Month: July 2008

Brashness in business

I always appreciate brashness in business. Thats how business get built. The guts, the mental strength, and the determination to standup against established players – thats what I am talking about.

Anil noodles: It requires guts to stand up and make noodles in a market, where people call noodles as ‘maggi’. In most parts of India, people refer to noodles as Maggi. So entrenched is maggi noodles. And the remaining of India knows one more brand – Top Ramen which is a world player. In this world of noodles, one company stands up and advertises a brand named as Anil Noodles – now that is guts. I do not know how it tastes, or how well they are doing, but their guts must defintely be appreciated.

Calvin and Dasavatharam

Well, people say that the biggest punch line in the Dasavatharam movie is the ending line – where someone questions Kamal if God exists ; and he replies back ambiguously, saying. “I hope he exists!”.  [or something close to that in  meaning].

Well, if Kamal can win acclaim for that, please put your hands together, and give a standing ovation to Bill watersons Calvin strip below.

Breathing life into animation

What happens when you put a team of physicists, biologists, AI (artificial intelligence) scientists, and software engineers in a room? Pretty incredible things actually. In the following video, where Torsten Reil unveils the kinds of beautiful mix of genetic algorithms, simulations of the human neural systems, and how they work with the motor sensors of our body. This could create some awesome things. Some applications he reveals are:

  1. More realistic video games
  2. Animated stunt men for dangerous stunts in movies (being blown by dynamite etc)
  3. Helping surgeons predict outcome of operations for cerebral palsy etc.

Look at the video for some breathtaking animations.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=ySRvKzZsDqw]

Pretty incredible eh? Brilliant, I should say. Torsten has realized that, this is has economic potential and has started his own company called Natural Motion. Go to his website here.

Update: While you are there at the naturalmotion.com website, check out both the euphoria demo and the backbreaker demo. You do not need to download the demo and see. Just click on the embedded videos.

Update2: I also see on the website, that this technology is already into some xbox and PS3 games. That is what gives these games a realistic edge.

Interesting Bengaluru

Four in a 2 wheeler … can I come too aunty? [Notice that, with all this, the helmet hangs uselessly at the back of the scooter]

Psychedelic colours on the back of a bus

Remember this road? This peaceful avenue used to be the bustling departure terminal access road for the old HAL airport road. What a difference.

[pictures shot using my Nokia 3110 classic]

Set gmail as default mail ‘client’

For those who are using Firefox 3 (if you dont, and want to try, go here), the official gmail blog has a great how to on how to set your default email client to gmail. I think this is great for some of us, who use gmail more than any other email. I do not have my outlook or OE set up for any email service, and most times, I end up copying the email address into clipboard, and then opening up gmail and pasting into the To: address bar. I think this hack will save a lot of time.

Go ahead, and take a look. This might for you as well. [link]

Olympic sprinting – not fair?

Jesse Owens – 1936 Berlin Olympics [image: LOC@flickr]

There is an unfair advantage to sprinters in the inner lanes, So says a recent scientific american article.

When Olympic sprinters dash down the track in Beijing this August, the fastest athlete may not take home the gold medal. Current start-gun technology gives athletes on the inside lanes an unfair advantage right off the blocks.

Although officials are aware of the problem, they have no plans to correct it before the Beijing games this summer.

Sound from the starter’s gun is known to take longer to reach athletes who start from the outside lanes than their competitors on the inside. Now a new study suggests that competitors nearest the gun have another advantage – the loudness of the bang shocks them into starting more quickly.

Very interesting. Read the full article here