Mobile phones in India were launched in late 1997 or early 1998 if my memory serves me right. For the first time mobile users, the choices were very limited. The “brick” like Nokia 5100 with the antenna and the crazy packages that came along with the deals that charged as high as Rs.14 for incoming calls and a higher amount for outgoing calls. Very few people had them and the ones who had them were obviously the rich and famous. I was in college then and recall how owning a laptop in those days was a big deal.

I still remember how a friend of mine was going back to Kerala on a train and had a few interesting companions – a laptop user who started to pull up the laptop and according to my friend “show off” and another, who went a step further to pull out his laptop and plug in his mobile phone to browse the internet. These were days when telephony in India was prohibitively expensive and this left my friend flummoxed!

Turn back the time and in just over 10 years, the face of mobile telephony has changed. With the devices getting smaller by the day and features increasing by the day, the mobile phone is pretty much the be all and end all of any modern Indian man – pardon me for sounding a bit biased here, I still believe the women don’t get it with gadgets and start a lot later than men here!

The in-thing is the new touch screen phone and this seems to be the next big thing in the mobile world! I don’t know who came first between HTC and the iPhone, but these two together have effectively changed the way the world sees mobile phones. I recall the hype the iPhone created in the US when they were being launched in 2007. Crowds braved bad weather and wanted to make history and waited overnight at stores to get phones as they were launched. For the connoisseur of the mobile, the iPhone was dubbed the Idiot Phone.

Why?

Simple – It does everything that a phone is not intended to do, what with an integrated bipod and a fancy camera and auto tilt screens. The iPhone has evolved over the last 2 years and there are newer and better versions out in the market. When India got its chance to get the iPhone officially, the hype was no different.

The iPhone has done to the market what no other phone over the last few years did – touch screen phones are the rage in town today. The last time I remotely remember anything like this being a rage was when we had the season of phones with a stylus. One may argue that this was the mother of the touch screen in a manner of speaking. But that said, the styles fever wasn’t as hot or anywhere as close to the touch screen fever.

In a matter of a few months, the competition has reacted and reacted strongly. Nokia’s 5880 is huge hit. It brings the traditional “durability” factor along with the touch screen phone that most people think lacks in the iPhone. With its provision for expandable memory and the market wining strategy of half the price of the iPhone, it’s a hot deal in town today.

The eye brow rising, WOW change for me comes from Blackberry. Who on earth thought that Blackberry with its huge office email using base will go touch screen. They were so renowned for their QWERTY keyboard and they changed, releasing the Blackberry Storm very close on the heels of their release of the Bold. I was reading an article where they shamelessly accepted that they had to make this change to keep pace with iPhone for the fear of being left far behind.

One thing is certain though. Technology being technology, things will change and change fast.

Any guess on what will take over from the touch screens?

Image Credit: powerbooktrance

Popularity: 33%

The recent 2 match 20-20 internationals between India and New Zealand were a “huge” let down for the cricket crazy Indian fans. Being so used to winning for a long time, the crash landing 2-0 score line had a lot of folks feeling bitter. The old habit of pulling out the daggers when the team does badly did certainly show up and the good old media at it again saying has India lost the plot. Add to this that a section of the media were asking a question saying was it the new uniforms!

What I fail to understand is the fact that that this was no big deal for most of us. These are T20 matches and true to their name, they are really 20-20. A result can go anyway and all that needs to happen to change the course of a game is 6 balls – A batsman can play out of his skin or a bowler can do the same and bingo, the game swings! The connoisseurs of cricket even fail to recognize that T20 is cricket!  To get into a difficult country where the pitches are fast, winds and wind chills have a huge impact and especially to play a game with literally no practice matches in hard.  People lose perspective to the challenges that the boys face when they travel around the world and expect them to perform at the same level always.

I happened to be travelling and caught both the T20 matches on blackberry – What surprised me was the kind of viewer comments that accompanied each defeat. I read all kinds of crap, the saddest being someone questioning Irfan Pathan’s commitment to the country when he bowled the last over and we lost the second ODI. Wasn’t it the same bloke who played out of his skin to win you a match that you had lost for God’s sake in Sri Lanka ? How can memories be so short lived??

I’m so glad the boys turned things around today to go 1 up on the ODI series. They did this with élan and showed that they are truly the team that is on the path to becoming the world’s numero uno. A few defeats here and there are bound to happen and one needs to be patient. This is a good team, not a god team that can win all the time. Winning and losing are part of the game and we must learn to accept defeat with grace. Pulling out daggers and knives is not a solution to an odd loss on the way. The path to greatness is never a bed of roses alone!

Image Credit: B Sandman

Popularity: 13%

The 1990s saw a humongous rush to secure an attractive and promising domain names. ‘Squatting’ was more pronounced for domain name registrations which went on to became a lucrative business opportunity.

Hoping that a worthy buyer will come along and make good the exorbitant price tag they carried. Quite a few did, like business.com, which went under the hammer for $7.5 million in 1999. More recently creditcards.com found a buyer at $2.75 million. Most of these were sold before the dot-com burst in 2001. Most of the domains names registered worldwide are under .com suffix, while .net comes a distant second.

This low investment, effortless business opportunity for several wannabe entrepreneurs across the globe has seen it charm fade away. This received a further blow, when last year the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which regulates top-level domain names, announced that it would open up the system to allow any suffix.

More recently, in Feb 2009, the “.tel” (touted to be world’s largest phone book ) was launched where this was available on first come first served basis, which meant registration of domains under the nose of popular establishments, vis-a-vis bmw.com etc. For those of you beginning to rush to check on the more recognisable names, NASA, FBI, Microsoft, IBM, Google and so on, don’t fret, as they have already secured their “.tel” addresses, earlier this year, while some of the popular Indian names, like “rediff.tel”, “ndtv.tel”, etc. are still up for grabs!

However, this needs to be bought for a minimum of 3 years initially costing $327 to $375 based on the country and domain registrar you register from. From 23rd March, .tel domains would be registered at $20 a year.

“.tel is your place on the internet, which will act like a switchboard.” said Kash Madhavi, the chief executive of Telnic, the London-based company that runs the .tel registry. “You can say, ‘Here are my Facebook details, here is my mobile number, and people will always be able to find you.” In the near future these will become more valuable when the need for mobile content increases further and a stripped-down web pages made available through mobile phones such as Blackberry, Apple iPhone etc.

Happy buying, if you foresee a big moolah, in this.

Image Credit: Existentist

Popularity: 15%

If Newton were to live in the current times, I am not so sure he would have a third law of physics associated to his name. Put differently, I would like to believe that at some level, most people today wish to defy Newton by trying to disprove his third law. For those that don’t find Newton’s laws appealing enough to remember it, the 3^rd law goes like this: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”!

Think of every single action in our daily lives and you’ll find that there’s some less-written about rule associated with each of it – be it obeying a traffic regulation on the streets, practicing basic etiquette when in public, or be it even the small little things that may border on the tedious for one individual but done for the betterment of others.

I am not the saint that obeys it all either: for e.g., I don’t shut off my phone when in public places, for I have the “crackberry” addiction of wanting to check e-mail; so I just put it on ‘vibrate’ unless that is too loud as well! I don’t wait the mandated full 3-seconds at four-way stop signs unless I spot a cop around the corner! The list goes on…

Now, if I were to be penalized for each of the infractions I mention above, I probably wouldn’t do it if the penalty bites me. I was talking to someone who had moved stateside recently, from India. He was talking about the ‘affordability’ of traffic tickets in India compared to here, and therefore being that extra bit careful not to be ticketed. How nice it is to talk about ‘affording’ not just material things, but traffic fines!!! It immediately struck a cord with me and pointed out a human trait – I am sure each of us has a disobedient side at some level.

For most folks, that are law abiding citizens, I am sure that it isn’t really a desire to disobey something in the first place, but we do it as long as there isn’t a downside, or negative repercussions associated with it. More importantly we tend to disobey only when there’s a fair chance of not getting caught at it!

This is equally applicable to nations as well – all things considered, if each and every country had equivalent technological warfare and military resources on hand, I am sure there wouldn’t be any war, invasion or “shock and awe” of any kind. If Jack knows that there’s only a 50% chance of him succeeding in a fight against Jill, he would think twice before doing it.

So, if there were to be an equal reaction to every “disobedient” action of ours, with an opposite effect, would we still knowingly incur the opposite effect? No! I wonder what Newton would say…

Image Credit: Cell 105

Popularity: 10%