Nitin Borwankar’s thought streams

While the world is moving to better and more snazzy UI's for Twitter ( see www.peoplebrowsr.com ) I am exploring the wonders of text mode.
This post was written as an email, I now have a python script that downloads my tweets and displays them on a green on black terminal emulator on my Mac, and I just discovered excla.im (again).
The python script runs off a cron job on my laptop and I save the tweets so I can catch up - scanning a screen full of formatted text - one tweet per line is far more efficient for me than
staring at screens with fancy distracting colors - after all isn't this all about 140 characters of text
- let's get with the program people! Yay, text mode! Two cheers! No, I mean only two people cheered for that ;-)

Google 10th Anniversary Award winner!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Google 10th Anniversary Awards Centre,
London W1U 4RY, United Kingdom.
Tel   :  + 44-703  185 4893 + 44-703  1802 935 
Fax   :  + 44-870  974 0291 + 44-870  4957 362
 
We are pleased to inform you that your email address has won an Award in the Google 10 Years Anniversary Awards as organized by Google Inc., held on 0ct 6th,2008. in London, United Kingdom. Google Inc. randomly selected 20 email addresses through a computer ballot system to receive an award of Five Hundred Thousand Great British Poun(500,000.00) each as a part of their for-profit philanthropic wing (GOOGLE.ORG) promotion. Awards MUST be claimed by the email owner ONLY, not later than 3 weeks from the day of notification.
 
Award Reference code: GOOGLE568A2008
File number:          G245
Send your complete personal information with your Award Ref. and File no. to us to enable us process your claim.

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Please do not reply if you are NOT the owner of this email address.
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After 10 years of establishment, Google Inc is worth over 23 Billion US Dollars with over 20,000 workers worldwide
making it the best and most successful online search engine in the world

A friend of mine was the CEO of a regional ISP in the mid 90's. I worked with his clients setting them up with Sybase and Oracle databases to back their web sites.
He specialized in T1's for businesses (no dialup at all) and also took a stab at the convention connectivity market. There was no wi-fi back then. He spent a lot of time laying cable under convention floors circa 1996 to provide connectivity for conferences, especially the trade show floor.
I forwarded the TechCruch post on LeWeb/Swisscom fiasco to him and he had some interesting insights.
 
Nitin,
 
Thanks - interesting.
 
The problem with the Internet business is that reliability is an
exponential function of cost.
 
With conferences, it must be 100% reliable - no second chances - so it is
expensive to do well. Everybody gets stars in their eyes when they see the
$$$ attached.
 
So you get lots of competitors who don't have a clue, undercutting you and
then you get convention center management and show management looking at
the $$ and trying to pick your pocket because they think you are making
too much money.
 
The problem is that most of the cost of delivering internet is setting it
up and having the infrastructure in place to deliver it. So whether you
use it for 5 minutes or 5 years, the cost doesn't change that much. Or
saying it differently, you have to pay for 5 years worth of connectivity
for a 2 day show - which makes people weak in the knees when they think
(wrongly) of how much money you must be making (or they could make if they
undercut you by 25%).
 
We got out of the business because knuckle dragging cable crimpers thought
they could do the job and the convention centers hired them to keep most
of the profit for themselves.
 
It was only a matter of time before something like this happened. It is
very hard to do well,and only 100% reliability is an option unless you
want to be the subject of this kind of blog posting, or worse, lawsuits,
either one of which can end your business.
 
I'd love to be back in the business, but it is a very stressful, demanding
activity where your entire reputation and business is on the line at every
event.
 
Hope you are well. Let's catch up soon.
 
<...>
 
> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/13/swisscomm-tries-to-deflect-criticism-of-le-web-internet-failure/
> --
> Nitin Borwankar
> nitin@borwankar.com
>
 
I wonder whether Swisscom was one of those doing the undercutting or getting undercut and how much LeWeb negotiated to get a low price.
 
Nitin

 

Studies apparently show that web surfing stimulates wider areas of the brain than just reading .... hmmm ... not sure if I like that ....
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fc%2Fa%2F2008%2F11%2F30%2FMN5C147QAB.DTL&tsp=1
 
-- Nitin Borwankar - nitin@borwankar.com - 510-872-7066 - YIM:nborwankar - Gtalk:nborwankar - AIM:nborwankar@mac.com walruscarpenter.wordpress.com Of shoes and ships and sealing wax of cabbages and kings
tagschema.com Implementation of tag database applications

Mumbai city of my birth is shows its true spirit
see second photo
 
http://arunshanbhag.com/2008/11/30/mumbai-beloved-city-reclaimed/
-- Nitin Borwankar
 nitin@borwankar.com

-- Nitin Borwankar - nitin@borwankar.com - 510-872-7066 - YIM:nborwankar - Gtalk:nborwankar - AIM:nborwankar@mac.com walruscarpenter.wordpress.com Of shoes and ships and sealing wax of cabbages and kings
tagschema.com Implementation of tag database applications

In the first two weeks since the election, President-elect Barack Obama
has broken with a tradition established over the past eight years
through his controversial use of complete sentences, political observers
say.
more ....
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-borowitz/obamas-use-of-complete-se_b_144642.html
-- Nitin Borwankar
 nitin@borwankar.com

From intomobile.com http://tinyurl.com/5of4ha
 
 
[...]
 
This kid got hit by a train, sending him flying 50 feet and knocking him
unconscious - and unable to complete his text message. That’s the
unfortunate part.
 
And, he is currently recovering in a hospital - which means he lived to
tell his friends how he got hit by a train and lived. Seeing as how he
lived and all, we’re gonna call this the hilarious part.
 
[...]
 
From intomobile.com More at http://tinyurl.com/5of4ha
-- Nitin Borwankar
 nitin@borwankar.com

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Generated 4 paragraphs, 291 words, 2000 bytes of Lorem Ipsum
-- Nitin Borwankar
nitin@borwankar.com