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Is Google+ a Facebook Killer?

Google has come up with an interesting social networking platform - Google+. It has some nice features, pleasant look and most importantly an intuitive interface. Will it be a Facebook killer? Here is my take on it.

Circles 
Google has gone one step ahead of Facebook in creating an online society. As in reality, some friends are closer than the others even on the web. It is desirable to share photos or status updates with only certain group of friends instead of everyone. Circles in Google+ allows one to do this by way of organizing friends. While Facebook also has a way to organize friends, I don't find it as intuitive as Circles; probably circles is marketed while its counterpart's utility is not.

Hangout
For me, if anything can recreate the feeling of society, then its got to be the concept of get together for a conversation. Hangout is designed to do this precisely. If you are chatting with people in a circle, the others in that circle are invited to come hang out. Hangout is a clear winner; forget video conferencing, even a fundamental chat requires improvement in Facebook.

Sparks
Sparks is, in principle, an integration of Google's search, news and buzz. It allows one to search for articles/ news related to a topic (marketed as hobbies). Upon marking the topic as an interest, related news will show up in the spark space in the user's profile. The user can then conveniently share the link on his profile.

As a side note, Google must have been working on this vision for a long time. I have been using the contact organizing feature in gmail since a long time. Hangout is a natural extension to voice/ video chat.

Google vs Facebook is a favorite topic for any technology analyst. A very good analysis of their products in the past, present and projected future based on emerging trends of mobile networking can be found in IEEE Spectrum. In that analysis, Facebook was given an undue advantage over Google in social networking related products. However, it is possible that Google+ can attract users due to the above mention cool features. With Google+ in place, Google has the potential to overtake Facebook even in social networking sphere, given that Google already has an edge in the mobile aspect (Android) of mobile networking.

With so many things possibly going Google's way, its still not easy to beat Facebook; Google Buzz was supposed to be a twitter killer. Gmail, Google's second most successful product, still competes with yahoo mail. Google docs can not replace MS Office. Ad Words is a  failure. Google WAVEd it good bye :-).

So is Google+ a Facebook killer? I don't think so...

TJ

Jimmy John's Sandwich: Its not just the food, its also about the attitude

I was at Baltimore last week to attend RFIC Symposium. I had the chance to try (read forced to try; food in conferences are sad and overpriced) a sandwich shop called Jimmy John's (JJ's) which was right outside the conference venue. They serve very good sandwiches which are actually cheaper than subway. However, their USP is ATTITUDE. Check these out:

Do's and Dont's at JJ's

More Stuff

Nice one. I will use it to sell my recipe sometime :-).

 This is super cool. It works well in my case, at least the last one.

Really??

 Do you use that in $5 sandwiches??

Dig at Jack Daniels.

 Didn't get this one myself. May be they are talking about pork sandwiches flying off their shelves.. Not sure...

"16 things it took me 50 years to realize" - Dave Barry 

1. Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a
laxative the same night.

2. If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race
has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word
would be "meetings."

3. There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."

4. People who want to share their religious views with you almost
never want you to share yours with them.

5. You should not confuse your career with your life.

6. Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.
(This one is very important.)

7. Never lick a steak knife.

8. The most destructive force in the universe is gossip.

9. You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling
reason why we observe daylight savings time.

10. You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests
that you think she's pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging
from her at that moment.

11. There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to
make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age 11.

12. The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age,
gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep
inside, we ALL believe that we are above average drivers.

13. A person, who is nice to you, but rude to a waiter, is not a nice
person. (This is very important. Pay attention. It never fails.)

14. Your friends love you anyway.

15. Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur
built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.

16. Thought for the day: Men are like fine wine. They start out as
grapes; and it's up to the women to stomp the crap out of them until they
turn into something acceptable to have dinner with.

JJ's is a chain and seems to be popular in college towns (Ref: Wikipedia). They seem to be expanding rapidly to big cities as well. Try it..

TJ

Item song of the year (so far)

The title song from the movie Dum Maaro Dum is my favorite item song of the year so far. It has sultry Deepika Padukone groving to some catchy tunes; credit goes to the original composer, R.D.Burman. The remixed version, particularly the lyrics, has attracted a lot of criticism. I think it is mainly because of the cult status of the original version and rather lewd lyrics in the modern version.

I started following Hindi movies after Dilwale Dulhaniya leke gayen and Kuch Kuch Ho Chuka Tha. If Zeenat Aman was the star of 1971 version, I felt Deepika Padukone was equally good in the new one. I will probably watch the 120min movie just for this 4 min song.

You can be smarter and watch the song here and lyrics are as below.

Hai Phir Dekh Raha Hai
Aaj Aankh Sek Raha Hai Kal Haath Sekega
Aaj Dhil Choda Hai Kal Khud He Rokega
Aaj Mere Liye Chair Kich Raha Hai
Kal Meri Skirt Kichega
Kichega Ki Nahi
Aakad Bakkad Bombay Bo Aasi Nabbe Pure So
Sau Rupiyon Ka Dum Jo Lun Do Sau Gum Ho Udan Chu
Phir Kyun Mein Tu Kar Rahe Tain Tun
Unche Se Uncha Banda Kothey Pe Baithe Nanga
Phir Kahe Ki Society Sali Kahe Ka Pakhanda
Bheje Se Kaleje Se, Kaleje Ke Kaleje Se
Mitjaoge Gum Maroge To Jioge Dam Maro Dam
(dam Maro Dam Mit Jaye Gham
Bolo Subah (sham Hare Krishna) - 3 Hare Ram) - 2
Duneeya Ne Hamko Diya Kya, Duneeya Se Hamne Liya Kya
Ham Sab Kee Parwah Kare Kya, Sabne Hamara Kiya Kya
Aah Aah Aah Aah............
Dam Maro Dam Mit Jaye Gham
Bolo Subah (sham Hare Krishna) - 3 Hare Ram

Kya Hai Kahani Tere Paap Ki Ho
Topi Hai Pyaare Har Naap Ki Ho
Khuli Hai Supermarket Baap Ki Ho
Kya Hai Pasand Kaho Aap Ki Ho
Andar Ke Bandar Se Ho Guftgu Si Ek Baar
Thi Justju Si Ek Baar, Ho Guftgu Si Ek Baar
Phir Kyun Mein Tu Kar Rahe Tain Tun
Unche Se Uncha Banda Kothey Pe Baithe Nanga
Phir Kahe Ki Society Sali Kahe Ka Pakhanda
Bheje Se Kaleje Se, Kaleje Ke Kaleje Se
Mitjaoge Gum Maroge To Jioge Dam Maro Dam
(dam Maro Dam Mit Jaye Gham
Bolo Subah (sham Hare Krishna) - 3 Hare Ram) - 2
Sham Hare Krishna- 5

TJ

Shell Script for 'Latex'-ing from vim

I am a vim loyalist.

Features in Emacs like compiling latex code and viewing the output without having to switch to the terminal is awesome. However, having used vim (and recently gvim) for more than 5 years, its easier for me to write scripts for vim to implement the cool features of Emacs rather than switch to Emacs. Below is a simple shell script to compile latex document and show the output without leaving the editor.


 #! /bin/sh
 source=$1
 infile=${source%.tex}
 latex $infile
 bibtex $infile
 latex $infile
 latex $infile
 dvips $infile.dvi
 ps2pdf $infile.ps
 evince $infile.pdf

You can use pdflatex instead of latex. Also, I use evince to view the pdf because any update in the file is updated in the viewer without having to restart it (unlike acroread). The script (I call it compile_latex.sh) needs to be saved in a directory included in the PATH.

Now comes the vim part. The following line needs to be added in .vimrc (or .gvimrc).

map :!compile_latex.sh %

I am now looking for a good psychiatrist program to integrate with vim; helps to vent out frustration :-).

My favorite technologies of the past decade

The last decade witnessed quick and drastic revolutions in various fields of technology. (Children growing up in that period would not appreciate a large number of sci-fi movies :-). ) Google conquered the web world while facebook defined e-society. Electronics have been applied extensively to improve every aspect of life; watch out for electronics in toilet paper. Communication has become so fast and cheap (read free) that collaboration with my professor was not affected when he left to Belgium on a sabbatical. Thanks to amazon.com, our shopping strategies have changed. Overall, our lifestyles have changed; food and language are probably the only common aspects that I share with my grand parents, who have chosen to abstain from this never ending revolution.

Among the developments (too humble a word; don't have a superlative term at the tip of my finger now) that have taken place in the last ten years, I have picked my three favorite ones

Smart-phone

I own a blackberry which acts like my personal assistant by maintaining my calendar, tasks, delivering my mails, giving me road directions, restaurant suggestions,  playing my music, taking notes, on and on and on. The iPhone and Evo 4G are much smarter with great cameras, enabling check deposit, document scanning, face time video calling (only on iPhone) and more useful features.

Smart-phones, with the criticism of providing continuous distractions, provide opportunity to immensely increase our productivity. Currently, it adds another dimension to our smartness. At the rate of growth of mobile phone industry (hardware, software and applications), the lack of proficiency with this device would become a serious deficiency.

Skype
People may argue that AT&T or Verizon is the largest phone service provider. If you are from India, you might vouch for BSNL to be the company with highest number of subscribers. However, Skype has to be the world's largest telephony service provider with more than half a billion registered users.

Skype uses the technology called VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol). The voice (and video) is converted into data packets and sent to the destination over Internet. With a decently fast Internet connection, I am able to hold video conferences with parents in India, without paying anything. Recent versions of Skype allow the users to share desktop screens. This has enabled me to hold technical discussions with my professor who is on a sabbatical in Belgium. This technology has managed to make collaborations simple, even with people half way across the globe. I hope to be able to work from India for 6 months a year :-).

MP3

60min/90min cassette tapes used to be the standard audio storage medium back in my school days. Listening to music while traveling was a luxury. Yes, there were Walkmans but the battery life was not too good. And then the life of these audio tapes were not long either.

MP3 compression algorithm was perfected in late 80s and early 90s. However, MP3 players had to wait for the digital signal processors and memory technology to catch up. NAND flash memory was several hundred dollars for a megabyte in those days. A MP3 player with 30 min playback time (paltry by cassette standards) would cost few thousand dollars.

By late 90s, computers got faster and could remember more. Optical discs became common and a lot of audio was carried around on CDs - the first digital audio revolution. NAND flash memory got cheaper by the day (it costs less than a dollar for every GB), non-volatile memory technology was mastered. Apple launched its first iPod in 2001 - the revolution in digital audio.  As Willie D. Jones puts it, time line can be split into B.C (before compression) and A.D (Apple Domination). Now, I carry all my favorite music in a small device that goes with my key chain.

There were probably other technologies which made more significant influences to this world, but as I told you before, these are my favorite. Please let me know about your favorite ones in comments.

What is in store next?
The coming decade can only witness an accelerated growth. The cool gadgets and technologies that I look forward to are

1. A super intelligent successor to a smart-phone with an intuitive voice based interface and 3D screens.
2. Techniques to generate, scavenge and recycle energy from the surroundings in a clean way.
3. Software defined radios. The success of my PhD work will give the much needed impetus to this dream of many a RF engineer ;-).

 TJ

Pre-Distortion for Power Amplifiers. Interested?

Driven by a high data rate and need for efficient spectrum utilization, modern communication standards like MoCA usually feature OFDM which has a high peak to average power ratio (PAPR). This constrains the designers to resort to the most linear version of PA, a Class-A PA. In addition to having a poor maximum efficiency, a Class-A PA’s efficiency degrades rapidly under back-off. On the other hand, a Class-B PA, albeit very non-linear compared to a Class-A PA, has a higher maximum efficiency and it degrades less rapidly under back-off.

Similar to the idea of pre-equalization used in communication, the input signal of the PA could be pre-distorted effectively to compensate for its non-linearity. In standard CMOS process, particularly with technology downscaling, the cost of digital signal processing has reduced dramatically, making it a smart choice to implement the pre-distortion in the digital domain.

If you are interested in working on this problem, please contact me.

Karthik