Silicon Valley Could Use A Downturn Right About Now

Interesting. via TechCrunch - Silicon Valley Could Use A Downturn Right About Now

"When I look back at the pictures from those early events, I remember good times, and no one was talking about twenty million dollar venture rounds or selling out for a cool $1.65 billion. Companies like Meebo and Sphere literally launched in my living room in front of a couple of hundred genuinely interested people.

Somewhere in there the money started rolling in. Our first dime of revenue was December 2005. A few months later a lot of companies were raising $3 million A rounds, then $7 million A rounds after the YouTube acquisition. Companies started to hire marketing managers and PR firms, and spending tens of thousands of dollars on launch parties. Now, a year after the madness started, it’s even worse. Companies have to actively dodge venture capitalists to avoid raising a big round of financing.

Times are good, money is flowing, and Silicon Valley sucks.

I don’t know what it is, but the same thing happened in the late nineties before the bubble burst. Lots of startups got funded that made no sense but people got excited anyway. A unique, beautiful and well executed idea was not a story worth talking about until that first round of big, eye-popping capital. People become more anxious, and more likely to snap at someone in anger or jealousy. Rumor mongering spikes, and a crucial balance is lost. It’s no longer about beautiful products and genius developers. It’s about the money and the status, and hot PR chicks and marketing departments.

The press side of things is equally nuts. I wasn’t writing a blog in the first bubble so I can’t compare now to then. But entrepreneurs are no longer talking to us just to get our opinion and hope for a blog post and a little discussion. These guys need press to stand out from the scores of startups just like them. Saying no to them isn’t really an option. They show up at our front door with a bottle of wine or flowers. They instruct their PR firms to do anything necessary to get a story. More than once I’ve had a CEO break down and cry on the phone when we said we weren’t covering them. And more than once, I folded and wrote about them after those conversations.

I left Silicon Valley at the peak of the insanity last time around, and I was pleasantly surprised when I returned in 2005 to see so much goodwill and community surrounding innovation. Now, it’s just like the old days again, and Silicon Valley is no longer any fun. In fact, it’s turned downright nasty. It may be time for some of us to leave for a while and watch the craziness from the outside again. In a few years, things will be beautiful again. The big money will be slumbering away, and the marketing departments will be a distant memory. We can focus, once again, on the technology. And the burgers and beer.

22@ Barcelona - Why Europe May Become The Hub

Sunny weather, exotic landscape, historical architecture, outstanding tourist attractions, incredible quality of life... we all know about these pluses in the major parts of Europe. However, no one ever looked at that place and said, "This can be the next valley". Well, attempt is made to change that soon.

Check out 22@ Barcelona - El districte de la innovacio

"22@Barcelona Project goal is to transform 22@Barcelona into an international platform of reference in the creation and development of innovative companies that will serve as magnet to young entrepreneurs of all over the world and making of Barcelona an entrepreneur capital.

Due to this reason, 22@Barcelona promotes several initiatives to provide the district with infrastructures and mechanisms of high support to entrepreneurs. Thus, specialized working spaces and services are created, with the participation of the different institutions linked to entrepreneurship, such as the Local Development Agency Barcelona Activa, la Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya o El parc d'Innovació de La Salle-URL."

I keep hearing about a variety of efforts to attract entrepreneurs and the creative thinkers. Also, my opinion of Spanish people is very high in general. So, I am thinking of spending few months checking out the innovation scene in Europe this summer. Let's see.

The Treadmill Desk!

via zdnet.

A while ago, I read a story (Unguided Days) written by my friend, writer Rohit Gupta (aka DJ Fadereu), where the world has evolved (or devolved?) to a point where the employer provides everything possibly needed right at an employees desk to get maximum hours from him. The day's lunch selection is delivered right to the desk through a food pipeline, and a highly evolved e-psychiatrist poses as a personalized e-god for each human. Matrix? Brave New World?

Well, while a personalized e-god might seem a bit too in the future, a new technology already has been launched in the market that allows employees to lose weight while working.

"They built what they called a "vertical workstation"--a desk fitted over a standard treadmill. They had 15 obese people to work at this treadmill-desk and measured how many calories they burned.



If an overweight office worker used this vertical workstation all day, every day for a year, he or she could lose up to 66 pounds, the researchers report in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.



James Levine and Jennifer Miller measured how many calories their 15 volunteers burned using exhaled breath but did not determine if the volunteers actually lost weight.



On average, their overweight volunteers burned 100 calories more every hour while walking slowly--at 1 mile per hour--than while sitting in a chair.



"If obese individuals were to replace time spent sitting at the computer with walking computer time by two to three hours a day, and if other components of energy balance were constant, a weight loss of (44 pounds to 66 pounds) a year could occur," the researchers wrote.



The researchers said their desk costs about $1,600."

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Tejaswi Nou Adhitam Astu!

Or, Let our study be brilliant!

I have been trying to pick up Sanskrit again, from where I left off in high school. How did we lose touch with such an incredible language? Sanskrit is a true phonetic language, unlike English, where each alphabet represents only one pronunciation. Also, every single vowel and pronunciation is structured in a way that it logically uses the throat, lip and tongue muscles. The following is a graphical description of the vowel structure and how they are derived.

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Outstanding Italian AD

One of the most prized commercials this year... via I believe in adv: and Anoop

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GPRS + Bluetooth + Laptop = Internet Anywhere

This is, of course, not a new story. The first time I started using GPRS for accessing internet from anywhere was back in 2004. Back then, the costs were higher and there was a data download limit. Also, it normally took a full day to get it properly working.



Fast forward to the present day -- we have a Rs. 11/day connection provided by Airtel that gets activated instantly. No download limit, no hidden costs. And last week, I used it to connect to my workplace VPN from a remote town in India, a bungalow in the very outskirts of Bangalore, and now, just before the flight takes off!

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Truemors - The new platform for spreading rumors

Guy Kawasaki's newest venture Truemors, is all about capturing rumors that spread across the web. Here's an excerpt from his blog:

"I need some help from people who are in the flow of interesting and true rumors. They would be folks who can provide “scoops” that begin with a phrase like, “Did you hear that...?”



For example, did you hear that Angelina Jolie just adopted another child? Did you hear that Apple is working on a cell phone? Did you hear that the dean of admissions of MIT resigned? Did you hear that Joe Thornton is getting traded to the San Jose Sharks?"

In several scriptures from Hindu mythology, rumors are represented as one of the most important ways of information spread. Rumor is a form of social constructionism and in their book 'The Social Construction of Reality', Berger and Luckmann argue that all knowledge, including the most basic, common sense knowledge of everyday reality is derived and maintained by social interactions.



It would be interesting to see how Kawasaki's model shapes up, but my belief that it would be one step ahead of twitter, because a true rumor based system should have a natural folksonomy, categorization and must be topical. If, for the sake of discussion, I start spreading rumor on a possible alien attack, the system should be smart enough to create topics around any metadata that I provide. How else would you retain the sanctity of a gossip?

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Honey, I blew up the battery!

One fine day, I came to work and was checking my emails on my Macbook Pro, and I found something sticking out from the bottom of the laptop. A few minutes later, check out what I found!











Apple buffs reading this must already know about the Macbook Pro battery and heat problems. Someone actually fried an egg on their Macbook!

However, I must admit, Apple has been extremely cooperative, and they are replacing it without any fuss!

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Indya.com tries the Apple iTunes Store Model

Ridiculous! Check out this latest move by Star owned Indya.com.

ContentSutra talks about this release. For $0.99, you can download and own episodes of "The Great Indian Laughter Challenge", "Koffee With Karan" and some of the popular soap operas.

Now, can someone tell me, when I can watch the episodes on TV every single day (yes, almost every Indian in the US have subscriptions to a bunch of Indian channels already), why would I ever want to own it? This is not like "Friends" or "Sienfeld", which you would naturally want to watch even after ten years. If it was a download-and-own of "Ramayana" or "Mahabharata", there was a reasonable chance that the model would have had some success. But with the current line up, they are just wasting time, money and making a fool of themselves. Even my mom, who is a giant fan of the soap operas, would never think of spending a penny on them. Do you know of anyone who would?

BTW, don't forget to look at some of the above episodes on YouTube when you get time. For free! :)