 300 = 100 + 60 = €160.

The biggest conclusion for the power user is - find a way to cut the OPEX, fast!

Now, lets look at the option of getting the photos printed online. Before the calculation, lets first admit that it is not as convenient to print pictures online as it is at home because

1. Pictures take time and money to ship
2. ActiveX control (Can't they do it in Javascript :-) ), in your browser, learning curve of operating the service
   
3. PrIvAcy issues for all those racy pictures of what you did at the New Year's party

So for the power user we have
Total cost = 0.09*7200 + Postage ( 36 batches @ Euro 5 each) = 648 + 180 = €828.

And for the casual user
Total cost = 0.09*300 + Postage ( 6 batches @ Euro 5 each) = 27 + 30 = € 57.

The question the user needs to ask is, is the the cost saving of online photo printing (1540-828 = €712 and 160-57 = €103, over 3 years) worth the inconveniences I listed above?

In pricing online services, companies like Media Markt need to ask, is the cost benefit for the user large enough after factoring in the inconvenienceof "online" compared to the "do-it-yourself" approach?

Let me hazard a generalization here - entrepreneurs who want to know if their web-services business idea will be successful need to do the back-of-envelope calculation such as the example above.

Services: what works in India...

I recently visited Bangalore. I enlist below a list of experiences with services

1. Cellular service - As good as I could have expected - my T-Mobile-Deutschland happily connected to Airtel's network (largest in India) and I was good to go as soon as I landed. Great reception, all over. Of fcourse, I am in a city of 10M+ people, where any mobile operator would roll out the best network for all those phones.

2. Airport baggage service - Well, that is a sad story. There was about 1 small baggage belt for a loaded 747. Took an hour to get the baggage off the belt, even though there were at least 10 attendents trying to speed up the process.

3. Roads - Bumpier than Germany's, but usable.

4. Traffic - Well, in India, never count distances by kilometers. Count in time. Moreover, traffic is particularly bad during the rush hours.

5. Broadband - Its not bad, considering you can buy a 256kbps down-link "broadband" DSL connection for just 4 Euros/month.

6. TV - I tried Tata Sky, a satellite TV system. The most interesting thing is that they have a "prepaid" system with a tariff of about 25c per day. Plus there is VoD - the money just gets debited from the "pre-paid" account. I think that Satellite TV is the most suitable Digital TV technology for India where the DSL/Cable infrastructure is very poor.

7. Banking - There are 2 banking systems - the western one with the ATMs and Internet banking, and the traditional eastern system where you visit the bank to do anything with Money. I believe that the former is slowly replacing the latter. But with the spotty telecom infrastructure and low education levels, it is going to be a while before banking makes a complete switch, especially in rural India.

8. Service - I love it. There are human beings to help you with everything. A good restaurant will spoil you with multiple people waiting on you. A complaint about broadband was quickly escalated and the ISPs engineer personally called up when it was fixed - there are plenty of ISPs to choose from now.

IP is after all, Best Effort

There has been a rapid expansion of services over the Internet. Real-time services like stock-trading, for example, are highly quality and time sensitive. When I check stock prices in the Indian stock market in the early morning in Europe, the trading-session is well underway in India. The first inkling of a high volume day (rapid rise or fall of the market) comes from the speed of my online broker's webs-server! Because at the end of it, Internet technology is based on Statistical multiplexing of the data-packets and service requests. When the number of users is high, quality degrades - some on the server connection, some on the server processing!

So if it is best-effort, how come everyone is shifting all sorts of critical applications to the Internet? Worse, many of these services are becoming more resource hungry and QoS demanding - think of the canonical "Internet Medicine" application where your high resolution X-ray is seen by an expert halfway across the world, marked up with comments, and sent back. Or those VOIP applications which keep jacking up the voice quality because the bandwidth is available (I saw a VOIP promo which claimed CD quality audio). Or, ok, if I am driving down the Interstate and using my 3G handset to pull up a Google Map of the area. Oops too late, by the time the map loaded I missed the exit.

Are we betting to much on best effort networks???

Yes and No, it depends.

So one of the nicest things about the Internet nowadays is that you can buy the QoS you offer with your service. This means for example, paying Akamai a fortune and then some more to give you great CDNs that can limit the vagaries of best-effort delivery. Another great thing about the Internet is that it is robust - the key design criterion for its pre-cursor, the Arpanet, was that it re-route traffic automatically around problem areas (problem-areas scenarios included nuked cities in those cold-war days). Moreover, folks who design good Web services have a good idea of the underlying best-effort clause of the Internet...e.g. Blogger saves this post every few seconds as I type it in directly into their web-site.

But sometimes, things don't go as well and applications do hit the best-effort wall. In my opinion, this is mostly due to bad design rather than unsurmountable limitations of the Internet platform. For example, I recently tested a video-voip SIP telephony system where the designer sent the audio and video streams over RTP, separately and without synchronization, hoping that packet re-ordering and routing and buffering will "even out". Moreover, they didnt prioritze voice packets over video packets - bad idea, given how much delay and jitter sensitive our ears are. But on the other hand, Skype or Microsoft Live chat have implemented these services beautifully on the same best-effort Internet.


To be sure, There are some applications which cannot be left to the mercy best-effort .e.g. the 112 service (in Germany; 911 in the US).

So lets just say,

know your underlying network when you design services over it, and promise your customers things that can be delivered over the best-effort network, not a circuit switched network.

Mobile Internet - the fight to the end, the EdGe

Starting about a decade ago, when broadband came to the consumer, it was marketed as the technology that would increase the "web-surfing" speed from the analog modem connection speeds of 56 kbps to 100s, and later 1000s of kbps. This was the marketing mantra, and ISPs touted every additional kilo-bit they could offer. But that was pretty much it. The point is, there were not too many Internet applications that made money at the time (there was no Google ad-sense) and just about the only folks making money off the Internet were ISPs and Internet equipment makers. There was no other business model other than subscription!

But now with the Mobile Internet, things are a lot different this time around in 2007. Here is a couple of reasons for why mobile operators do not want to let go of what services are running over their 3G networks

1. Mobile operators have paid up a *lot* of money for buying spectrum and installing 2-3G hardware in the early part of the decade. 3G technology that implements high-speed mobile Internet takes up a lot of this spectrum to deliver high speed Internet. Subscription models are not enough to get reasonable returns on this investment, especially since customers may not value the offered mobility more than a few dollars a month, given most of them are city-dwelling, almost always connected folks.

2. On the other hand, operators have learnt (painfully) from the seeing nimble and innovative application service creators like Google and My Space that there is a whole lot of money to be made by offering services directly to users. They missed the fixed broadband opportunity but don't want to miss the mobile broadband train.

So mobile operators are going to fight tooth-and-nail to protect what they perceive as the "next" big technology platform. I do not doubt this perception - companies like Apple (iPhone), Nokia (Ovi), and Google (gPhone?) also think that mobile Internet is huge. Not in the subscription way, but in the services way.

Lets take the example of Nokia's Ovi platform. Nokia's strength is that they make the edge device - the handset. Therefore, Nokia (or Apple or Google) will be hoping to push all the functionality to the edge. Cut out the mobile operator (again!) like this -

server =====(bit-pipe of mobile operator)==== end-device/software

Looks a lot like those money-making fixed broadband application services like Google's ad-sense. This is the heart of the battle now and ahead...the fight to the end, the edge.

Lets wrap up with the questions for a mobile operator right now

• Do mobile operators know how to charm the end-customer like the Nokias, Apples or Googles of the World?
• Can they break out of their "bill-them-monthy" business models?
• Can they be as fast, as nimble, and as trendy?
• Can they change, adapt, reform, morph, rejuvenate as fast as their new nimble competition?
• How long before legislation or technology (e.g. WiMax) wrenches open their presently closed mobile IP networks?
  

Why DVB-H/DMB can easily kill 3GPP, and why it should not

I get the impression that most cellular service providers are pitching video-on-mobile as the next must-have application. After the tepid response to 2.5G web-on-mobile in general, this may be the next use case for the expensive spectrum cellular service providers licensed at the beginning of the century.

The idea is to use, say, 3G WCDMA networks to do the following
1. For the basic service, broadcast popular content to users. 3GPP-MBMS supports such broadcasting.
2. For the premium service, unicast VOD content to users. 3GPP-MBMS also supports such unicasting.

Can service operators win the mobile video game? I say no.
Why? Simply because there is formidable competition from terrestrial digital video broadcast technologies likeDVB-H/DMB. And right now it looks more likely that DVB-H/DMB are going to win.

DVB-H/DMB broadcasting has its roots in technologies like DVB-T, a digital TV broadcasting standard that heavily involved broadcasters. As I write this, mobile device manufacturers are already working directly with broadcasters to put the electronics of DVB-H/DMB into mobile devices, leaving service providers out of the equation. The benefit of DVB-H/DMB is that the bandwidth comes cheap, its like TV signals in the air. Service operators however, have paid a lot for the spectrum 3GPP-MBMS uses. Hence, 3GPP cannot be as attractively priced as DVB-H/DMB. In addition, DVB-H/DMB has a 2 year technology lead over 3GPP - I saw many Samsung Ultra's at the IFA last week touting built-in DVB-H and/or DMB decoders.

So then the question becomes, can 3GPP's main advantage compared to DVB-H/DMB - Unicast VOD - become the saviour of service providers?

I again say no. VOD on mobiles is a very long shot. When I am on the subway, I need to shut my mind and get entertained-something DVB-H/DMB does very well. I just like watching TV. I have my Apple iPod for VOD.

The second pitfall for 3GPP is content. Where is the content and who controls it? Somehow, in all the excitement about new delivery platforms, service providers often forget that the delivery platform is less important and content is more important. And in content, broadcasters (who support DVB-H/DMB) have way more experience and relationsips with the content providers. Hey, service providers were just selling voice for the past 100 years.

So is it all over for 3GPP? Raise the white flag and kill the video-over-cellular dream?

I again say no . Just raise the white flag and think.

There are plenty of things that can be done

1. Targeted video advertising, in full cooperation with the DVB-H/DMB folks: 3GPP gives us the ability to unicast, and that can be translated into targetting video ad overlays. Another major advantage that can be exploited is that 3GPP technology knows the recipient of te content unlike DVB-H/DMB and can therefore support targetted advertisements. The cellular service providers and DVB-H/DMB folks should chalk out technology to multiplex targetted advertisements streamed over the formers' network with the content streamed over the latters network.
2. Premium services, again in full cooperation with the DVB-H/DMB folks: I am thinking time shifting funcationality for DVB-H/DMB content. I missed the first 5 minutes of a TV soap because I was buying the subway ticket. Can 3GPP help me download that?

Talk people, talk.

Quality of Apples and Dells from One Big Factory in China

There is a fascinating article in this weekend's WSJ about "The Forbidden City of Terry Gou", a huge electronics factory in Shenzhen, China, where a half-a-million strong army of workers churn out Apple iPods, iPhones, Dell laptops, etc. The importance of this factory is emphasized through statements like "presently all iPhones are made here" and the quotes that western customers get addicted to such cheap and cost-effective manufacturing.

Amen to the entrepreneurial spirit of Mr. Terry Gou, whose Taiwanese company by the name Hon Hai runs the factory, along with many others in mainland China. The guy apparently drove around the US in the 80s and 90s to pitch his company's manufacturing capabilities. Now his company has operations in dozens of countries. Who says entrepreneurial spirit flourishes in the Silicon Valley or London only?

The article goes on to highlight some allegations of poor conditions for the workers; apparently there was a news scandal with some folks accusing Apple of using exploited labor to make their iPods at Mr. Gou's factory. I can hardly believe Apple's assessment that a majority of Apple-set standards were being complied with, but lets leave the politics and human rights aside for now.

What do you make of the following argument I put forth:

"The notion of an Apple product being of higher quality than a Dell product (or visa versa) is flawed. After all, they are all produced in the same factory"

Now there are many possibilities here which may blunt the above statement. For example,

1. Part of the quality of a product, say in years of successful operation, depend on product design.

2. The quality checking of an Apple product may be more stringent than a Dell product (or visa versa).


But still, there is no denying that a significant part of the quality in any manufactured product stems from how well trained the workforce is, and what sort of raw materials and machinery is used to make products. So I conclude that many products that are made in the same huge factories of China and sold all over the World have the same (or suffer from) quality issues.

Next time I choose between "Made in China" products, I am going to partially discount any claims of one product being of a better quality than the other.

Got the $199 EEPC, the $9.99 broadband; now where is the content?

I read about the ASUS EEPC today (http://www.hothardware.com/News/Asus_Eee_PC_Hands_On_Preview_/).
Here are the highlights that struck me as most interesting:
1. Full blown Linux distribution (Xandros) with Open Office installed
2. Weight of <900 gms
3. Expansion through USB
4. VGA output
5. WLAN/Ethernet connectivity
6. Rumors of putting 3G connectivity on the EEPC soon
7. $200
8. $200
9. $200
10. $200

Yes the pricing is very attractive, and it will be a high volume seller in developing countries (think volume, think China, Latin American, Africa, and South Asia). There are offcourse, lots of issues here. For example, localization is one issue. Then there is the issue of Internet connectivity itself.

But the most important issue is that of content. So far, the content on the Internet is limited to cater to people who have some western-style education. Content for the masses, and I mean content that is interesting to large populations of developing countries does not exist. One of most important business plans that needs to be written now is how to produce, syndicate and price content for this huge market. Unless we have meaningful and reasonable content to offer, the case for spending $200 on a computer becomes very weak.

We also need to understand that there may be populations who now have access to the Internet, but other basic infrastructure such as roads, delivery services, banking systems, electricity, etc. lag far behind.

How do we prevent the situation of putting the cart in front of the horse?

Skills and programming languages

One of my cousins asked me about the programming language to learn to acquire the "skill" of computer programming. By skill she meant, I suppose, something that can be marketed in a job interview as a differentiator from the other candidates.

But ever since compiler/interpreter design advanced beyond assembly programming, most computer languages are written as simple English statements, making computer languages easy to learn and understand. In fact, the "skill" in Computer programming is almost independent of the computer language used.

So what is the skill part?

The real "skill" is understanding the capabilities and limitations of the underlying data-structures and algorithms that come pre-packaged with several of the contemporary high-level programming languages. Now that requires some serious CS education. For example, the CLR book is an excellent resource for mastering data-structures. And if you are brave you could read Knuth's work.

Still, its good to be conversant with the syntax and peculiarities of a programming language or two because it saves a *lot* of time and debugging effort while actually writing up code. In my experience, I can trace the usage of my programming language learning/usage patterns as this

Age: Computer Language
7-9: Logo
10-12: Basic
13-16: Pascal, C
18-21: C, C++, 8086 Assembler
21-25: Java, C++, VB
26-27:C#
27: Python
28: Python, C++

Thats a whole lot of languages. Now lets analyze the list and come up with the minimum but adequate list of things to read

1. For syntax, just learn C, or C++, or C#, or Java. The syntax of these languages is nearly identical and knowing one of these well will go along way toward working in any of these languages. But do not assume you know one if you know another! These different languages exist because they were created to support different programming paradigms and architectures. Please read up the fine print before switching arbitrarily between them!!!

2. Learn a scripting language like Perl, Python, etc. in addition to a "heavy duty" language like C, C++, C# or Java. In many circumstances writing a quick (although perhaps inefficient) program in a scripting language can save you lots of time.

So my 2 cents about the marketable skill part: C++ and Python. And a good data-structures course.

Paradigm shift towards near-network communication

There was a story on Slashdot (http://pressesc.com/01184858412_multi_gigabit_wireless) about new radio technologies that will make it possible to communicate between devices separated by a few meters at rates of several Gbps. Think Bluetooth on steroids.

I am tempted to declare this possibility as one of the most exciting things in the future of Networking. Whoa thats a big statement, but consider the possibilities from having the facility of super fast near networks.

1. Wireless peripherals, finally. Yea I know we've heard this before, but with this fat bandwidth pipe even (super) HD resolution screens and data-pumps such as set-top-boxes could go wireless. Only 1 power cable per box.

2. Networking at the edge. The prospect of mobile-p2p bcomes very compelling if you consider that near network connectivity will exceed the capabilities of core/access networks. Offcourse the latter will also improve, but given that it is cheaper to have users buy devices with high-wirelss bandwidth interfaces rather than deploy fiber-optic cables to every apartment, I believe that near networks will become a cost-saving platform to distribute content.

Example: My neighbor and I see the 2012 Olympics in super HDTV resolution. Can we form a near-network bridge instead of having the access network fork 2 separate copies to both of us? Here is the possibility to mitigate the fundamental bottleneck of on-demand high-definition content delivery of havng to unicast at the last leg no matter what smart protocol you employ.

DVRs n us in year 2010+

I read an article in the WSJ (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118458998340567497.html)earlier today which spoke about how cable companies are incorporating DVR technology into their service offerings. DVR or Digital Video Recorder technology enables the wonderful convenience of time shifting using which users can watch their programs at any time after the broadcast. Many also provide convenience features such as the facility to cut out advertisements from the broadcast.

The article says that 50% of US cable subscribers will have DVRs by 2010 and goes on to predict that the DVR will become an essential aspect of the TV experience.

When this happens, TV will no longer be, well, TV. What a DVR offers is very titillating to my geek sense: A time travel feature as far as my TV is concerned, something that has more potential than just geek excitement.

The PVR is yet another acknowledgment of the limitations of our unicasting infrastructure for VOD. If there was infinite network capacity and infinite server capacity then no content provider would allow content caching on users' PVRs (even if it was DRMed). This mental block is noted in the WSJ article, but now cable companies see the value ($) of promoting PVR technology. The truth is that PVRs enable a whole bunch of services that were just not possible with the current unicast infrastructure for VOD. Lets talk a little about these golden nuggets for the service providers.

1. Directed ad-insertion: Yep I know we all think that PVRs are supposed to cut out the ads. But imagine the mouth watering preposition of inserting a car ad when daddy is watching the Simpsons and inserting a Harry Potter trailer when little Johnny sees the show. The Simpsons program downloads once, but the directed ads get inserted at the Q-tone according to who is watching.

2. Promise of large scale VOD: Its true: supporting concurrent VOD through having a centralized server is just not feasible with present bandwidth (including ADSL 2+) or server capacity. This explains why even P2P video technologies like Joost feverishly download and cache content when a user is not watching. The short bursty duty cycle of watching TV in the day (meaning people watch TV for maybe an hour every day on average) is a great opportunity to cache content on the local PVR during the downtime.

3. The battle for the boss-box of the living room: The battle to become the defacto box of the living room is on. Is it going to be the game consoles like X-boxes and Sony PS*s with their growing hard disks that can double as PVRs? Or will they be service providers" set-top-boxes/PVRs? Any of these stake-holders would love to win over the eye-balls and ear-drums of the whole family.

Oh Mr (Video) DJ I want to dance for Real

Real player v11 is going to change everything in the "User generated" video content category i.e. You-Tube and Google Video sort of content.

A few months ago I was looking for ways of downloading You-tube videos. There was a rather arduous way with Linux and Mplayer and scripts and that sort of stuff. Typically not what would excite a budding video mixing artist. But now Real has done it. The latest Real player provides an easy way to download any non-copyrighted content into your hard-disk on a plain Windows PC (Real says that a Mac version is in the works). Best thing is, it supports all sorts of formats.

In short, I now envision 1000s of budding Video DJs downloading little clips of video from all over the Internet, stitching n' mixing them up (adding value through their talent), and then republishing content.

And I imagine that after a few iterations, this content may just graduate from "User Generated" to hugely engaging and popular A-class content. Wow this is like the analogue of open source software. Open source content, being refined and sliced and diced and mixed for your viewing pleasure.