The Attack of the Font Monster

After the initial shock of the news wore off I was more fascinated by the affect it had on the websites of reputed news agencies and I was not disappointed !

CNN and The Wall Street Journal had shot their website design to pieces by increasing the font size of their headline to huge proportions. Their graphic designers would have had a tough time for sure. On the other hand The Globe and Mail and The Times of India did not compromise their designs to accommodate a piece of news and I respect that. The others were somewhere in the middle.

What is the message that websites are giving when they do this ? In case you wear glasses and you cant find them, we do not want you to miss this piece of action, so allow us to blow it up for you. Maintain some dignity guys!

Killing the iPad 3g softly, from Inside

What is the most likely thing you will carry in your pocket if you are a tablet owner. I am guessing you will have a killer smart phone that can do almost everything except the dishes. No wait, it could possibly do that as well - there must be an app for it.

The leader in tablets, Apple has two flavours of the Ipad - Wifi and 3g+Wifi. You pay a cool $130 extra to get the 3G capability on your pad. But step back and think, is it worth it ? You may say yes, it is. I need to be connected to the internet when I am travelling and there may be no wifi around.

Think again and reach for your pocket and look to the skies (there would be a cell tower around somewhere). I am willing to bet your Apple iPhone has atleast 2-3 bars of signal strength (provided you are not covering up the antenna area!) and that is all you will need to connect your iPad to the Internet - the magic of wireless tethering.

Very powerful concept, that allows your phone to effectively become a router to other devices including laptops and tablets. It does not really make sense any more to pay extra for that 3G capability. I would love to see, how Apple responds!

The game now hinges on your service provider, to provide you with a plan that encourages you to use reams of data on your smartphone. This means a couple of things for service providers

1. All devices are made equal - No disparity in charges per mb depending on the device that consumes the data
2. Exponential growth of data traffic on the wireless network - Time to redo calibration of network capacity

The Business of News

Here's an interesting piece of original research by me! Sitting in Toronto during the final months of my MBA, while glancing through Indian Newspaper sites, a thought crossed my mind - Where does all the news come from ?

So I decided to do a little research on 7 newspapers from India who have an online presence. The idea was to try and determine the source of the news - for instance PTI (Press Trust of India) , AP (Associated Press), Reuters etc. For the purpose of this research I purposefully did not include Television based news sites (as I really discount the quality of reporting on non business Indian News Channels)and I focussed this study on non financial newspapers only. This research was conducted on 1st Mar 2011 at about 1.30 pm IST.

I did consider three more papers - The Statesman, The Telegraph and The Tribune but I decided not to include them in this research. The main reason why I chose not to include them was because of the fact that they either do not do justice to the online format by trying to replicate the print news as is on the web (no, I am not referring to the ePaper versions) or they simply have a horrific site design.

For once, I am not going to include my viewpoints on the outcome of the research and I would like to invite you to comment on it. I am expecting that this post would generate different viewpoints and thats the reason why I do not want to channelize those thoughts by providing mine upfront.

A request - if you do quote this anywhere, please mention the author's name!

Enabling credit card payments

I am fascinated to see the adoption of technology. Square Inc is now offering any one with an iPhone / iPad (with an Internet connection) in the US the ability to accept credit card payments. This means cab drivers, electricians, mechanics, plumbers, flea traders and sunday market farmers can accept small transactions through credit cards. (oh, i am not sure if they would have an iPhone). I would be tempted to use one for the heck of it but the transaction fee is set at - 2.75% + 15 cents per transaction.

I think the transaction fees are slightly high but that is possibly because it is still trying to figure out proper risk management techniques. I think the image says a lot. and this is the example of only one of the companies doing it (the coolest one by far) there are other Payment Processors engaging in this niche area as well - Sage Payment solutions (looking at mid to small sized merchants), PayWare Mobile processing. Cool stuff overall...

I am so angry with ICICI Bank...Money Manager account

I am so angry at ICICI Bank for trying to force its customers to use the Money Manager software on its Internet Banking offering.

Ok, so a little background first....around New Year's time (or atleast thats when I noticed it) ICICI Bank introduced a service called Money Manager on their Online Banking system. The way I see it, it is a personal finance software which aims to help with your day to day expenses. I think its quite neat as a concept and its bound to catch on with other banks having a substantial retail base.

This is fine but there is a catch to it. The Bank has decided to charge for the software (25 rupees per month) after an initial trial period of 90 days. So far so good, the Bank can do what ever it pleases as long as it makes the rules clear upfront. Obviously, I am not interested in the software as I dont want ICICI Bank to charge me Rs. 300 a year for a software that I personally will not use.

So, whats the way out? Thankfully there is a way out! Customers can unsubscribe from the service. Hey but, whats this. I cannot unsubscribe before 31st Jan 2011 ? Really !? Weird. So I put a reminder on my phone to unsubscribe from the software on 1st Feb 2011. When I visit Money Manager on 1st Feb 2011, surprise - surprise. The unsubscribe date has been postponed to "on or before 28th Feb 2011". What a cheap, underhand trick.

They think, by forcing people to remain subscribed to the service they can induce customers to use their software. No it does not... It makes people mad. And it makes them write a blog about the horrible experience and let their friends know about it.

And oh yes, I have updated my calendar and shifted the date to 28th Feb 2011.

Lets have another round on personal Integrity!

Its legal! So what do you think when you hear this. It means that the laws of the land have said it is ok to do so or the laws dont have any explicit opinion about it, hence its legal.

Think about it. Where do the laws come from? They definitely do not originate from human nature, otherwise we would not go about breaking so many of them on a regular basis. These are created by people based on their judgement about right or wrong at the time of framing the law.

Now this does not mean that the law is all encompassing. In fact laws are created when people find ways to do things which are not right but the law at that time did not object to it. Think about hoarding. Inherently it means that you are utilizing your resources to stimulate market demand without exerting direct compulsion. This would have been perfectly fine if you were not dealing with food.

My point is that even if the basic values of a person are in the right place, he cannot always depend on the legality of a situation and decide accordingly. He may end up violating his values without even knowing about it, unless some one explicitly points out to him. So it is necessary that you question your own move and be comfortable with it personally, cause if you seek solace or justification externally, you probably will twist the message to suit your frame.

These thoughts are not mine. They are credited to my professor, Dr. Mark Kamstra from the Financial management class at Schulich. I am really glad that they have shaped my thoughts in this manner and the experience has compelled me to pen my thoughts down...

Integrity - by Michael Jensen

I attended a talk on "Putting integrity into Finance - A positive Approach" by michael jensen on the 17th of September 2010 at Schulich School of Business and was propelled to share the ideas discussed.(http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=876312). Michael had a very interesting way of defining Integrity which was void of morality or ethics.

Drawing from the field of ontology he said that integrity is such a basic quality of a being that it cannot be termed as good or bad. An entity has integrity when it is whole and complete. For organizations to have integrity it is important that the design, the implementation and the use of the organization - all three are carried out in a manner which was intended and planned for.

He goes on to further say, that integrity can be maintained in two ways :
A. When the person (or organization) honors his promise in timely fashion.
B. If he is not able to honor the promise, then inform the other party well in time and be ready to accept consequences. There have been numerous cases where companies have gained customer loyalty at times of service failures just by ensuring that the company does everything in their power to amend their shortcoming.

Integrity comes when a person follows the rules and abides by the law of the land. Interestingly, integrity can also be maintained if a person chooses to not follow the rules but let everybody else around him know of his intention of not following them. He should accept all consequences openly and not have anything to hide. A shining example in this regard is Mahatma Gandhi who openly defied the government with his non-cooperation movement and accepted all the hardships.

Some of the interesting analogies he drew were :
1. Integrity compared to spokes of a bicycle : If some of the spokes of the bike are missing and we keep on adding weight onto it then the bike would eventually give in and fail.
2. Integrity as compared to gravity : Like integrity, gravity is neither good nor bad, it just is. Gravity keeps the atmosphere together or it is instrumental in causing death when a person walks off from the top of a building.

These ideas seemed revolutionary to me when I heard them.. I know I have been able to convey only a fraction of the enthusiasm I had when I attended the seminar itself but I would love to hear thoughts of people around this.