Author: Pran Kurup

Pran Kurup is founder and CEO of Vitalect, Inc.

Adobe Share is Just a Document Dump!

Adobe’s Share service is just a dumping ground for documents. It is still got a long way to go before challenging either MS Office Live or Google Docs and spreadsheets. I tried using it in Firefox and it ended up in a loop where the site was always trying to install Flash 9. I finally switched to IE and managed to use it. The UI is all clunky and flash. At this point, Share sounds more like an announcement of Adobe’s intent to play in this space more than anything else.

Adobe has so many different products it is so hard to identify which product does what: Live Cycle Policy, CorpShare are a couple that come to mind in the document sharing realm. Buzzword sounded very interesting, but before it could go mainstream Adobe acquired them. It will be interesting to see how Adobe puts all the various pieces together or simply adds one more product to its already long list!

Dravid Deserves Credit for Stepping Aside

My initial reaction when I read above Dravid’s resignation from the Indian captaincy was one of deep disappointment. I also couldn’t help thinking that he was “running away from responsibility” as Bishen Bedi put it. Here was India’s top and most reliable batsman with a mixed record as captain throwing in the towel just when it looked like was coming into his own, emerging from the shadow of Greg Chappell, with an impressive tour of England.

As I thought about it some more I realized that this was first time since Sunil Gavaskar that a top Indian cricketer actually went out when on top rather than being booted out. It clearly takes a lot of character to walk away from a highly visible and powerful (and not to mention commercially profitable) role like the Indian captaincy. Hats off to one of India’s top sportsmen. One hopes that Dravid continues this approach when he decides to hang up his boots some time in the future. His decision will eventually pave the way for the influx of new blood into the team. His stint as captain might not have been the best but he deserves credit and appreciation for passing the baton to a younger generation of players.

Pakistan: Messy At 60!

Musharraf can’t bring back Nawaz Shariff, his old boss whom he fired from office. But the courts think Mr. Shariff should be back in the country. Ms. Bhutto can’t become PM by law because she has had two turns at the job already. Musharraf can’t be President and Army chief according to the Supreme court. So he is being forced to dunk his uniform. Musharraf wants to be President but if he can’t, he wants to Army chief. No matter what, he wants to be in power. Ms. Bhutto wants to get back into action in some form or shape. But she first has to dodge hordes of corruption charges (among others) off her back. Given its endless war on terror, the US loves to keep Musharraf in office but can’t completely ignore the wishes of the Pakistani population. And then, there are all the fundamentalists groups, and of course Bin Laden and his followers, the spill over from Afghanistan, and the constant tension with India. It just seems like a situation that is getting worse by the day (btw, there are optimists even in this hour of crisis!).

After 60 years of so-called independence, its time Pakistan sought independence from what it has become during this time. A fresh start minus the current key players might be the best place to begin. Highly unrealistic and far-fetched, yet a grass roots movement to achieve this objective seems to be the only hope for Pakistan.

Selectors Deserve Credit as Young Team India Shines

There were rumors that the big three of team India (Dravid, Sachin and Ganguly) were forced to sit out the 20-20 World cup. Irrespective of these rumors, the selectors (who are almost always criticized), deserve all the credit for banking on youth in the 20-20 World Cup.

The Indian team in this tournament has been a world apart from the ODI team that played in England. The fielding has been simply superb, especially in the match against SA. Dinesh Karthik’s catch and Rohit Sharma’s run out would have done Jhonty Rhodes proud. Dhoni seems to be growing on the job as captain. He lead the team well and seems to be growing in confidence when it comes to playing a responsible knock. Rohit Sharma was terrific revelation. A technically sound batsman who appears to be more suited to Test cricket, adapted magnificently to the demands of the fast paced game. His scoring shots were deft placements all along the ground as opposed to traditional 20-20 slogs. R.P Singh continues to show tremendous promise. Unlike “loose canon” Sreesanth, RP is turning out to be Mr. Reliability. Bhajji and Viru are enjoying their return to the limelight and making good use of it.

It remains to be seen if India can continue its good show. All in all a great performance from a young team. As this tournament enters its final four the big question really is: Are we headed for a first ever Indo–Pak final in world championship cricket tournament?

Top 10 Reasons Why Dravid Quit

Rahul Dravid quietly bailed out from the hot seat of India captaincy. Here are the Top 10 reasons why Dravid quit:

  1. He was always late for practice thanks to Bangalore traffic.
  2. He wanted to fire Ganguly, but Greg was no longer around to “execute”.
  3. Pawar mailbox was always full so he could never send him email.
  4. Kapil paaji @ICL offered him a deal that he could not refuse.
  5. He had planned to take off his T-shirt (a la Dada) after the ODI at Lords but it didn’t materialize.
  6. 20-2o commentary seems more fun.
  7. He wanted to end nightmares he was having about the upcoming tour of Australia.
  8. He misinterpreted Chak de and Chucked his captaincy!
  9. US Intelligence believes it is because of Al-Qaida.
  10. He couldn’t bear the frequent calls from Azhar-bhai.

LinkedIn or LinkedOut?

Seems like LinkedIn is down? Blame it on Obama! In a smart move Senator Obama registered at LinkedIn yesterday and fired off a question for small businesses and entrepreneurs and guess what? The site is down today!

Folks in the Hillary campaign are sure to blame Obama for this outage! 🙂

Google’s PPT Equivalent Closer to Release?

This morning I received a powerpoint file via email to my gmail address and I was pleasantly surprised to see a “View as Slide Show link” next to the attachment, much like Google’s ability to view docs and spreadsheets.

On clicking the link I noticed that the slide show view converts the slides to flash and on the far right corner of the browser window there is pull down that lets you jump to different slides.

It will interesting to see what the powerpoint equivalent looks like.

Apple’s iPhone Price Drop: A Big Goof-Up

Apple announced a $200 price cut on the iPhone. Ok, I didn’t buy one at the outrageous $599 price point and I don’t intend to buy one at the reduced price either. If you did purchase one at the high end for $599, you are probably pissed! My sympathies.

Steve Jobs’ open letter to early buyers seems to say, “You have reason to be pissed, but hey that’s life! We’ll meet you half way by giving you a $100 store credit!” I think this is the master marketer, Steve Jobs’ biggest goof up ever. Next time Apple announces a product many of the early buyers are going to think twice and many are probably going to wait around for the big price drop.

There are rumors about performance issues with the iPhone. Moreover, if the product was doing well in the market, why drop the price? In short, it appears as though Apple grossly overestimated the market. They perhaps thought that the hype will turn into sales and when it didn’t, Apple decided to drop the price in a hurry, in the process antagonizing many early enthusiasts. The only good news for Apple is that there were probably very few early buyers. So if you factor the financial hit of the store credit and a temporary PR crisis, it perhaps can be easily outweighed by an increase in sales triggered by the price drop.

Earlier, one of the Research firms predicted that Apple will sell 7 million iPhones in 2007 and 15 million in 2008. At a minimum of $499 each, that’s $3.4 billion to $7.5 billion in annual iPhone revenue for Apple. Obviously, they got it all horribly wrong!

Apple reported that it sold 270,000 iPhones during its fiscal third quarter and told analysts in July that it expected to sell 1 million phones by the end of September. Jobs said Wednesday that the company is on track to meet that goal.

Kids Castle Newark, CA

Kids Castle in Newark is a great place these days for kids birthday parties. The owners have given it a face lift recently. The various play things have been fixed and re-organized. There is now a giant screen on which they can play movies, TV etc.

Desi pizzas are an added attraction (this has been available for a while). Pav Bhaji pizza being my personal favorite. Beer is a recent addition too. Nice way to spend an evening with friends and family. Kids are sure to have a great time.

They also have a website (who doesn’t) these days. Though a crummy site, it gives you a starting point.