Subhodeep(dot)com - everything that may or may not interest you!

The much hyped Google’s “Open Handset Alliance Project”, a.k.a Android mobile platform is officially announced on a HTC device on the T-Mobile network. It is due its big break on October 22nd this year. Want to have a look, visit the official page of the G1 phone or catch up Sergey (of Google) introducing Android OS platform on Youtube.

The initial views posted on Financial Times and BusinessWeek have a mixed response towards the phone and the platform. However, it is early to take a call on Android and on the mobile device. It is surely to open up a huge market for developer Apps, which may surpass that of iPhone. And this is what’s worth the watch. Google seems to be banking heavily on developer apps and has even announced an Apps challenge worth $10 Million. Android software reflects a different approach. By making the software available free of charge to any handset maker, Google hopes to seed a large number of handsets - an attempt to put its search and other services directly into the hands of millions of mobile users, creating an advertising market that executives say could be worth far more than the one on which the company’s fortunes were founded.

It would also be interesting to see how soon can Google proliferate the OS (and phone) into emerging markets. It is important to capitalize on these even grounds - eat into iPhone’s share in the smart phones category and establishing a strong hold early on.

I’d like to share an inspiring post I came across on the internet. It’s worth reading through it..

Here it goes -

What are your odds of becoming famous? It’s not a rhetorical question - I’m very serious, and there’s a point to this.

I get a fair number of e-mails from people that go something like:
“Hey Aaron, love your project. I’m working hard on my own project, so wish me luck, too.”

And I do wish them luck, very sincerely - but I tend to think they’ll do fine, regardless. Partly because they’re the small percent of the population that’s out there DOING THINGS. As far as I’m concerned, if you just keep DOING THINGS, over and over, eventually you’ll make it.

I came across a study by the National Endowment for the Arts that I thought was interesting. It was a study on how many people in the U.S. work in artistic fields. How many actors are there, how many artists, writers, etc.

This all connects back to why you shouldn’t be afraid of taking a risk from time to time - 1.4% of the population in the United States works in an artistic field as their primary job. That equates to about 2 million people in a country of about 305 million people, with an additional 300,000 that work in the arts, but make a living some other way. Almost half of those are designers and architects, which means the remaining 1 million people account for the vast majority of everything you read in a book, magazine, or watch on TV.

I find that fascinating, because it means that very few people are effecting great change.

But this is a post about the risks of failure when you take a chance. So here’s what struck me from the article the most. Of all the artists working in the U.S., about 2% of them were actors, or 39,717 people.

Half live in California, with New York claiming about 20%. So let’s take a look at a historically risky thing to do - moving to Hollywood to become an actor. Try telling your parents that your plan is to become famous in Hollywood, and see how they react. Everyone knows that making it in acting - becoming famous - is… well, insane. No one really does it, right?

The question is, what does it take for you to be at the top? If you’re an actor, and want to become famous, who do you have to beat in order to do it? Let’s define famous as having one of the top 200 acting jobs in Hollywood - after all, I can think of 20 top name actors off the top of my head, and I’m not really up on those things. 200 seems a fairly good number.

Sitting at home thinking about becoming an actor, you’re competing against all the millions of others that would like to be rich and famous, just like you. Your odds are hugely against you being successful, because millions of people want those top 200 spots. Haven’t you ever SEEN the turn out for American Idol? The line stretches for miles and miles (or so it seems).

But the truth is, as soon as you make the decision to become a full time actor, you’re no longer competing against the millions that want to become rich and famous, you’re competing against those that are actually doing something about it. And according to the NEA, that’s about 40,000 people. If you take yourself very seriously and move to California to act as your primary occupation, you take a step that most would-be actors never take, and now you’re competing against the other 20,000 actors living locally.

Half of the roles will be for one gender or another, cutting your competition in half again.

We’re now at 10,000 to 15,000 or so competitors who are in town to really do this full time. To really give acting a go as their dream.

But now we look at you, and your skills. Let’s say you’re a good actor, and a good networker. In fact, at these two skills - which is what you need to get off the ground - let’s say you’re in the 80th percentile; you’re better than 80% of the actors out there.

So, really, in auditions, you’re up against the other 20% who are as good or better than you, and the 10% who are worse, but have the right characteristics for the role. 30% of 15,000 is 4,500 people competing for those top 200 roles.

4,500/200=23 people.

There’s a lot in there that we can’t account for, like luck, and those top 200 roles only being for beautiful people and you and I look like lumps of coal… those are problems.

But if you’re good at what you do, and you look at yourself and say, “Yes, I have the characteristics needed as qualifiers to the industry,” then your odds of being successful, of being one of the 200 most successful actors in Hollywood, is about 1 in 23.

Which means that right now, sitting in your room reading this, wherever you are in the world, the chances of you becoming famous is about 1 in 23. Great odds? Not really. But as bad as you would expect? To become the next Julia Roberts or George Clooney?

I don’t think so. After all, if I put your name in a hat along with 22 other people, and told you I’d give you 1 million dollars if I picked your name… you’d be pretty excited.

But here’s the point of this entire post: It’s all a chain. It’s a chain that starts with you sitting in your living room thinking about how cool it would be to be rich and famous. And the action items in that chain are what separate you from the world; the things that you do that most of the others don’t are what knock out your competition. Thinking about becoming an actor makes you like millions of others, but becoming an actor makes you like only 2% of the population. Taking a chance and going to where acting is happening knocks out all but about 1% of the population.

If you’re talented and good, your odds of becoming a famous actor right now are 1 in 23. But no one will ever really pull your name from a hat and declare it so. They won’t come to your house and pull you out on their own.

Your odds are 1 in 23 because you’re one of the few people in the world that stood up and walked out your door, and really, honestly tried to follow your dreams.

And so few people really do that. And if you actually get done reading this post, stand up, and become an actor - or whatever your dream is - then you really are on your way to success. But if you just nod after reading this, think it’s interesting, and then close the browser and go make yourself lunch and that’s it - then welcome to the millions.

Your odds are entirely determined by your own next moves.

Aaron

P.S. I should also add that the biggest problem in acting, really, is that not hitting that top 200 spots is impossible or outside aiming for, but that hitting lower doesn’t make much money. According to the survey, most actors are better educated than the rest of the world (strong competition) and earn less than their peers at about $23,400 annually. When people say that acting is a hard business, they don’t really mean that getting to the top is impossible, just that getting to the middle is far easier. And the middle in this industry is not as lucrative as in other industries.

—————————————————————————————-

Adapted from Aaron’s post on his new venture
—————————————————————————————-

Here are 20 things you may not have known about Google’s beginnings.

1. Google started as a research project created by Ph.D. candidates Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford. Page and Brin were 24 years old and 23 years old respectively.

2. Google got its name by accident. The founders misspelled the word “googol,” which refers to the number 1 followed by 100 zeroes. The word was chosen to reflect the company’s goal of organizing the massive amound of information that is available on the Internet.

3. The Google home page is so sparse because the founders did not know HTML and just wanted to create a quick interface.

At first, there was not even a “submit” button. Users had to hit the “return” key to generate a Google search.

5. Google’s search technology is called PageRank ™. It assigns an “importance” value to each page on the Web and gives it a rank. But that is not why the technnology is called PageRank. In fact, it is named after Google co-founder Larry page.

6. Google’s traffic doubled when they introduced their “Did you mean…” feature. This feature was made possible by a much-improved spell checker.

7. Google users apparently never feel “lucky,” since the “I feel lucky” is almost never used. However, in trials it was discovered that users saw it as a comfort button and did not want it removed.

8. The search engine that Page and Brin were collaborating on was originally called BackRub, named for its ability to analyze the “back links” pointing to a given Web site.

9. Brin and Page would hang out at the Stanford computer science department’s loading docks in hopes of borrowing newly-arrived PCs to use in their network.

10. Google’s first data center was Larry Page’s dorm room.

11. When Page and Brin tried to find buyers to license their search technology, one portal CEO told them “As long as we’re 80 percent as good as our competitors that are good enough. Our users don’t really care about search.”

12. The first major investor, Andy Bechtolsheim, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems, wrote a check for $100,000 after seeing a quick demo on the porch of a Stanford faculty member’s home in Palo Alto.

13. At first, there was no way to deposit the $100,000 check. It was made out to “Google Inc.,” but there was no legal entity with that name. The check sat in Page’s desk drawer for two weeks while he and Brin rushed to set up a corporation and locate other investors.

14. Google Inc. opened its door in Menlo Park, Calif. in September 1998. The door came with a remote control, since it was attached to the garage of a friend who sublet space to the new corporation.

Jobs likes to make his own rules, whether the topic is computers, stock options, or even pancreatic cancer. The same traits that make him a great CEO drive him to put his company, and his investors, at risk.

In October 2003, as the computer world buzzed about what cool new gadget he would introduce next, Apple CEO Steve Jobs - then presiding over the most dramatic corporate turnaround in the history of Silicon Valley - found himself confronting a life-and-death decision.

During a routine abdominal scan, doctors had discovered a tumor growing in his pancreas. While a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer is often tantamount to a swiftly executed death sentence, a biopsy revealed that Jobs had a rare - and treatable - form of the disease. If the tumor were surgically removed, Jobs’ prognosis would be promising: The vast majority of those who underwent the operation survived at least ten years.
Yet to the horror of the tiny circle of intimates in whom he’d confided, Jobs was considering not having the surgery at all. A Buddhist and vegetarian, the Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) CEO was skeptical of mainstream medicine. Jobs decided to employ alternative methods to treat his pancreatic cancer, hoping to avoid the operation through a special diet - a course of action that hasn’t been disclosed until now.
For nine months Jobs pursued this approach, as Apple’s board of directors and executive team secretly agonized over the situation - and whether the company needed to disclose anything about its CEO’s health to investors. Jobs, after all, was widely viewed as Apple’s irreplaceable leader, personally responsible for everything from the creation of the iPod to the selection of the chef in the company cafeteria. News of his illness, especially with an uncertain outcome, would surely send the company’s stock reeling. The board decided to say nothing, after seeking advice on its obligations from two outside lawyers, who agreed it could remain silent.

In the end, Jobs had the surgery, on Saturday, July 31, 2004, at Stanford University Medical Center in Palo Alto, near his home. The revelation of his brush with death remained - like everything involving Jobs and Apple - a tightly controlled affair. In fact, nary a word got out until Jobs’ tumor had been removed. The next day, in an upbeat e-mail to employees later released to the press, he announced that he had faced a life-threatening illness and was “cured.” Jobs assured everyone that he’d be back on the job in September. When trading resumed a day after the announcement, Apple shares fell just 2.4%.
Apple entertained no further questions about Jobs’ health, citing the CEO’s need for privacy. No one learned just how long Jobs had been sick - or that he had contemplated not having the surgery at all. “It was very traumatic for all of us,” recalls one of those in whom Jobs confided, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the topic’s sensitivity. “We all really care about Steve, and it was a serious risk for the company as well. It was a very emotional and very difficult time. This was one page in the adventure.”
***
The Steve Jobs adventure: By now it’s one of the most remarkable stories in business. When Jobs returned in 1997 to Apple - then facing its own near-death experience - he arrived with a tarnished legend. He was, of course, the charismatic boy wonder who at age 21 had co-founded Apple with Steve Wozniak in his parents’ garage back in 1976. He was worth $200 million by 25, made the cover of Time magazine at 26, and was thrown out of the company at age 30, in 1985.

What he’s accomplished in the past decade has not just restored Jobs to the Silicon Valley pantheon but elevated him to the status of superstar. On the brink of bankruptcy when he returned, Apple now has a market value of $108 billion - more than Merck, McDonald’s, or Goldman Sachs; $1,000 invested in Apple shares on the day Jobs took over is worth about $36,000 today. And it isn’t just Apple and its investors that have benefited from Jobs’ executive skill. Pixar, where he served simultaneously as CEO, has come to dominate the animation business, churning out megahits like “Finding Nemo” and “The Incredibles” that prompted Disney (DIS, Fortune 500) to buy the company in 2006 for $7.5 billion. (Jobs now owns 7.3% of Disney, worth $4.6 billion, in addition to Apple stock worth $682 million.)

No less an authority than Jack Welch has called Jobs “the most successful CEO today.” Jobs, at age 53, has even become a global cultural guru, shaping what entertainment we watch, how we listen to music, and what sort of objects we use to work and play. He has changed the game for entire industries.

Jobs is also among the most controversial figures in business. He oozes smug superiority, lacing his public comments with ridicule of Apple’s rivals, which he casts as mediocre, evil, and - worst of all - lacking taste. No CEO is more willful, or more brazen, at making his own rules, in ways both good and bad. And no CEO is more personally identified with - and controlling of - the day-to-day affairs of his business. Even now, Jobs views himself less as a mogul than as an artist, Apple’s creator-in-chief. He has listed himself as “co-inventor” on 103 separate Apple patents, everything from the user interface for the iPod to the support system for the glass staircase used in Apple’s dazzling retail stores.

Jobs’ product introductions are semiannual events, complete with packed houses, breathless blog dispatches, and celebrity appearances - two hours of marketing performance art. Who else could have the nation panting in anticipation of a cellphone? After watching Jobs unveil the iPhone, Alan Kay, a personal computer pioneer who has worked with him, put it this way: “Steve understands desire.”

Jobs’ personal abuses are also legend: He parks his Mercedes in handicapped spaces, periodically reduces subordinates to tears, and fires employees in angry tantrums. Yet many of his top deputies at Apple have worked with him for years, and even some of those who have departed say that although it’s often brutal and Jobs hogs the credit, they’ve never done better work.

How Jobs pulls all this off - how this bundle of conflicting behaviors can coexist, to spectacular effect, in a single human being - remains a puzzle, even though more than a dozen books have been written about him. Jobs is notoriously secretive and controlling when it comes to his relationship with the press, and he tries to stifle stories that haven’t received his blessing with threats and cajolery.

This story is one of them. While Jobs agreed to be interviewed by my colleague Betsy Morris on the subject of Apple’s selection as America’s Most Admired Company (see What Makes Apple Golden), he refused to comment for this story, which had been in the works for months. Dozens of people who work or have worked with Jobs did agree to extensive interviews, most insisting on not being named (even if praising him) for fear of incurring his anger.

History, of course, is littered with tales of combustible geniuses. What’s astounding is how well Jobs has performed atop a large public company - by its nature a collaborative enterprise. Pondering this issue, Stanford management science professor Robert Sutton discussed Jobs in his bestselling 2007 book, “The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t.” “As soon as people heard I was writing a book on assholes, they would come up to me and start telling a Steve Jobs story,” says Sutton. “The degree to which people in Silicon Valley are afraid of Jobs is unbelievable. He made people feel terrible; he made people cry. But he was almost always right, and even when he was wrong, it was so creative it was still amazing.” Says Palo Alto venture capitalist Jean-Louis Gasse, a former Apple executive who once worked with Jobs: “Democracies don’t make great products. You need a competent tyrant.”

Fair enough. But it is also important to understand the ways in which Jobs’ attempts to manipulate his world pose risks for Apple - and thus its investors. They are evident in his difficult partnerships with music and television companies, which chafe at his insistence on setting uniform prices for their songs and videos on iTunes; in the real story of his battle with cancer; and in his deployment of stock options at Apple and Pixar, which exposed both companies to backdating scandals.

Jobs himself judges the world in binary terms. Products, in his view, are “insanely great” or “shit.” One is facing death from cancer or “cured.” Subordinates are geniuses or “bozos,” indispensable or no longer relevant. People in his orbit regularly flip, at a second’s notice, from one category to another, in what early Apple colleagues came to call his “hero-shithead roller coaster.”

Jobs’ own story is far more complex. And in the 26 years that Fortune has been ranking America’s Most Admired Companies, never has the corporation at the head of the list so closely resembled a one-man show. Last year Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster opined that if Jobs were forced out as a result of the backdating scandal, Apple’s shares would drop 20% overnight. At the company’s current market cap, that would make him Apple’s $22 billion man. “Steve Jobs running the company from jail would be better for the stock price than Steve Jobs not being CEO,” muses Sutton.
Jobs is hardly likely to be forced out, as we shall see. On the contrary, he’s likely to continue taking Apple - and its customers, competitors, and investors - on a wild ride to places they couldn’t have imagined.
It may be instructive, then, to consider what drives the Steve Jobs adventure.

Courtesy: money.cnn.com

Soon after I got to know about it, I lay my hands on Google Chrome, the newly launched browser from the internet giant. Frankly, I was impressed with its speed, its simplicity, its security and its robustness - and this is just the beginning.

Key features:

- Open source (open for developer Apps)
- Clean and fresh interface
- Improved speed, security & stability- incorporates ‘WebKit’ rendering engine (similar to Apple’s Safari browser)
- Individual process for each tabs (tabs have their own ‘Sandbox’ space) - This means that the browser does not simply crash, should one tab misbehave.
- Improved JavaScript performance with the new ‘V8′ JavaScript Virtual Engine - Developed by Google Engineering (openly adaptable)

A few glitches:
- Plugin incompatibilities
- Issues with ‘Capcha’ (image verification) on a few websites
- JavaScript rendering issues on pages (issue on Facebook)

I suggest you to give it a try. The product is in Beta, so ignore a few bugs - which should be fixed with time. If you wish to know what’s under its hood, go here.

It is still long for it to be reckoned as an industry ready browser. The launch of Chrome can be seen as Google’s attempt to maintain its stronghold on the internet. FireFox plugins like CustomizeGoogle.com can virtually wipe off Google Ads, the company’s ‘bread & butter’. If people started using this ad-free feature, Google’s revenue could plummer down from billions to zero overnight.

It was high time that Google take control of the browser experience. Zero revenues for this internet giant, valued at $160 billion, would not be a pretty picture.

The effort is appreciable. And by the end of it, I’m left asking - are we in for another ‘browser wars’? Can it be the next ‘internet operating system’?

Microsoft, watch out!

Way to go, Google!