Prashant's Weblog

Hunt for ebook reader in India

Posted by Prashant - 26/11/09 at 06:11:23 pm

I get a feeling of remorse thinking about the drop in the amount of reading activity I used to do earlier to what I do now. They were good old days when you had that mental make to churn book after book, but these days it is different. Habit of reading has done the vanishing act to such perfection that even Houdini will be proud of its flawlessness. So it was in an attempt to reinvigorate this almost dead wont that I was bitten by the ebook reader shopping bug. The idea that with this  6 inch by 11 inch photo frame like device I can stay sink in to my bed and read thousands of books without straining my eyes (like reading from my laptop) made me want to buy this device. Thus started this journey of research on various e-book reader devices available and ways of buying them so that the cost remain low.

At the outset let me clarify I have not bought any device because at the point of writing this rant, I found the cost of these devices in India is way too high than what I would like to pay.

So it started with me thinking what do I want out of this device. The list is simple;

1. Cost should be less than 10 K INR. 14K would be a stretch.
2. It should not be too small(mobile phone form factors) nor too big (Kindle DX) and it should be handy. Ideally 6” in width.
3. It should have E-Ink technology. Screens build with this technology are easy on your eyes unlike say your laptop screen. There are ebook readers which are built with screen driven by non-E Ink technologies. They also claim that it is as effective as E Ink screens. But I am not sure if  I want to take a chance on these.
4. There are rumours that ebook readers that display color other than black, white and grey are being planned. I am not sure if this is a must have criteria. But the device should be capable of displaying 8 shades of grey. 4 shades of grey is also fine but not sure how crisp the images would be.
5. There should be a easy way to transfer books on and off the device. Preferably through USB cable. I dont think wireless transfer to the device is something that I would ever need. Even if I am traveling, I dont think I am that busy that I cant do it through a USB cable prior to my travel. So wireless is an option that I am not even considering.
6. It should support various document formats. More the merry. But it must support at least  non-DRM PDF,text, images (gif,jpg) and mp3
7. It should have a built in dictionary and search functionality. Never underestimate the power of an inbuilt dictionary.
8. It should allow creation of custom folders.
9. It should preferably support at least the important Indian languages (Kannada).
10. The OS driving the device should preferably be open source. This is important because, the chances that someone will code enhancements and provide additional plugins is higher and by using open source the over all cost generally comes down and hopefully it will be passed on to the customers.
11. Ebook reader company should have a history of frequently release  of newer firmware for the device.
12. It should allow external memory cards of bigger capacity. The larger capacity card it allows the better.

With this feature wishlist in place, it was time to look at the various ebook readers in the market. A good place to start is the Mobile Read Wiki page. I think it has listed almost all the ebook readers which are currently available in the market.

Pocket book 360°
Liked this device, it supports lots of format, its relatively small(5′), but its kind of cute. No fancy stuff like Wireless, touch and does not support handwriting, but is good enough for reading books. It sells at $240 and can be shipped to India. I would have bought this device, but considering the total amount amount after including customs duty, which you need to pay, it is not worth it

Cybook Opus:
Yet another device in the market, but is damn costly. Not sure even if I were willing to shell out that kind of cash I would buy this device.

Hanlin V5:
Yet another device in the market. Sells at $250, add customs duty and its not worth it.

Readius (unreleased):
No idea on this.

Hanvon WISEreader N526:
This is also pretty nice. It has the hand writing recognition, which can be used to highlight sentences and make notes. I send an email couple of weeks back to these guys asking if they ship it to India. Yet to hear from them.

Sony Touch Edition PRS-600:
Its pretty good but does not ship to India and is pretty expensive. Not worth the price.

Kindle 2:
Ships to India, but then its a pain to get the ebook in and out of the device. Considering the custom duties its damn expensive.

Cool-er Classic:
They sell at $300. It does not have any great features that other ebook readers don’t have. They ask you to select a country before they display the price tag. So for India its $300, not sure if this includes customs duty. If it does not then its not worth the price.

NUUT2 :
No idea

iriver Story:
Looks good. Not released yet I guess and I am sure it will be pretty costly.

Nook:
Pretty good bit does not ship to India. Very expensive also.

IRex iLiad series:
Ridiculously high price.

So if you are in India and want to buy a ebook reader, you are basically out of luck. You either wait for someone to come up with a reader manufactured in India which will bring the cost of these devices to where they are suppose to be or you can ask some one who is traveling from US to India to get one for you.

I tried these options too but it works out pretty expensive

- 20North
This will allow you buy US products from India, especially the one which are not currently being shipped to India. But again customs make it really expensive. But sometimes they come up with some schemes because of which you get products at US prices. But none existed when I looked for Ebook Reader.

- Shipito
This will allow to purchase products in US and then get it shipped to India or for that matter anywhere in the world. Again I don’t think there is a way to escape the customs.

I even tried the Ebay Gobal Easy Buy, again very expensive.  The only reseller of Ebook readers in India that I could find is  Ereaderindia. Based out of Chennai these guys sell Hanlin and Cybook readers. While I was browsing their site, found the contact number of proprietor of this firm and obviously called him. What an conversation it turned out to be. My conversation started with me letting him know about my intention of buying an ebook reader. What followed was something which I had never expected. He patiently listened to me until I completed and then explained to me why buying his products at the current price was really a bad idea. He actually convinced me reconsider my buying decision and asked me to wait for another 6 months when the prices will drop. Now how many people like him do you get to meet? Not many at all.

So with that sagely advice, a halo appreared and I attained enlightment. A realization that buying these devices was indeed a bad idea at this point of time dawned upon me thus ending the ebook shopping journey. But something good happened during the course of this journey. Not sure how but I happen to pick a paper back edition of  Rohinton Mistry’s “A fine Balance”. Slowly but steadly I have inched towards the 3/4th mark of this 500 odd pages of extreamly creative writing.  Hopefully it will continue this way.

Collaboration lessons from Nature

Posted by Prashant - 17/11/09 at 01:11:17 pm

William Wordsworth once said “Let Nature be your teacher”.  If you care to look, its amazing how nature always has an easy way of delivering the message across. With the dawn of the Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 tools and technologies and increased pressure on bottomline, concept of collaboration and how its a win-win situation for all has taken the center stage in the management circles these days. Now the question is what is the best way to explain this “Collaboration” and “win-win” situation to say a layman? Apparently nature has this story of Honey guide bird and the nomadic Boran people of Kenya which beautifully elucidates how working together can be a very rewarding situation for all the parties involved.

Across the bushlands of northern Kenya, a remarkable example of cooperation
between bird and man can be found, operating today much as it has for untold centuries.2
This is the territory of the Boran, a nomadic tribe who continue to subsist through hunting
and gathering. For as long as they can remember, the Boran have been taking advantage
of the helpful behavior of a bird known as the greater honeyguide (Indicator indicator),
which—as its name implies—is widely renowned as a guide towards choice deposits of
honey.
By nature the honeyguide displays a great fondness for beeswax and bee larvae.
Inasmuch as beehives are virtually inaccessible to these birds and well protected by the
bees (Apis mellifira) themselves—the colonies are typically located in large trees, rock
crevices or termite mounds—the honeyguide requires the aid of man in order to pillage
the honey-cache. As the natives tell it—and now confirmed by the study of Isack and
Reyer—they summon the honeyguide to the campsite by emitting a specific, penetrating
whistle which can be heard from a distance of over one kilometer.3 Upon hearing the
whistle, the bird responds by flying towards the campsite of the Boran, whereupon it
announces itself by flying close to the humans and moving restlessly amongst
conspicuous perches in the trees, all the while emitting a very characteristic call (tirr-tirrtirr-
tirr). Once it has gained the attention of a potential honey-gatherer, the bird then
proceeds to guide him in a fairly direct manner to the site of the bee-colony, the latter of
which may be several kilometers away. Alternately appearing and disappearing, the bird
periodically returns to check on the humans, as if to make sure that they are still
following, such returns becoming more frequent and agitated as the two parties near the
hive. The Boran honey gatherers, in turn, whistle and bang sticks while following the
bird to maintain its attention and announce their position. According to professional
honey gatherers, “through its guiding pattern, the bird informs them about the direction
of, the distance to, and their arrival at the colony.”
Upon arriving at the site of the bees’ nest, the honeyguide perches near it and emits a
very characteristic “indication” call. By all accounts, this call differs markedly from the
guiding call. Should the Boran experience difficulty in locating the colony, the bird
swoops down and circles it as if to further clarify the precise location of the nest. Once
the nest is found and its thick walls breached, the Boran plunder the honeycombs, always
leaving a few select morsels behind for the honeyguide.

(Source)

Simply awesome isn’t it? If time is not a constraint then the whole article(source) is worth reading. Apart from the collaboration message, you actually start to wonder as to why and how, animals/birds sometimes display such strange behavior. Talking of strange behavior, check this video;

Blame the behavior of Leapord on natal scents of the baby Baboon or maternal instincts of the leapord itself, such instances provide lots of points to ponder upon.

Site Updates – menu

Posted by Prashant - 16/11/09 at 11:11:15 am

Made some changes to the menu;

Old Menu:

New Menu:

I always felt that the top menu was in a way cluttered. Lots on info which the user will hardly use, but has to see it every time user visits this page.  So I have used the dropdown menus to hide it. Now the user can click and navigate to the links. These menus are created using basic HTML and a bit of simple Jquery. I am still a newbie with Jquery, so I have implemented it in a crude way. The code looks lot ugly than the end result. But hey it works (hopefully).  I checked it on Mozilla 3.0.15 and IE 8. Mozillar it works like a charm, but IE there is a small glitch (duh!! Its IE stupid) . I am not sure what is causing it .

Otherwise it works fine in both the above mentioned browser.  Need to check with other browsers and browser versions. So thats the update for now. Drop in an email in case you find a bug. Until next updates. Adios.

RFO’s flashback delusion – Another Leopard “rescued” from wild

Posted by Prashant - 13/11/09 at 02:11:58 pm

Recently N.T.Vijaykumar of INW posted this picture of a 15 day old Leopard cub, which was found abandoned by its parents and was rescued from the forest by the locals. After it was rescued it was promptly delivered to the RFO(Range Forest Officer) who apparently decided to keep it in his residence.  This news triggered off sort of a debate on one of the naturalist email alias. In the debate, one of them(Prakash Matad) pointed out that this is not the first time that a RFO has suffered the “flashback delusion” and decided to own a Leopard as a pet like the kings of the yesteryear, but its the fourth incident within four months.
1)One leopard cub was in bandipur RFO office in month of august
2)Two leopards in nagarhole in RFO house in month of september
3)One more now in nagarhole (shown in the picture above)

This action of RFO brings up some disturbing questions to light;

1) What RFO office did, was it the right thing to do?
2) Was the RFO absolutely sure that the cub was abandoned by its parents or was it just roaming around like cubs do when parents are out hunting?
3) After the animal was rescued, why did the RFO try to “domesticate” it?
4) What is the future of this adorable cub?
and many more.

I think they should have left the cub as they found it and let the nature do the flipping of the coin to decide if the cub should continue to live or not. It may sound “in-human” but look at the options now;

1) RFO takes care of it for some time and then releases it back to the forest. Going by the history, not only in India but all over the world, human track record for imparting “quality wildlife skills” is pathetic. Barring few cases it is said that all animals introduced back into the wild found it difficult to survive.

2) Rehabilitation: RFO can rehabilitate the cub. The chances are quite good that the cub would survive the rehabilitation. But common everyone agrees that it is really sad to see such a magnificent animal rot in a zoo

I seriously hope RFO makes all the efforts to introduce the cub back to wild and hope it grows big and healthy to rule its territory like a King because these magnificent and regal creature deserve nothing less.

The Skeleton Dance

Posted by Prashant - 08/11/09 at 11:11:50 am

Thanks to the strange and unusual morning itch to check off at least few off the 33 thousand odd unread blog posts in my RSS feed reader that there was a slight twist in what otherwise whole have been a regular, laid back, lazy Sunday morning. One of the blogs I follow had linked to a Disney animation called “A silly symphony – The Skeleton Dance”. Have to say I absolutely loved it. As the skeletons twist, turn and defy virtually all the known and unknown laws of physics you are transported to a magical land where imagination knows no bound. There is a different kind of energy in cartoons and animations that cannot be found in any of the other art form. I find it hard to understand how could someone not approve of them. By someone if I am hinting to my dad, I will not be very wrong. Though he thoroughly enjoys the wild chase of Jerry by Tom and has a hearty laugh when Tom loses a dimension after Jerry demonstrates his skills with the sledge hammer in the Tom and Jerry show, he still categorizes them under activities-to-be-done-in-between-project-meetings aka. activities-that-are-waste-of-time. My analogy of how Sunil Alag, the ousted CEO of Britannia, drew inspiration from Tom and Jerry to churn out a global snacks brand, did little to change his opinion. One can’t find fault with him, after all the great Homer Simpson himself once said “Cartoons don’t have any deep meaning. They’re just stupid drawings that give you a cheap laugh”.

So is Homer Simpson right?

When I watch/read superman (or any other comic for that matter), is it just a neurotic, bug-bitten super hero protagonist hanging by walls and tangled in his own web of mundane human problems or is he the mirror for us to reflect on the what we are, what battles we want to fight and win and how to fight them?

Is it just another adventure for Tintin in The Calculus Affair or is he trying to send a message through the character of Marshal Kurvi Tasch and his dictatorial regime in Borduria? Are these two images just a coincidence or is Herge trying to convey a message.

(Kurvi-Tasch in Tintin)                            (Saddam)

Again why does “Amaih Kurvi-Tasch”, phrase used by the men of Borduria’s military to greet each other sound so similar to “Hail Hitler” used by the infamous Nazi army men?

Isn’t the conversation between Calvin and Hobbes in the above comics, top-notch philosophy text book bundled in to a 600 * 400 pixel image? If you ask me there is enough “stuff” in that small image to keep your nurons busy for a year.

So comming back to the point. Animations, cartoons or comics are like any other art forms with their roots deep inside the culture, thoughts, ideas of not just the creator but the entire society around the creator. They might appear, like Homer points out, stupid drawing that brings a smile, but when you look within and read between its lines, you will be surprised with what will meet your eye.

Nostalgic moments…

Posted by Prashant - 06/11/09 at 07:11:20 pm

It was close to 8.30 in the morning. Previous dull, rainy night had strode into a beautiful, bright, sunny Thursday morning. As I was already late, I had to quickly gobble up the breakfast and then hop into the taxi. The lazy quiescent morning traffic had still not completely awakend from its slumber, so we zipped through the city and before the next door aunty’s clock could sing its 9′O clock psalm praising the divine, I was starting at my destination. As the hoarding unmistakably announced itself as “PESIT”, lots of wonderful memories rushed all at once causing almost a jam that rivaled, both in intensity and scale, the one Hutch network encounters on a new year’s eve.

It had been long years since I had walked that path that led from the gate, so when the taxi driver asked if he had to drive past the gate, answer was a stern NO. I asked him to stop well before the gate. There was no way I would have allowed the aging rubber of the tyre separate me from the path which had embraced and welcomed a young apprentice in me with its arms wide open, cheered as the education apparatus slowly chiseled out the rough edges over 4 long years and then with equal grace bit farewell when I was ready to take on the grind of life. Strange was the way it prepared all who walked this way for life to come. As I climbed up or walked down its slope, day in and day out, little did I then realize then the subtle way it was trying to ingrain in us the fact that up’s and down’s are normal and if you find yourself going down, the time you find you find yourself ploughing up is not far off. What a lesson of life from something as simple as a path. I walked down the slope and there it was, an edifice standing tall, overlooking a beautiful garden, Mr. M Doreswamy block. It was in this block that I was suppose to interview really bright people some of whom by the end of that day would be part of the same family which I am currently am.

It started a day or two before. I was asked to pick a date when I would be to able to take part in the university hire program to recruit fresh blood into our company. As I scanned the schedule, I was delighted to see PESIT in the list. From then on the choice of date and college was obvious. So I wrote back to my manager and my request was immediately granted. Life had come back one full circle.

I stood in front of the computer A block for almost a whole minute. Just stood and stared at it. Then realizing that I was late had to rush and after walking couple of steps, it was heartening to see a familiar face in between a sea of unrecognizable, anxious, energetic faces. He directed me to the sports arena and as I entered, it was overwhelming to see 400 odd strong crowd. There was a different kind of energy ebbing from there. It was as though the brand of my company was the strong force holding these 400 odd highly energetic nucleons together in that place.That very moment I knew it was start of a fabulous day.

The recruitment process started with usual pre placement presentation, which most of them slept through. It still beats me why they include so much of financial jargon about the company. Then one of the manager leading the recruitment drive walks up to me and tell me that we as seniors will be addressing the crowd on our experience being part of the organization. Omgh!! He ought to be joking..me speaking in front of 400+ crowd!! I the severe anthropophobia was not drowning me enough already, another manager pointing his fingers at me, yells into the microphone to the crowd..”Do you recognized this person”. The microphone which until that point of time never worked properly making it very difficult for people at the back to hear, suddenly out of no where found this extra efficiency to transmit the question loud and clear to all the corners. I froze, what the heck is this guy doing. I would consider myself a super star at social networking if half of my own class members recognized me, he is talking to a batch eons after I passed out. I guess the blank who-the-heck-is-this-guy expression on every one’s face made the manager realize that he probably has committed biggest blunder of his life by assuming that I was some superstar of the college in the yesteryears and the my first step on the stage would be greeted by shrill whistles, aarti and a pretty face hurling herself towards the stage, tearing off her top and screaming “I loveee yoooooooooouuuuuu Prashant”. He simply thrust the microphone to my hand and walked away to the corner. There I was there standing like an Ashoka pillar, a fat one thought, in middle of no where. It is in situations like these when your mind and body conspires against you the most. While I was thinking hard as what to say, my brain was rattling a speech of how it had ordered me to visit something called toastmasters club and how the rotund, corpulent body would not budge an inch from the seat.

Legend says that Lord Krishna miraculously appeared out of no where and tampered the demand-supply situation by supplying extra yards of saree to Draupadi, while Dhushashan was busy trying to outstrip the supply. I am sure it was the same character, he struck a CD of lagaan in my head, fast forwarded it to the second or third song where in ARR was screaming “Koi na ab roke tujhe, toke tujhe Tod de bandhan saare…”, while the CD got struck couple of times, it did the trick and inspired me to muster enough courage to get started and rest was history. I surprisingly spoke better than what I expected I would do. What was even more surprising was the gyan regarding why you should join my organization..”You should not join because we believe you can write good code, you should join because we believe you, you and every one of you have the skills and ideas to change the way people work, play, lead and learn tomorrow”. Now where the hell did that line come from!! Failing to find any intelligence within to attribute that line to, I guess B.R. Chopra’s character coming to my rescue is the only other viable alternative.

We were all enjoying it, so we took turns to walk up to the stage and make a speech for long enough time to bore them to death. The HR folks were quite obviously envious of this latest acquired skill by engineers. With what until now used to be their stronghold domain, now seeing that breached by non-HR blood, they even felt threatened to an extent. They were thunderstruck thinking how can an engineer excel them and bore people more than they could do it. I can foresee training budget for the HR to quadruple in wake of these un-healthy signs.

So the boring pre-placement presentation was followed by a written test which had two sections. First section had some cryptic, undecipherable questions and the second section had, yep, even more of the cryptic, undecipherable questions. Yeah it beats me too as to why divide it in to two sections in the first place. Anyways we distributed the papers and the test started. I warned myself not to go through the question paper as I knew I would feel pathetic about myself after reading through it. But then the stupid curiosity won over the sagely advice I had given myself and I started flipping through the pages. First page and the next and then the next until I reached the last page. I thought I fared pretty well..better than the standard I had set for myself before I started. I could recognize few nouns, verbs, some adjectives and prepositions were piece of cake. I even recognized a trigonometric function too (yeah my dad would feel proud today and feel that his toil and sweat in making me study engineering have not gone waste). Rest of it, goes without saying, was worse that hieroglyphics. So I turned to an engineer who churns out complex C language code day in and day out and are generally considered the geeky and intelligent lot within my organization..PSST!! and when he turned, I asked “What do you think of the paper? Not that difficult right?” trying to sound intelligent. Felt lot better about myself when he replied ” Greek and Latin”.

The written test went smooth and fine. We compiled the results and announced the list of candidates who would go through the next round of technical interviews. We divided ourselves into 8 teams with around 3 members in each team. Each team had good representation from both engineering and IT. Instructions were clear, don’t probe too deep in to technical topics. Look for “Potential” was the mantra. What ever that meant. But it was fun. You had to be good if you had to successfully dodge the tricky C language questions, puzzles and simply weird questions which tested not just about the final solution but the approach you take to get there. How you approach a problem, how you list, prioritize and finally pick the best solution, how you handle assumptions, your body language etc. etc. Every thing was under scrutiny.

The quality of the people whom we met surpassed the stringent selection criteria we had. They were a bundle of amazing energy and innovative ideas. The whole experience, more than a interview process, became a mirror for self introspection. You were once like that..what happened to all that energy. They were already working on some of the coolest ideas. While one team was try to solve the problem of how a deaf and dumb will speak to a blind person using technology another person had coded his own operating system making you wonder if you are really eligible to interview them.

The whole process went fine. All who cleared technical rounds went through a HR round. We collated the final list of students who were given green signal by HR. The thrilling expressions of students whose name was called out as part of the final list marked the end of a 12 hour event.

All in all a great experience and something I would love to do again given a chance.

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