I went to a beautiful trek last weekend (02/27-03/01) with a group called “Adventura”, an adventure club in Infosys. I spent an exhilarating weekend with a bunch of highly spirited and fun loving people.
Trek details:
• ~10Km one-way to Kodachadri, ~2500ft elevation gain
• ~2KM one-way to the Cave, ~450ft elevation gain

The key highlights of the trip were:
• Positive spirit and enthusiasm created by the Infosys crowd through out the trip
• The beautiful evening swimming in the warm waters of the Arabian Sea while watching the spectacular sunset at the baiyandoor beach.
• The breath taking view of the sun-rise on top of Kodachadari
• Beautiful hike up and down to the Cave (the cave itself was not worth the hike)
• Magnificent view of the clear sky in the night
• Marvelous sounds from all the birds and insects dwelling in the wilderness
• Incredible views of the serene and unruffled landscape

The overall experience was very delightful and pleasant.

From Bangalore take a train to Shimoga.
From Shimoga you have to catch a bus to Kollur or Biyandoor
You have to go to the kodachadari base (start the trek on the jeep trail)

Few Pictures from the trek:
Kodachadari
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Sunset 1
Sunset 2
Kodachadari
Kodachadari
Kodachadari
Kodachadari

It is a well known fact that companies that are the market leaders in one technology wave fail to catch on to the next wave. Usually these shifts happen with the advent of new disruptive technologies. Take the example of companies like Lotus, Word perfect, Apple, DEC, Ingres, and SCO to name a few. Every one of these companies failed to make the required changes to embrace the disruptive and discontinuous change.
Intel is the current Market Leader with Micro processor technology. Intel as a company has been doing a lot of thinking and investment in the area of “what is the next thing after semi-conductors? Can a multi-billion dollar semiconductor industry survive if a new discovery revolutionizes the whole computing industry?”

A Quantum Computer could solve a problem in few months that would take millions of years for a conventional computer. Using the principles of quantum dots, Quantum physics describes the special rules that apply to atoms and subatomic particles. One principle is that when you observe a particle, you change it. If a particle can be in one of two states, for example "up" or "down," it only settles on one state when you look at it. Before you look at it, it can be in both states at the same time. Conventional computers process information as "bits."

A bit can be a one or a zero. A string of eight bits can represent a single number from zero (00000000) to 255 (11111111). In a quantum computer, bits can be both one and zero at the same time. A string of eight bits can therefore represent all of the numbers between zero and 255 at the same time. (Source: Science daily)

Think of using atoms to manage states instead of transistors in a semi-conductor chip. This will completely revolutionize the way we have known about computers, all the billions of dollars invested in various manufacturing plants across the globe will be rendered almost useless and Intel the market leader in microprocessors will have to find something else to do.

Biological computing may be the next big threat to the whole silicon industry. You could possibly use biological particles like bacteria and viruses to control your state and use billions of them in a space that can only fit 1000 transistor today. Biological particles will not have the problems of heat, transmission and power that we have today, the system designed today can become more powerful tomorrow when the bacteria or virus replicate. All this completely changes the way we use silicon, the systems designed with bio-chips may be millions of times faster than the silicon based, there will be simply no match with the computing power. It is like using diodes instead of semi-conductors to manufacture PCs.

As we all know, patenting has become a very familiar task in the research landscape. One critical question remains: whether intellectual property is fundamentally inconsistent with the norms of research science. Although, we are likely to ask more questions around what sorts of research discoveries should be patented and about how proprietary research tools should be disseminated in the research community.
Intellectual property has been an important phenomenon in research science. According to me it is absolutely essential to preserve the benefits of intellectual property while minimizing interference with the progress of science.
When large corporations are investing so many dollars on research and often the goals of the competitors are similar. It is very likely the output will be similar or pretty close, then how does one really qualify infringement.
In the global landscape, the validity of the patent is largely questionable in many countries. Making sure you are protected in every country is often very expensive and some countries don’t have the intellectual property rights as in U.S. How does a corporation deal with global infringements?
I am not suggesting that corporations should not harvest IP, but in many cases they are going over-board with IP protection. Patent the core-technologies and the technology that is going to be market differentiators but not every new thing you come across.

One of my resolutions for this year was to start blogging more often. I found this interesting article that talks about the future of wireless technology, it addresses some of the issues of who pays for the WiFi connections. Wireless capabilities cannot be restricted to a confined boundary or location .. so how do you compete against free wireless service providers .. if wireless connections does become free then it become like internet where it will extremely difficult to force customers to pay. In my opinion Occasionally Connected Computing will become the norm with the cost of the bandwith will become so cheap that it won;t be worth charging the customers.

Techweb > News > WiFi�s Future: Paid Or Free? > Want Free Wi-Fi With That Latte? > January 14, 2004

Bangalore metro rail work to start next April - The Economic Times I really hope the karnataka gov is serious about considering a alternative to the massive traffic problems in bangalore. Last time I visited bangalore in Dec 2002, I was amazed to see the explosive growth of this city. All the other mass transport plans never saw the light of the day, hope this is not one of them.

Wishing you all a very happy and wonderful new year (2004).
I really hope this year will enable me to do more of blogging.

Regards
Ajay

webservices.xml.com: Web Services Acronyms, Demystified [Jan. 09, 2002] A very good article, although written in Jan -2002, gives a high level overview of some of commonly used web services acronyms. Lots of new protocols and WS standards have been since added.

Testimony of Dr. David R. Criswell: Senate Hearing on "Lunar Exploration" | SpaceRef - Your Space Reference. Save the environment by harnessing the solar power generated and beamed from stations located on the Moon . I personally think it is going to take a couple of decades before this technology can be made practical. But this possibility can save our envioronment on earth, this can also bring down the cost of producing power significantly.

Sessions

For those of you who missed the action in Microsoft PDC. All the material from various PDC sessions where you can find information on latest and greatest MS technology and products.

ScienceDaily News Release: Quantum Computer Could Solve Problems In A Few Months That Would Take Conventional Computers Millions Of Years. This is clearly a disruptive technical innovation that can change the way we look at computing power today. In a decade or so we will reach a saturation point with the semi-conductor technology in terms of die size and speed, quantum computing has a very good chance of being the next leap in scientific development. The challenge will be to find the supporting applications requiring the horse power in the consumer market. Can anybody think of applications that require the computing power other than games in the future?

Steve and I went for a beautiful hike in the Mt. jefferson park last weekend. To get to the hike is about 1.5 hr drive from Portland, Oregon.

Driving direction:
From I5 sounth (south of salem) take 22 west. Immediately after the mile post 60, turn left into white water rd (it is very easy to miss this turn). Follow the dirt road for 6 miles till you hit the trail head.

Total Hike distance is around 12 miles with a toal elevation gain of 2,100 ft. You have to hike along the ridge line (on the pacific crest trail) with the beautiful view of the forest below and the Mt. Jefferson staring right in front of you. Finally you will reach a series of beautiful lakes called the bay lake, strout lake, heart lake etc. A wonderful day hike with some spectacular views.


some pictures are attached

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I am taking an interesting class this quarter called the organization change management. Some of suggested reading material seems pretty good. I will post more about this class as it progresses.

This is the executive summary (Marketing part) for my MBA class business plan. I think the product One-Card has a lot of potential ... there is a clear market need, we will see how the business plan progresses.

I. Executive Summary
One-Card is a convenient, secure and practical digital card product and service. One-Card aims to eventually replace the traditional bulky wallet with a single easy to carry digital solution.
The Product
Multiple current offerings of plastic money, digital money and various membership services will all be rolled under one standard One-Card interface. The patented technology behind the product called “One-Card common cryptographic interface” has combined existing proven technologies in creative ways to support the digital card infrastructure. One-Card works with existing infrastructure, making it widely acceptable.
Market
We will supply an added convenience of One-Card to the rapidly growing PDA users who currently carry many cards. This market has been well established, Gartner predicts PDA sales of 33.7 million by 2004, up from this year's projected 13.7 million. Of this number, a significant number is held by the small business owners. Many small businesses have some pretty complex purchasing requirements, this is where the One-Card product provides valuable services to organize and manage all credit transactions securely. The small business owner is the primary target market segment for this product.
Objectives
Security and privacy of customers will be key objective along with supporting numerous value-added services that enhance the value and developing a strong global retail channel for making this product widely available and acceptable.
Mission
Our goal is to establish One-Card as a market leader in digital card solutions by forming a network of users and vendors with emphasis on security and standardization of card technologies. Enhance the acceptability by licensing the standard interface to other product manufacturers and vendors.

With E-mail Dying, RSS Offers Alternative. An excellent article that describes RSS as an viable alternative to using email as means of reaching subscribers. Using email to generate newsletters or daily, weekly content summaries through subscription is annoying to users thus gets trapped by junk mail filters. It is very clear that the industry is rapidly adopting syndication as a means to reach customers.

I finally placed an order for a new laptop. I bought Dell's Inspiron 300m
Dell - Dell Home Systems Inspiron 300m Notebook with the following additions..
60GB hard disk instead of the standard 40 GB.
Dell TrueMobile® 1300 WLAN (802.11b/g, 54Mbps) miniPCI Card (I think having 802.11g support is a great to have)
128MB dell USB key
24X CD/RW / DVD combo (I was tempted to buy the DVD RW .. oh well) ...

Turn home number into mobile one. The most important feature that I am looking for is the capability to keep the same phone number even if I change the service provider, better still keep the same instrument (phone) as well. Hope all this changes happen as soon as possible.

Sluggish PC?

In case you started to notice a decline in your computer's performance over a period of time, it may be because of many unwanted tasks that are running in the background, read this article for find out more details.
Possible solution:
Run msconfig and go to the startup tab where you will notice all the processes that get started during startup. Disable processes that are not needed, you can find out more about what they do by going to this web site .

Microsoft to Test 'Voice Command' for PDAs, Phones. A person walking next to you can erase the data on your device by just talking ... alright I am kidding. We need a better way of controlling and communicating with our mobile device .... voice activated dialing is any catching on and I think this is a step in the right direction.

Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows: "Longhorn" Alpha Preview. I am not particularly impressed by any new longhorn features yet.

Few comments
New welcome screen -- can I plug my own screen which should be fully customizable?
Start Menu -- my contacts is useful .. but will I upgrade for this feature ... the answer is NO.
I don't clearly understand the benefit I would get from my hardware as opposed to the device manager.
My Computer --- Disk space is currently available as a tool tip .. maybe a marginally better way of representing the disk space.

I will update this post with more comments on longhorn.

Tinny computers, I always wondered how the actual usability will look like when the technology gets smaller and smaller. I am confident that technology hurdles are easy to overcome compared to the application, usability, privacy and security issues. Thinking about usage scenarios or what I call business innovation ahead of the technology innovation is going to be critical for succeeding in the future.